The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has released a guide for the faithful with regard to methods of assisted reproductive technologies. Titled “A Catholic Primer on in vitro fertilization,” the document explains the Catholic Church’s objections to practices such as IVF, while offering encouragement to married couples who struggle with fertility.
In vitro fertilization is the most popular assisted reproductive technology, in which a woman’s ovaries are hyper-stimulated to yield multiple eggs. After being harvested, the eggs are fertilized with sperm in a laboratory and some of these embryos are transferred to the mother’s womb with the intention that at least one will grow to term. In the process, however, many of the embryos do not survive and the “extras” that do are either killed or frozen in cryopreservation.
Find out more specifics in the article below:
IVF
The bishops offered multiple reasons that the IVF procedure is morally wrong, beginning with the previously mentioned killing or freezing of embryonic children. The bishops did note that the freezing of embryos does not necessarily kill them, but they compared it to imprisoning children and explained how it does not respect their dignity as human beings.
Next the bishops touched on the importance of sexual intimacy in marriage and its power to both unite the two and the power to create life. Marriage should never be separated from such intimacy, and IVF, the bishops argue, can act as a wedge between the husband and wife. Furthermore, they also voiced their displeasure with the masturbatory efforts by which the sperm must be harvested from the man.
“IVF separates conception from the spouses’ intimate, sexual union, and the children conceived through IVF are instead created through technological manipulation. IVF also intrudes on the exclusive nature of the couple’s union by introducing other people into the act of conception itself,” the bishops wrote.
The bishops conceded that it is always good to bring children into the world, and they made it clear that children born from IVF procedures are no less loved by God. This, however, is not to say IVF is an acceptable means of having children. They noted that married couples are called to “be open to receiving such a gift,” but that no one has an absolute “right” to obtain a child.
Surrogacy
The primer also touched on surrogacy, which is when the fertilized embryo of a couple is transferred to a different woman to grow. The bishops stated unequivocally that the practice is morally wrong, and treats both the surrogate woman and the child as objects:
“In surrogacy contracts, even in cases of “altruistic” surrogacy where no money is exchanged, the nature of the process means that a woman is valued according to her capacity for production and output; she is not treated as a mother who loves and nurtures her child as he or she grows in the womb.”
Natural Family Planning
The bishops suggested that couples in need of help conceiving should seek means approved by the Catholic Church, such as “restorative reproductive medicine.” These methods generally seek to heal the root cause of a couple’s infertility and the bishops note that it can even have higher rates of success than IVF, which ignores or bypasses the cause of infertility.
They referred interested couples to Natural Family Planning education organizations, links to which can be found on the USCCB website.
