The Ends Don’t Justify The Means
A Note Before I Begin: I started writing out these thoughts about 6 months ago, after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling began shining a spotlight on the IVF industry. National discussions began on how IVF is connected to the pro-life position. That court ruling and the discourse that followed had me peeling a scab off my old infertility wounds. I sat with what I had written and contemplated sharing it, but then headlines quickly changed as they do these days. Last week, President Trump extolled IVF and spoke about federal funding of IVF to create more babies and love more babies; thus, he brought it back to the national spotlight. I knew I could no longer stay silent. So, I’m dusting off my words and vulnerably sharing my heart and experience with you. Know that I am sharing in love and trying to be gentle with such a difficult topic.
My sister and I spent some of our downtime during college watching the emotionally charged LifeTime movies. Back in the 90s, there seemed to be numerous movies about surrogacy and IVF. We agreed, sitting on our coral-carpeted bedroom floor, that we would be surrogates for each other if we ever found ourselves not being able to conceive. But we couldn’t really even imagine that. We had 9 children in our family and we were convinced that our challenge would be limiting the size of our families one day. My mom walked in as we were watching one of these movies and casually told us, “You know, that is against Church teaching.” Our young adult selves were appalled. How could something good, like creating a family, be against Church teaching? How could the Church be so cruel that it wouldn’t allow something like IVF or surrogacy when there was no other way a woman could have a baby? That just didn’t make any sense.
Fast forward almost 10 years, and I found myself pondering these Church teachings very intimately. I was one of the 1 in 10 women at that time (1 in 7 today) who was facing infertility. As my husband and I navigated that infertility rollercoaster, I was forced to confront and try to understand the Church’s teachings in this area. I wasn’t willing to just ignore them. And yet, they were very, very hard to swallow. I am now convinced that those teachings, although not easy to accept when I was deep in the pain of infertility, were merciful safeguards for my soul and for my marriage.
When I had exhausted the help of my first reproductive endocrinologist, I met with a new infertility specialist, a Catholic doctor no less. I was offered IVF as my most hopeful option for conceiving. Suddenly those Lifetime movie conversations with my sister and that casual remark from my mom came flooding back to my mind. I knew, that as a Catholic, IVF was a step too far. But why? I am not one to just blindly accept, without trying to understand. So I began to read. I combed through Church documents, including Donum Vitae (the Church's document that deals with the dignity of procreation), Evangelium Vitae, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, publications by the US Catholic Bishops and any other articles/documents I could find. I talked with other Catholic women in a small online forum (yahoo groups - remember those) who were also walking through the deep pain of infertility. And I contacted the National Catholic Bioethics Center in an attempt to better understand the Church’s teachings in this area. I wanted to understand why the Church taught what she taught. I also reviewed all the materials provided to me by the fertility clinic to better understand what all was involved in the IVF procedures. And, if I'm honest, I was looking for any way that IVF could be done morally?
I am no theologian, but I found that there were many misconceptions about what the Church taught and the reasons behind those teachings. Basically, the Church's teaching boiled down to whether or not infertility treatments assisted the marital act or replaced the marital act, and whether or not the treatments respected the dignity of the child. A few more specific reasons why I found that IVF was not a moral option included:
1) God intended children to be created through the marital act and he intended that act to be both unitive and procreative, "which man of his own initiative may not break" (CCC 2366). IVF takes the procreative aspect of the marital act outside of that human and act and it also inserts a 3rd party (the lab and doctors) and sometimes even a 4th party (donated egg/sperm). Donum Vitae points out that since fertilization in IVF happens outside a couple’s bodies, it “establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person.”
2) No one has a right to a child, but rather every child has a right to be born through a marital act as God intended. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that, "A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The "supreme gift of marriage" is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged "right to a child" would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right "to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents," and "the right to be respected as a person from the first moment of his conception." (CCC 2378). Desiring a child is a good and holy thing, but we must never feel that we have a right to a child, as if he is our property.
3) The IVF industry - and it is a very profitable industry - preys on the very real and very good desire of a woman to conceive a child. By holding out the hopeful promise of that gift, the temptation to do whatever it takes to reach that goal is extremely difficult to resist - no matter the cost financially, physically emotionally or spiritually.
4) The ovarian hyperstimulation through synthetic hormones and the egg retrieval required in IVF can pose a health risk to women, while it does absolutely nothing to address the actual hormonal or physical issues that may have led to her infertility. In fact, it may add to potential health risks in the future, including cancer.
