Dr. René Frydman is best known by French citizens as the “medical father” of their first in vitro fertilization baby (1982). Medical researchers, on the other hand, laud him for his quadruple decades of pioneering work in advanced reproductive technologies.
Nonetheless, in his recent book, La Tyrannie de la Reproduction (The Tyranny of Reproduction),1 Frydman’s former universal passion for reproductive techniques imploded. He stunned many fertility specialists by expressing serious unease over what he called degenerate “social consequences” spawned by IVF.
In a recent interview with Le Figaro,2 Frydman defined his salient concern: the degeneration of an IVF couple’s desire for a baby. He recounted how, over the past four decades, he has watched that desire morph from a want or wish that is normal—one he has “defended all [his] life”—to a tyrannous attitude of: ‘we will obtain a baby by any means, at any cost.’ As a result, Frydman is deeply unsettled by a scene he sees everywhere. More and more couples are routinely entering fertility clinics with a dual combative attitude: “we have a right to a baby’ and ‘you’re going to help us obtain that baby, no matter what!”
This analysis attempts, first, to vindicate Frydman’s observation concerning the corruption of an IVF couple’s desire for a baby by foregrounding its psychological-moral foundation and, second, to demonstrate the nexus between that derailed desire and the intrinsic immorality—that is, the injustice—of IVF.
Part One: Aristotle’s distinction
In an important passage from Donum Vitae,4 the Church juxtaposes the moral distinction between the respective desire for a baby that characterizes a NaPro and IVF couple:
In his unique and unrepeatable origin, the child must be respected and recognized as equal in personal dignity to those who give him life. The human person must be accepted in his parents’ act of union and love. . . . In reality, the origin of a human person is the result of an act of giving. The one conceived must be the fruit of his parents’ love. He cannot be desired or conceived as the product of an intervention of medical or biological techniques 5 (emphasis mine).
The questions evoked by this passage deserve careful consideration:
(1) Why, precisely, does the Church insist the generation of a baby within the marital act provides the only way for the parents’ desire for a baby to both recognize and respect the child as someone “equal in personal dignity” to them? And,
(2) How, specifically, does the desire of IVF parents for a child run amuck by resorting to a technical production that denies the child’s dignity and personal equality to them?
We can begin to formulate an answer by reflecting on what an infertile couple means when they say: ‘If only we could have a baby!’ or ‘We really want (i.e., desire) a baby!’ Everyone would agree statements like these express a legitimate desire since, all things being equal, it is better for a couple to have kids than to be childless. And most people experientially recognize a desire to have a baby is perfectly natural. Living proof, in fact, that the Church is right to insist marital love reaches its perfection in giving life.
But is the reason people think an infertile couple’s desire for a baby is a good thing simply “because it is good to have desires, and the generation of a child fulfills those desires?”6 Of course not. We think the infertile couple’s desire for a baby is good by the fact that the object of their desire—the baby—is a good. And the baby is a good, not because he fulfills his parents’ desires, but because his existence, entirely independent of their desires, in and of itself, is a good. And, according to the demands of justice (the Golden Rule),7 a baby can only be wanted by his parents as an intrinsic good.
Notice how the respective focus of the parents’ desire shapes and differentiates the way they evaluate their child’s existence. When the existence of the baby is a parents’ central focus, they, in effect, say ‘the fulfillment of our desires is good because now a new life has begun.’ But when parents place the fulfillment of their desire for a baby at the center, it is tantamount to admitting ‘it is good for us to have a baby because, by having him, our desire has been satisfied.’
What helps us make sense of these opposing parental attitudes is Aristotle’s theory of the two ways human beings ‘want’ something.8 The first type of wanting takes the form of ‘to desire;’ the second type of wanting takes the form of ‘to intend.’ In the first case, the wants of an infertile couple, their desires for a baby, do not lead them to concrete actions. Their desire remains at the level of simple wanting or hoping for a baby. Therefore, if that couple eventually have the baby they hoped for, they would consider the baby, not as a product of their own doing or making but, as pure gift.
In the last case, when the couple’s wanting is an intending or an intention, it is aimed at something they are unable to do right now, but believe they will be able to do just as soon as they convert their intention into concrete actions. Hence, when that couple’s desire for a baby is in the form of an intention, it directs them to search for a means, that is, to find concrete actions that will realize their intention. They perform these actions deliberately, that is, with the intention of obtaining whatever it is they want. And if they obtain the baby they intended, they would consider the baby to be the object or product of their own doing or making—a product of their causative will.
