CV NEWS FEED // Catholic writer and mother of three Emily Zanotti took on the ethical concerns of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in an article Friday. Zanotti has been open about her own struggle with infertility.
“Although the pro-life movement has focused almost exclusively on abortion, IVF presents some of the same moral concerns that abortion does,” Zanotti wrote in her piece for the Salt Lake City-based Deseret News.
She noted that both in abortions and in IVF “life is viewed as disposable simply because of its early stage of development.”
“In abortion, a pregnancy is ended; in IVF, new life is created, often just to be destroyed,” Zanotti explained.
“As a Catholic who has struggled to conceive, this tension is particularly relevant to me,” she continued:
The Catholic Church does not permit [IVF], and knowing this, I was obligated to follow the church’s teaching despite a lengthy battle against endometriosis that, at one point, fused some of my internal organs. Eventually, by treating the cause of my infertility, I was able to conceive.
“Many people, of course, don’t have an outcome like mine, and want children so much that they are willing to bear the expense and uncertain outcomes of IVF,” Zanotti wrote.
Later in her piece, she referenced the late Pope Benedict XIV who over a decade ago “opined on the consequences of [IVF], including the threat of designer babies, the commodification of children, and the wholesale destruction of human lives that aren’t recognized as human lives.”
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Zanotti concluded by praising the Alabama Supreme Court’s landmark ruling from two Fridays ago that frozen embryos are children under state law.
“The Alabama court’s decision is the right one, not just from a Catholic perspective,” she stated:
As more couples pursue IVF and produce unused embryos, we have to figure out how we treat those decidedly human children. The Alabama Supreme Court has given urgency to this important conversation.
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Zanotti on Sunday took to X to reply to Human Events Senior Editor Jack Posobiec who claimed that not ending IVF is “the pro-life answer.” Posobiec is Catholic.
“[T]he *Catholic* position is that IVF is an impermissible sin against the dignity of the human person,” she wrote.
In another X post, Zanotti explained how she was able to resist the use of IVF during her efforts to conceive.
“Basically, [modern humans’] approach to fertility is always that we are owed children and that the end result justifies whatever sins we commit along the way,” she wrote in a reply to The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles.
“I just didn’t think that way,” she added. “It wasn’t easy, by any means. But just because a technology confers a much desired benefit doesn’t mean it’s a ‘good.’”
Readers can find Zanotti’s full article here.
