In Neolithic Boyz, Jay Manifold reviews three books on human nature and shares this amusing point from Lee Silver’s Challenging Nature: The Clash of Science and Spirituality at the New Frontiers of Life:
Consider the controversy that would attend the introduction of “another high-risk reproductive technology … from 2 percent to 10 percent of women who avail themselves of this technology are seriously harmed by it. The risk of death to embryos is about 50 percent; and of the embryos that survive, 20 percent die during the fetal stage of development. Finally, for babies born alive, the risk of a serious birth defect is 4 percent.” But “this technology is the primary one used by our species since we first came into existence — sexual intercourse, fertilization in a woman’s reproductive tract, and development of the embryo and fetus in her uterus.” (p 342)