Part Two: Differing desires
Aristotle’s explanation of the two ways human beings ‘want’ or ‘desire’ something confirms a connection I consistently observe9 between the respective desires of NaPro and IVF parents and the corresponding intentional actions that follow from these desires.10
Typically, a NaPro couple has previously worked with a NaPro doctor and has taken reasonable steps to remove the disease impediments to their infertility. The typical form of their subsequent wanting is the simple wish that a baby might come from their loving act of intercourse as its fruit or its crown. This form of ‘wanting a baby’ inclines them to accept and welcome their child’s conception, gestation, and birth as a miracle or a gift.
What’s more, I have also noticed two additional dispositions in my NaPro parents that lend credence to the legitimacy of their desire for a baby. First, they tend to be just as ready to accept the occasions when their desire for a baby is not fulfilled (when they do not conceive) and, second, when they accept and give assent to a child who is either not “planned” or who, because of health or congenital anomalies, did not turn out to be everything they had hoped for.
What, then, is the NaPro couple willing or intentionally (i.e., voluntarily, deliberately) doing, when they engage in an act of marital intercourse with the strong desire for a baby? Their desire does not direct them to a concrete act with the sole intention to generate a baby. The marital act is not, first and foremost, a “means” by which the couple reach the goal of a “child.” Only in its natural or biological structure is there a means-end link between copulation and procreation, and only on that level is the conjugal act a means to generate a baby. But by the fact the NaPro spouses also choose to engage in marital intercourse during times of infertility—to strengthen their union—is a testimony to the transcendent character of the marital act. The marital act is more than its procreative meaning. It is a personal act. And in its personal structure, rather than being an act or a means solely for the generation of a child, it is an act of love. It is an act in which the spouses integrate their sexual inclinations, passions, and fertility into the level of reason and will, the personal level of love and union.
Therefore, what the NaPro spouses are intentionally doing when they engage in an act of marital intercourse with a strong desire for a child is to exchange love—to make a complete, reciprocal gift of self—and to join their embodied selves, one to the other.11 Their personal desire for a baby and their act of love become the occasion of pro-creating a new human life with God, so that the conception of the new human being originates from the causative act of God’s loving will and arises from within his parents’ act of love. We can see, then, the NaPro couple’s marital act is not only carried out with an explicit desire or intention to generate a baby but, also, to exchange love.12 Having intercourse with a deep desire for a child, the couple is consciously aware that, from within their intimate exchange of embodied love, a new human life could come. They place their marital acts of love at the service of life.
Now we can answer the first question posed in Part One: the reason “the Church insists the generation of a baby within the marital act provides the only way for parents to respect and recognize the child as someone ‘equal in personal dignity’ to them” is this: the act of marital love is the sole reproductive context in which parents are able to welcome and love their child unconditionally—as a gift—as someone whose mere existence is, already, per se, a good. And, loving their baby unconditionally is the only way parents are able to accept their child justly,13 as is his due: as someone equal in personal dignity to them. Hence, the way spouses desire and conceive their child within their reciprocal self-giving act of marital love is a faithful icon of the way God unconditionally loves the human being into existence.
But I observe a completely different intentionality—the volitional phenomenon Frydman recognizes—in a couple’s decision for, and execution of, the actions of IVF. As soon as the couple decides to do IVF, their previously legitimate desire—‘we wish we could have a baby’—morphs into an intention—‘we will generate a baby, no matter what!’ But, as Frydman maintains, this intention reflects the erroneous mentality that a couple has a right to a child. The couple lose sight of the reality that a child is a gift, not property.
Although parents have a right to the marital act, they do not have a right to a child. And if there is no right, there cannot be a legitimate exercise of a means. However, the IVF couples’ intention to generate a baby, based as it is on this flawed idea that a child is a right, does direct them to find a means to realize that end.14 And the means they choose are the concrete actions of IVF: oocyte collection, fertilization, and embryo transfer. By executing these actions, the couple intends to fulfill their desire to generate a baby.