5) Every IVF cycle creates multiple embryos. Often only one or just a few are implanted in a woman and the rest are either frozen, donated to research or destroyed. Millions of human embryos are destroyed by the IVF industry each year, while others are put into deep freeze indefinitely.
As emotionally charged as this topic is, and as much as we should approach it with merciful love for all whose lives have been touched by IVF, I hope that the national spotlight on IVF will get us talking within the Church about this issue. Because it matters. Most people simply don't understand what is involved in IVF and how it is not consistent with our pro-life convictions.
We can’t say we are pro-life and that every human life is worthy of respect if we do not extend that to the millions of frozen lives in IVF clinics. We can't say we are pro-family if we do not see how the IVF industry directly harms how God intended families to be created. We can't say we are supporting women if we do not see how the IVF industry does a huge disservice by turning a woman's inability to conceive into a lucrative industry that isn't focused on her health and healing. This industry has also brought with it a slippery slope, as my dad would say. This slippery slope, on the surface, looks like it is good for married couples - creating a life for couples who desperately want to be parents. But the ends, the gift of life, don’t justify the means of attaining that life, or the other moral issues that have been opened by creating life in a petri dish, or the sad casualties of every IVF story - casualties just as real as the casualties at abortion clinics - on that path to life and parenthood.
I am well beyond those early years of infertility that tried my faith. But back then, I'll admit, I understood with my head what the Church taught long before I could fully accept it with my heart. God, in His mercy, allowed my heart to catch up to what He asked of me, even though it was very, very hard. And He ultimately blessed my obedience with life.
Months after turning down the offer of IVF and walking out of that fertility clinic, my husband and I felt God calling us to adoption. We were blessed a few years later with the gift of our sons through the sacrificial gift of adoption. If I had walked down the road to IVF, I probably would have missed out on the two greatest gifts in my life, which is unimaginable to me now.
IVF and infertility are hard and delicate topics to address. They involve such a painful and personal and isolating period in a couple’s life. The pain of infertility is one that many of us don't even discuss in detail with our closest friends and family. But we can’t just turn away from the Truth surrounding these topics because it is hard and it hurts. Just last Sunday, John 6:60-69 was read at every Catholic Mass. We were reminded that Jesus asks hard things of us. In that Gospel, Jesus had told his disciples that they had to eat his body and drink his blood to have everlasting life. Many of them left Him and said, “This saying is hard. Who can accept it?” (John 6:60). The Truth is not always easy to embrace is it? Sometimes it calls us to embrace a very heavy cross and walk forward under the weight of that cross.
While we discuss the moral problems within the IVF industry, we can’t ignore or insensitively treat those whose lives have been impacted by or even created by IVF. That number is growing every year. I have no doubt we all know of and probably love someone who was created through IVF. Each and every IVF baby is created in the image and likeness of God. Every IVF baby has inherent dignity and worth as a child of God. That dignity is not determined by how one is conceived. If that is you, or one of your children, please know that the problems with IVF do not in any way diminish the gift of your life or diminish your dignity or that of your child. Both things can be true at once - IVF can be immoral and those born from it can be worthy of the dignity due every single human life.
If we are unabashedly pro-life, then the dignity of every human life must also extend to those embryos not wanted, those no longer needed, those embryos sitting frozen in an IVF clinic, those embryos selectively discarded due to genetic concerns in the same way we say that dignity should extend to every child in a woman’s womb - planned or not, wanted or unwanted, conceived in a loving marriage, conceived outside of marriage or conceived through a violent act. Every single unborn human life deserves protection.
As uncomfortable as it may be, I think this national spotlight on IVF is giving us an opportunity. Let's take a close look at what being truly pro-life and pro-family means far beyond the issue of abortion clinics and begin to see what happens within the walls of IVF clinics that also cloak themselves in the false appearance of providing a compassionate service for women and families.
A final note: There are many scientific tests and procedures that can help couples facing infertility, which the Church does approve of as morally licit. There are also places like the St. Paul VI Institute (https://popepaulvi.com/) and NaPro Technology - (https://naprotechnology.com/), with doctors all around the county who are tirelessly working to help couples struggling with infertility in a moral and holistic manner. They look at addressing what could be the root cause of the problem. They also help a woman heal so that she is healthier no matter if she conceives or not and so that her chances of conception through natural means are increased. If you are facing infertility, please know that you are in my prayers.
If you want to read the Church Document I mentioned above and a few others see:
Pope St. John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae
