Editor’s Note: This article is the second in a series on the Catholic viewpoints of reproductive technology.
PROVIDENCE — In-vitro fertilization (IVF) has recently made big news as a result of President Donald J. Trump’s Feb. 18 executive order directing greater access and affordability for the procedure. Reflecting the clear and consistent teaching of the Church that IVF is a grave moral evil, Bishops Robert E. Barron and Daniel E. Thomas recently issued a statement urging the administration to instead support greater access to restorative reproductive medicine.
The Church’s teaching on the intrinsic immorality of IVF is based on doctrines centering on the dignity of the human person. Yet there are further dimensions of IVF that get less attention — pursuing it might make a person, or a couple, miss their vocation; and the technology has further-reaching ramifications than couples seeking to have a baby.
“It’s never too late to find a solution” to infertility, said Monica Bergeron, a certified FertilityCare practitioner and owner of ICON Fertility Care Education Center in Rhode Island.
Bergeron specializes in guiding her clients through the Natural Procreative Technology (NaPro) process, which employs the Creighton method to track a woman’s fertility cycles and treat the underlying causes of infertility through medical interventions.
“Hopefully for many people, what they find is healing,” Bergeron said. “But even for those few couples who go through the (NaPro) process and discover that they have issues that preclude having children, they also find healing in terms of what’s going on with their bodies. They can heal certain conditions that can be barriers to their long-term health and well-being, and it gives them the freedom to pursue other options and make educated decisions”about their happiness.”
Yet, there are couples who continue to experience infertility even after pursuing restorative reproductive medicine. For them, Bergeron said, there is an opportunity to explore the vocation to which God has called them.
“There are ministries that require a lot of an individual that a person with a family might not get involved with,” said Bergeron.
Going beyond the individual or couple, IVF affects how human beings see themselves and one another, according to Peter Colosi, Ph.D., associate professor of philosophy at Salve Regina University.
In a January 21 interview with Ruth Institute founder Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., Colosi discussed the emotional toll on women, men, and children affected by IVF.
Colosi observed that this toll comes down to creating a child out of love as opposed to creating human beings “as products.”
The manner of a child’s conception matters in ways that range from the child’s own self-esteem to interpersonal relationships.
“If people only understood what it means when you go from non-being to being,” said Colosi, “that moment is meant to be embedded in the most loving of relationships. Your existence is a beautiful gift to your parents.”
“When we replace the conjugal act with a technical procedure, that 180 changes our entire attitude towards each other,” Colosi added. “Instead of conceiving of each other as gifts to be received, we conceive of each other as a product or something we have a right to. The Church says the child is the one who has a right.”
The couples who long for children aren’t to blame, said Colosi. “No one ever told them that there’s a way to cure infertility” through restorative reproductive methods.
“Many people who start this aren’t fully informed of the results, like aborting transferred embryos” and destroying embryos that aren’t selected for transfer, Colosi said. “So the agony comes later, once they realize what they’ve done.”
Some of that agony can stem from wrestling with the dilemma of realizing that some embryos are treated as “medical waste” while others are selected for survival. Parents are often not informed that some of their embryos have been frozen until after the fact, creating a deep “mental anguish.”
Colosi noted that even though some countries are beginning to craft laws requiring the transfer of only one embryo to reduce the number of embryos that are destroyed or frozen, this approach maintains “a product mentality.”
Adding to the lack of knowledge around available infertility treatments is the fact that IVF is not often addressed from the pulpit. Parish priests “should speak on the goodness of the alternatives to IVF,” said Colosi. “If people knew, they would take that yearning (for a biological child) and run to those alternatives.”
Colosi paints a dark picture of the ultimate outcome of IVF as a result of its uses for surrogacy and genetic engineering. When embryos resulting from the IVF procedure are not selected for transfer but are frozen and used for surrogacy, there is a risk of people “marrying or dating half-siblings,” with even farther-reaching implications, including uses in genetic engineering to obtain “designer babies” – a mentality not so different from the eugenics movement in the early 20th century, which inspired Nazi protocols around creating human beings that conformed to an ideological view of perfection.
Natural conception is “waiting for the surprise gift of a new person,” said Colosi. IVF is “I’m going to build and choose.”
At its heart, said Bergeron, restorative reproductive care is “aimed at taking really good care of the woman. Loving her so she is free to discern her joy.”
“Women deserve this care,” Bergeron said. “This is just proper medicine.”