Thus, the couple’s sole intention in their choice and execution of the actions of IVF is to fulfill their desire for a child. It is a logical impossibility for a couple to choose and execute the actions of IVF without the intention to generate a baby. Proof of this is the fact that when repeated rounds of in vitro are unsuccessful, the couple cease and desist—they stop doing the actions involved in IVF. But, as already noted, NaPro couples who do not get pregnant from their fertile acts of intercourse do not stop having sex because of it. They understand the marital act does not lose its personal essence of love when it does not end in a pregnancy. In contrast, then, to the NaPro couple who place their marital acts of love at the service of life, the IVF couple place their technical actions at the service of the fulfillment of their desire for a baby.
In doing so, guided by their corrupted desire, IVF parents deny their child’s fundamental equality with them by refusing to desire and love the child in the manner in which they (and all human beings) want and need to be loved, that is, unconditionally, just because they exist. As such, the IVF parents’ conditional love for their child—accepting him on the condition that he fulfills their desires—contradicts a primary demand of justice, the Golden Rule. The parents accept their child in a manner they would not want to be accepted. In this way, the will of IVF parents to produce a child technologically opposes reason precisely in its opposition to justice, a basic component of human rationality.15
Having said that, we are also able to answer the second question posed in Part One. “How, specifically, does the IVF parents’ reception of their child deny his personal equality to theirs?” Because their corrupted desire for a baby prevents the IVF couple from loving the child in the manner in which they want to be loved, that is, unconditionally—just because they exist—IVF parents deny their child’s fundamental equality with themselves. Therefore, the conditional acceptance of their baby, based as it is, on its parents’ corrupted desires, is fundamentally immoral because it is unjust.
As such, the conditional love of IVF parents for their child contradicts the principal demand of justice, the Golden Rule: The parents accept their child in a manner they would not want to be accepted. Hence, the manner in which spouses produce their child through IVF is not a faithful icon of the way God unconditionally loves the human being into existence.
Part Three: Authentic gift vs. false “creation”
Typically, when husband and wife conceive a child within a bodily act of unitive love which includes the explicit desire for a baby, they recognize it was not they who “made” or “created” their baby; a Power beyond theirs—God—did. Although one spouse may have quipped to the other, ‘let’s make a baby,’ both recognize that even the natural processes of fertilization took place independent of their direct control. As a result, they can only welcome the new life of their baby as it truly is: a pure gift, the crowning gift of their marital love. Since their reciprocal act of self-giving love was open to life—the husband and wife provided the human gametic material of ovum and sperm, they were pro-creators with God by placing their act of love at the service of life, at the service of God’s desire, His causative will, and His love.
The child conceived within his parents’ act of intercourse is not the object of his parents’ making, but the fruit of their love. Since the desire of the NaPro parents did not relate to something that was solely in their power to do (to generate a child), their desire is not the only cause of their child’s existence. Oftentimes, the NaPro parents realize the existence of their baby depends, not only on their will, but on the will of God who fulfills their desire. Their desire is to respect the child as a gift freely given by God. Hence, the intentionality exercised in the conjugal act by the NaPro couple is unconditional love for the baby. It would make no sense, then, for the NaPro child to say to his parents: ‘I exist because, and only because you desired me.’ The NaPro parents did not will the existence of their child; they only hoped for it. Therefore, they accept and love their child unconditionally—just because he exists—and value the goodness of his existence independently of their desires, their will, or their love.
This provides the NaPro child the perfect opportunity to relate to his parents as an equal, as someone who, like them, desires to be loved in and for himself. Thus, as the NaPro child matures, it would make perfect sense for him to say to his parents, in effect: ‘I exist because you desired to make a gift of yourselves within a bodily act of union that was engraved within your deep desire for a baby; I came to be as the gift of God and the fruit and the crown of your act of self-giving love.’16
The NaPro child, although perhaps only subconsciously, feels gratitude to his parents; he cherishes his parents’ unconditional love; he possesses an existential appreciation for the fact that his parents freely provided the occasion and the gametic material so that God, according to his good design, chose to bring him into being.
The NaPro parents, in turn, relate to their child as someone who is their equal, a rationally intelligent and self-determining person who desires to be loved in and for himself, just because he exists. As a result, the NaPro child relates to his parents with a sense of existential independence. He feels free to become, not primarily the person his parents desire him to be, but the person God wishes him to be. The NaPro parents receive and love their baby in the only way they ought to relate to someone who has deliberately been willed by God: as a gift, as an end in himself, as a person in his own right.
