Over the past several weeks, in vitro fertilization, or IVF, has rocketed to the top of most people’s news feeds due to a Feb. 16 Alabama Supreme Court decision ruled that frozen embryos are recognized as children under state law.
This decision came about due to a pair of wrongful death cases brought by three couples who had frozen embryos destroyed in an accident at a fertility clinic. The state’s justices ruling was based on an 1872 Alabama state law allowing parents to sue over the death of a minor child, which “applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”
This decision had an immediate impact upon IVF services in the state of Alabama. On Feb. 21, the state’s biggest IVF provider, the health system of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, suspended their operations, stating, “The system’s Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility ‘must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments.’”
After two weeks of no IVF services and substantial public outcry, state legislators proposed a bill signed March 6 by Gov. Kay Ivey that granted “‘civil and criminal immunity’ to patients and clinics during IVF services, giving doctors, patients and manufacturers legal cover to proceed with the treatments.”
During the several weeks of IVF-related consternation on both sides of the issue, Catholic Church leaders commented positively on the original decision of the Alabama State Supreme Court.
IVF and Church teaching
For some background, in vitro fertilization is a process that brings new human life into the world via a glass petri dish, rather than the womb of a mother through the sexual congress of the child’s mother and father.
Today, IVF is the most common way couples struggling to have a child are able to achieve a healthy pregnancy.
There is no doubt that infertility is a serious cross to married couples earnestly seeking to conceive a child. But is IVF the appropriate method for Catholics struggling with infertility to achieve their dream of having a child?
Let’s take a closer look.
• Catholics, respecting the natural order of creation, believe that children are to be conceived exclusively through the physical marital act between husband and wife. IVF in contrast divorces conception from the union of the parents and instead makes it the act of technicians artificially bringing about life in a glass dish in the lab where the reproductive cells, the egg and sperm of husband and wife are mixed together, having been individually harvested from both man and woman.
• The mixing together of egg and sperm from husband and wife results in the forming of embryos. Following a selective screening process, certain embryos are chosen for implantation in the womb, others are frozen for future use, others may be used for experimentation and others still are simply discarded. What does that mean? Human dignity demands that we never experiment upon human beings without their consent, and certainly that we never destroy or freeze them. The IVF screening process encourages discrimination according to preferred characteristics of the child at the very beginning of life, according to John Haas in the article “Preaching Points: On In-Vitro Fertilization,” from the publication “Ethics & Medics.”
• Doctors implant one or more than one embryo in the uterus in the hope that one will implant in the uterus of the mother. Sometimes, more than one embryo implants; if the parents only desired one child, the doctor may resort to killing the unborn baby in the womb.
• IVF comes with significant financial costs, as well. Not only is IVF staggeringly expensive, it offers no guarantee of success, requiring multiple attempts. Much of the expense comes from the several stages of mechanisms, including ovarian stimulation to the mother, egg retrieval from the mother and embryo transfer to the uterus of the mother.
Think of the number of medical professionals involved that need to be paid for the skilled work. Thus, the costs of IVF for a South Jersey resident start in the $10,000 range and may increase depending on the success of the treatment and if the mother’s eggs will be stored for future attempts of conceiving a child. Each round of IVF embryo transfer has around a 45% chance of conceiving a child, with even lower percentage rates that a healthy baby will be conceived and very much depending on the age of the mother, as noted in “The current status of IVF: are we putting the needs of the individual first?” from the National Library of Medicine.
• The substantial financial costs of IVF, which further exacerbates the division of wealth in this country – and the divorcing of conception from the martial act and its replacement with an artificial act in a laboratory – have the effect of turning children into a commodity that can be purchased and tailored to the needs of the parent. This has the unfortunate effect of children being treated as a right to be obtained rather than a gift that may be received.
It is important to note that every child conceived through IVF is to be cherished and is loved by God. This cannot be emphasized enough. While we value every human life, it is proper for Catholics to reject the means by which children come into being through IVF. An unethical means never justifies a good end. When humans seek to justify themselves in this way, they are usurping the role of God.
Ethical medical tools
Fortunately, IVF is not the only answer for infertile couples. If a couple is struggling with the cross of infertility, they should be encouraged by pastors, family members, friends and people of good will to a) find the cause of why they are infertile, and b) seek to heal the source through medical means that value life in all its stages. It is so important to realize there is hope after receiving a diagnosis of infertility.
Every woman has the right to know how both her menstrual and fertility cycles function in order to understand the way her body works. The Creighton Model FertilityCare System (CrMS) was developed by faithful Catholic medical professionals in order to help women and married couples achieve the goal of a healthy pregnancy. CrMS relies upon the standardized observation and charting of biological markers that are essential to a woman’s gynecological and reproductive health. Perhaps you have heard of a married couple “charting” as a reference to their use of CrMS, otherwise known in more general terms as using natural family planning (NFP). Through use of CrMS alone, a married couple has a 20% to 40% chance of conceiving a child, as noted in the FertilityCare Centers of America information document, “What is CrMS?”
Sometimes, CrMS alone is not able to help an infertile couple successfully conceive a child. Thankfully, over time, new ethical procedures are advanced. For instance, NaProTECHNOLOGY, developed by faithful Catholic medical professionals, acts specifically to maintain women’s reproductive and gynecological health and treat abnormalities in women’s menstrual and fertility cycles.
The Christian act of adoption
Of course, beyond medical procedures, as Christians we must always remember the importance of adoption – a beautiful act.
Saint John Paul II wrote this to parents of adopted children in an address in the year 2000: “To adopt a child is a great work of love. When it is done, much is given, but much is also received. It is a true exchange of gifts. … Adopting children, regarding and treating them as one’s own children, means recognizing that the relationship between parents and children is not measured only by genetic standards.”
Adoption is a courageous decision, with emotional and financial costs, that enables a child to receive the love from mother and father, husband and wife. Together, married couples make themselves as a gift to the child(ren) they raise as their own, though they may not share the same genetic code.
There are married couples who sadly, due to infertility, will not be able to raise children. In this difficult situation, these words of Saint John Paul II can serve as a healing balm and an invitation that expands minds and hearts: “Infertile couples are fruitful when their married love is ‘open to others, to the needs of the apostolate … the needs of the poor… the needs of orphans’ and to the world.” I have seen this insight of JPII firsthand here in the Diocese of Camden; I have witnessed married couples while struggling to conceive, thriving in living the Gospel message.
Culturally, as we consider the ethical nature of IVF, it is important to remember that the vast majority of human beings would never knowingly end the life of another human being, especially an innocent one. However, in the process of attempting to conceive a child through IVF, that process, and by extension, the mother, father and medical technicians WILL end the life of at least one embryo, which regardless of personal opinion, is a very small and defenseless human being.
Saint Gerard Majella, patron saint of those struggling with infertility, pray for us.
Father Peter Gallagher is parochial vicar in Holy Angels Parish, Woodbury, and part-time director of Catholic Identity at Gloucester Catholic High School, Gloucester City.
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