In Vitro Fertilization



 in vitro fertilization , technique for conception of a human embryo outside the mother's body. Several ova , or eggs, are removed from the mother's body and placed in special laboratory culture dishes (Petri dishes); sperm from the father are then added, or in many cases a sperm is injected directly into an ovum, a process known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection. If fertilization is successful, a fertilized ovum (or several fertilized ova), after undergoing several cell divisions, is either transferred to the mother's or a surrogate mother's body for normal development in the uterus, or frozen for later implantation. Eggs also can be frozen and fertilized later. In vitro maturation is when the ova are extracted and then matured in a laboratory (instead of in the mother's body) before they are fertilized. I choose this picture to show that children are created other than in an old fashioned way by intimacy. The purpose to in vitro fertilization is to artificially create a child when a women is unable to produce a child on her own.