But the actions of IVF—the technical simulations of the mere procreative structure of the marital act—sunder the link between procreation and the act of sexual love. These actions deny a new human being the reciprocal self-giving act of its parents’ marital love. Therefore, the act of generating new human life in vitro becomes an artificial technique whose fundamental character is completely different from the natural process of fertilization within the marital act. Separated from the interpersonal communion of spousal love, the fertilization of an embryonic human being in a petri dish becomes nothing more than a rational, productive action oriented to a goal. The parents’ intention to generate a child by means of IVF treats the child as a product and reduces him to the object of their production.
For this reason, IVF parents make the life of their child depend on their desires, on their will and, therefore, on their power. Their power to make gives the IVF parents ownership over their product, creating a relationship riddled with gross inequity. The IVF child could think and, in effect, say to his parents: ‘I came to be only on the condition that your desires for a baby would be satisfied.’ The child, once he is old enough to reflect on his beginnings, might also think ‘I exist to vicariously fulfill my parents’ hopes and dreams.’ But this sort of existential dependence would contradict the child’s fundamental equality with his parents and all other human beings.
What’s more, IVF parents and doctors create the child in their own image. They manufacture the child according to their own eugenic and developmental criteria. Instead of saying to the child ‘we accept you because and in the measure in which you exist,’ they, in effect, say: ‘you live because and in the measure that we desired and genetically screened you.’ As the product of his parents’ will, the baby becomes a mere means, an instrument, for the satisfaction of their desire for children. There is no other way to put it: the parents use the child as an instrument to fulfill their desires.
They, in effect, say to the child: ‘It is good for us to have you because, by having you, our desire for a baby has been realized.’ In practical terms, should the IVF parents’ original attitude of instrumentalization continue beyond birth, it could mean they might regard the child, should his mental or physical development be compromised, as a frustration, a disappointment, as someone who falls short of meeting their desires and expectations. In this case, the injustice of the IVF parents’ relationship to the child would pose an even greater threat to his personal equality and dignity.
Conclusion
All the previous arguments conjointly attest Dr. Frydman’s moral antipathy toward the corrupted nature of an IVF couple’s desire for a baby is absolutely justified. What he has yet to see, and what this essay has tried to prove, is that an infertile couple’s degraded desire for a baby is not just an immoral social consequence of, but also inextricably linked to, the tyranny of IVF—its intrinsic injustice. The will of an IVF parent, grounded in a corrupted desire for a baby, chooses to generate their child within an act of technological production, thus contradicting their unconditional acceptance of the child that alone accords with reason, that is, comports to justice and to the dignity of the child’s nature as a human person.
Endnotes:
1 Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, 2024.
2 January 18, 2024.
3 NaProTechnology is a versatile, universal women’s health science developed by Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers and his medical colleagues at the Saint Paul VI Institute. Evolving over four decades of clinical research, Natural Procreative Technology (NaPro for short) utilizes a standardized and prospective system of cyclic charting whose biofeedback is critical in helping women understand their health and fertility. One abiding hallmark distinguishes its almost forty-year history. The important goals of a woman’s healthcare—the regulation of fertility and identification and treatment of reproductive abnormalities—are realized in cooperation with her natural procreative cycle.
4 Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation Replies to Certain Questions of the Day [Donum Vitae].
5 CDF, Donum Vitae, Part II, section B, chapter 4C.
6 Rhonheimer, “The Instrumentalization of Human Life,” 153-78.
7 The outset of Rhonheimer’s moral analysis of technological reproduction (cf. ftnt no. 6), makes it clear that his thesis—the “simple” form of IVF is fundamentally immoral because it is unjust—concurs exactly with that of German philosopher Robert Spaemann. Rhonheimer references the conclusion of Spaemann’s response article to Donum Vitae: “Regarding the baby conceived in a test tube, he is naturally, like every other baby, a creature in the image of God, and must be respected as a person. Nevertheless, the way in which he has been produced is unjust. It violates the fundamental equality of all people, which finds expression in the fact that every person—including the person’s parents—owes his life to nature” [emphasis added]. (“The Instrumentalization of Human Life,” 157, quoting from R. Spaemann, “Kommentar zur Instruktion ‘Donum vitae,’” in Die Unantastbarkeit des menschlichen Lebens. Zu ethischen Fragen der Biomedizin. Instruktion der Kongregation für die Glaubenslehre. Mit einem Kommentar von R. Spaemann (Freiburg: Herder Verlag, 1987), 92.
