One of the most difficult teachings of the Church for people to understand is its rejection of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). What could the Catholic Church possibly have against bringing new life into the world? Isn’t it supposed to be universally pro-life?
Contributing to the confusion surrounding this question is that many people have been given deeply unsatisfactory answers to our title question by well-meaning but uninformed people. So, for example, one may hear something like, “If God wanted you to have a baby, it would happen naturally. We can’t play God.”
Such answers completely miss the point. They don’t simply rule out IVF, but any medical intervention at all which aims at increasing a couple’s chance of conceiving a child. But the Catholic Church does not oppose any number of such medical interventions. In fact, they are positively encouraged: the Church wants infertile couples to be able to have babies! (See the links below for more info on this.) But it is a leap too large to infer that, because babies are a good thing, any way of creating one must be good as well. Indeed, we can all imagine ways of making a baby that are obviously immoral.
IVF is not rejected because the Church rejects medical interventions in fertility as a whole. Nor is it simply dismissed as “unnatural,” another common misconception about Catholic teaching in this area. (Reliance on such terminology, at least when used without further explanation, is less than helpful because “natural” or “unnatural” are very elastic terms which can mean any number of things, both good and bad. Are eyeglasses natural? Is fornication unnatural? Answering such questions depend entirely upon defining natural in a precise and consistent way.)
Rather, IVF is rejected because, whether it is intended or not by the would-be parents or their doctors, it subtly teaches us that children are something akin to products. That is to say, by removing the procreative act from the context of a loving relationship, it “produces” children technologically. But the products of our technological expertise are also subject to manipulation and even destruction by the same expertise.
Again, this is not to say that this is at all what is intended by couples and doctors. The Church is not accusing anyone who resorts to IVF in their desperation to achieve a very great good, a child, of ill will. But intended or not, acts have consequences.
I have not, to this point, mentioned that an additional problem with IVF is the production of many embryos, only a small minority of which will be brought to term. The rest will be destroyed or frozen (perhaps to be destroyed later). Of course, the Catholic Church has very serious concerns about a practice that knowingly produces several unique human beings that will be destroyed as part of a process to produce one (sometimes more, in the case of multiples) unique human being that will be nurtured and cared for.
I did not mention this earlier because it is important to be honest about the fact that the Catholic Church would oppose IVF even if it were not connected to the mass destruction of embryonic life. The Church would not reverse its view of IVF even if a method which produced no embryonic casualties were to be devised.
So why do I mention it now? Because it is often very difficult for us to see how things that we do not intend might come to pass from our actions despite our best intentions. Many Catholics would balk at the idea that the consequence of separating procreation from the loving act of the spouses is the eventual willingness to manipulate and even destroy life because it has come to function in our imaginations as a technological product rather than an inviolable gift from God.
But does not the fact that we are willing to countenance the death and destruction of a great majority of embryos produced by IVF in order to overcome infertility indicate that the mentality against which the Church is warning us is actually impossible to avoid once children become products?
The Church has always taught that for an act to be good, it must be both well-intentioned and good (or at least neutral) in itself. A good act, like, say, giving to the poor, can be vitiated of its goodness by a bad intention, say, looking good in front of your colleagues. And a good intention can be undermined by a bad act itself because no matter how well intentioned, bad acts will have their consequences.
In a case like IVF, where there is such an obvious good outcome (a child to love and nurture), it is easy to tell ourselves that our good intentions could not possibly lead in directions we ourselves would reject. The destruction of most IVF embryos is not, in itself, the reason that the Church rejects the practice, but the fact that those who resort to IVF are not dissuaded from doing so by this fact is proof that the Church is right about what the act itself teaches us about the value of human life.
Options for the treatment of infertility that do not have the same moral pitfalls as IVF are available. Furthermore, they are generally more affordable and more effective that IVF. See here:
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7810
Anyone interested in NaPro technology to treat infertility can start here:
http://www.naprotechnology.com/
Anyone wanting to dig deeper and think more about the issues raised in my very short piece could do worse than Peter Colosi’s address to the third annual Theology of the Body Conference here:
http://peterjcolosi.com/category/video/
[video:http://vimeo.com/26123604 width:400 autoplay:0]And the most important magisterial document for Catholics seeking to fully understand the Catholic position is Donum Vitae, available on the Vatican website:
Finally, there are several other angles worth considering that are not typically mentioned in these discussions such as the health of the children and mothers involved in IVF:
Or the corporate agenda behind IVF or the impact on the decision to adopt or not:
http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/What-IVF-Does-Not-Heal.html
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/12/a-global-by-pass-of-the-heart
