IVF has become the media’s latest buzzword. Most outlets present IVF in a sunny and simplistic light, leaving some Catholics with questions like “Why would the Catholic Church be against fertility treatments? Shouldn’t married couples who are experiencing infertility be given the chance to be parents?”
The answers are found in the “Catechism of the Catholic Church.”
What is IVF?
IVF stands for In-Vitro Fertilization, which is a medical process that is touted as a remedy to overcome genetic and medical issues relating to fertility and conception.
Also labeled as a form of “assistive reproductive technology,” IVF involves the direct handling of a woman’s eggs and a male’s sperm to artificially inseminate an egg in a lab to produce an embryo. According to the Mayo Clinic, embryos are then transferred into wombs to begin gestation. A typical cycle of IVF takes two-to-three weeks.
The Harvesting Process
At first glance, IVF seems innocuous – simply a procedure to help parents conceive a child. However, the morality and ethics of the procedure begin before the embryos are created.
To help stimulate egg production, women have to take various steps to increase the fertility of their eggs and facilitate ovulation. During retrieval, eggs are removed from the ovaries with a suctioning device or needle that harvests more than one egg at a time, with no guarantee that any of the eggs will be healthy or able to be used to create embryos.
For men, the process is different. Sperm can be collected at any time and even frozen for use at a later date and is often collected through unorthodox means.
Fertilization
Following retrieval, two predominant methods of fertilization are used. The first is conventional insemination, in which eggs and sperm are simply put together and kept in an incubator. The second is intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in which sperm is directly injected into eggs to create a zygote.
On occasion, couples are counseled to use egg donors, sperm donors, and “gestational” surrogates if attempts at fertilization and implantation fail. Not all embryos will be viable, and often embryos perish within days of fertilization.
What Does the Church Say?
Paragraph 2377 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that “entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children.”
According to the Church, the separation of conception from the loving and procreative act of intercourse between a married couple is morally unacceptable. The Church has also stated that IVF entrusts the process of procreation and conception to that of biologists and doctors, not God himself:
“Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses’ union . . . . Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person.”
The Magisterium of the Catholic Church maintains that IVF does not respect the human dignity of the individual parents or the embryos created through IVF.
During fertilization and implantation, embryos that are considered to be unviable are either “discarded,” used for scientific research, or frozen indefinitely. These standard practices violate the dignity of the human person, whose life begins at conception.
The Church’s top doctrinal office issued an “Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin.” The document, titled “Donum Vitae” (“The Gift of Life”), explains the morality surrounding IVF.
The “fruit of human generation, from the first moment of its existence, that is to say from the moment the zygote has formed, demands the unconditional respect that is morally due to the human being in his bodily and spiritual totality,” the document states:
The human being is to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception; and therefore from that same moment his rights as a person must be recognized, among which in the first place is the inviolable right of every innocent human being to life.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) further outlined the moral issues and clinical issues surrounding IVF, eugenics, and cloning in a document available on the USCCB website.
“No human being can ‘create’ the image of God,” the bishops stated. “That is why we say that human beings ‘procreate’ with God.”
Hope
For those wishing to become parents, the Saint Paul VI Institute offers alternatives to IVF like NaPro that align with the Catholic faith. Life-affirming healthcare and technology are out there, and the Church supports natural fertility regulation and natural family planning (NFP) to help families “be fruitful and multiply.”
The Catholic Church approves NaProTECHNOLOGY (Natural Procreative Technology) for the treatment and identification of fertility issues.
“NaPro is a major scientific breakthrough—the results of 30 years of scientific research—that involves medical and surgical treatments that cooperate completely with a woman’s reproductive system,” the Catholic Business Journal reported. “NaPro Technology is a method approved by the Catholic Church by which couples can achieve pregnancy based on a woman’s fertility cycles.”
According to a developer of the technology,
NaProTECHNOLOGY works cooperatively with the procreative and gynecologic systems. When these systems function abnormally, NaProTECHNOLOGY identifies the problems and cooperates with the menstrual and fertility cycles that correct the condition, maintain the human ecology, and sustain the procreative potential.
Doctors across the country, like Dr. Michael Kloess from Our Lady of Hope Clinic in Madison, Wisconsin, have helped many Catholic families grow their families through NaPro and NFP.
“We find that many women who suffer from infertility often feel pressure to abandon their religious beliefs when trying to achieve pregnancy,” Kloess explained. “We are committed to providing natural and morally acceptable medical alternatives to infertility and gynecological health issues within the Christian health care tradition.”
