I am starting a new Q & A series for this blog. In teaching confirmation classes, or in writing short pieces for the parish bulletin, I come across different questions that I answer. I am going to share the answers here. I will provide answers that are in line with Catholic teaching. All feedback and discussion is welcome. I will start with a piece on IVF.
What does the Church teach about IVF?
IVF is a procedure for creating human beings outside of the marital conjugal act. It involves harvesting eggs and sperm cells – often from the two people who will be the child’s parents, but sometimes including external donors for one or both parents. The eggs and sperm are combined in a laboratory to create new lives that can be implanted into a woman’s womb three to five days after fertilization. Embryos not used are destroyed or frozen. Embryos can be screened genetically, and those not meeting the parents’ criteria are frequently destroyed. Several embryos usually are implanted increasing the odds of a multiple pregnancy. In such cases, one or more of the children are often be aborted.
In determining the morality of IVF, and related reproductive related moral issues, the Church looks to two constant principles of the natural law. First, every human being is to be given the dignity due to them as human beings, including the fundamental right to life from conception to death. Second, the sanctity of and meaning of marriage must be protected. In looking at marriage, the Church focuses on the unity and fidelity of marriage, and the role of the conjugal act in procreation within the loving context of marriage.
The Church clearly and consistently teaches that IVF is immoral. While a couple’s desire to create and share a new life itself may be good, the means provided by IVF are counter to the moral law in three areas. First, the human person created by the union of egg and sperm is treated as something that can be created and/or destroyed at the will of the parents or scientist/technician. This is evident in the eugenic screening of embryos and is even more obvious in the casual destroying and freezing the unused embryos. No human being should be frozen – deprived of nutrients, shelter, and the opportunity to grow. Few of these frozen humans are ever “used.” They remain in a frozen limbo. Eventually they perish or fall under the scientist’s knife.
If IVF avoided the disrespect and disregard for the children created, it would still be immoral. First, any IVF procedure that involved more than the consenting spouses within a marital relationship would violate the unity and fidelity of the marriage. It would be clearly wrong to involve the use of eggs or sperm from someone outside of the marriage. Children and parenthood are the rightful fruit of marital love. Introducing a third person (egg and/or sperm donor) is a violation of this relationship.
The Church teaches that even IVF using only the eggs and sperm of the married couple wanting to be parents immoral. The Church has consistently recognized that the marital conjugal act, designed by God, serves two purposes – unitive and procreative. Conception, pregnancy, children, and parenthood are properly the fruit of the conjugal act performed within the loving embrace of a married couple. Through this act God invites married couples to share with him in the creation of new human beings. With IVF there is science producing the procreative element of that act in a series of sterile procedures (often including the sin of masturbation) and involving at least one additional person essential to conception other than the marital couple. IVF rips the procreative function from the conjugal act and replaces it with a technician’s procedure for harvesting, screening, freezing, and implanting. The fruit of love is replaced by a quality control process that involves more death than life.
Additional Resources
Dignitas Personae (Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith)
Donum Vitae (Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith)
Begotten Not Made: A Catholic View of Reproductive Technology
The moral status of in vitro fertilization (IVF) Biology and method
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