8 Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans. D. Ross, Rev. J. L. Ackrill and J. O. Urmson (Oxford University Press, 1998).
9 For the past 27 years, as the director of the ethics division of the Saint Paul VI Institute, I have conducted ethics consults with hundreds of infertile couples, the majority of whom opt not for IVF but for the diagnostic and treatment measures associated with the women’s health science of NaProTechnology, i.e., with natural conception.
10 Discussions with our psychologist, Dr. Kelly Morrow and some of our nursing staff, made me aware that some NaPro infertility patients also drift into a twisted form of desire whose intrinsic logic manifests itself—as it necessarily does with the IVF couple—with the intention to have a baby (naturally), no matter what! If so, such desire would shape the intentionality of their marital acts (just like it does the actions of the IVF couple) and would result in the same injustice toward the baby—loving him not in and for himself, but because he is the means or instrument of fulfilling their desires for a baby. Although this has not been my experience with my NaPro infertility clients, I can certainly understand how this sort of intentional desire could occur, given the intensity with which some infertile couples desire a child. It is paramount to seek good moral and psychological guidance as the infertile couple attempts to seek infertility treatment.
11 In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle divides human actions into two kinds: praxis and poiesis (also spelled poesis). The first activity, praxis, is a doing that is an end in itself; the second activity, poiesis, involves a making or producing that is a means to an end: the product. The marital act is of the first variety, praxis, i.e., a doing, an activity desired for its own sake: to reciprocally express love. This in contrast to the actions of IVF, a poietic activity: the actions of the ‘simple’ form of IVF (oocyte collection, fertilization, and embryo transfer) are not desired for their own sake, that is, they have no intrinsic value, save they are a means to the goal, the product (the child) that is being created or produced. [Oded Balaban, “Praxis and Poesis in Aristotle’s practical philosophy,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 24: 185-198, 1990 cited in Rhonheimer, “The Instrumentalization of Human Life,” 166.]
12 I once spoke with a woman who used CREIGHTON MODEL FertilityCareTM System solely to have a baby. Because she despised her husband, but did not want to divorce him for the sake of the children, she would only consent to sexual intercourse on her peak day of fertility and only when she wanted another child. She had five children and just about as many times of sexual intimacy with her husband. We spent most of our consult time discussing what it means for a couple to engage in marital intercourse that is truly human, truly marital, as a reciprocal act of self-giving love. As Humanae Vitae explicitly states: it is good for couples to engage in intercourse during their infertile times to express and strengthen their bodily union and love. Any act of intercourse that lacks this personalistic dimension of an exchange of love—because it is done only as a means to generate a child—deviates from the true meaning of the conjugal act and fails, proportionately, to help the couple develop a healthy marriage.
13 The virtue of justice perfects the will in respect to seeking the good of others. Human beings naturally tend to regard other people as their friends and equals. They consider the natural principles of justice that are summarized in the Golden Rule (“Do unto others what you would have them do onto you”) and in “Love your neighbor as yourself” as reasonable and, in theory, as requirements that they can fulfill without the acquisition of the virtue of justice. But when it comes to the level of our habitual dispositions, we humans know, in our wounded, sinful condition, that we habitually tend to seek our own good and to prefer our own good over that of the other person. In other words, our habitual tendency to seek our own good is stronger than that of seeking our neighbor’s good. Thus, our reason and our will do need to be habituated by the virtue of justice so we can seek the other’s good as consistently, readily, and joyfully as we seek our own. Conceiving a baby within an act of marital love enables the couple to readily and consistently give their child the unconditional love that is his just due: what is his own, what is his due by right of his person and personal dignity. Producing a baby through IVF—placing the fulfillment of their own desires for a baby over the intrinsic good of the child—disables the couple from giving the child what is his due as a person. “Justice, then, by its very essence has to do with the relationship with one’s fellow human being: to the other as a person: to the life, physical integrity, material and spiritual goods that belong to him.” Martin R. Rhonheimer, The Perspective of Morality (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 230-32.
14 Rhonheimer, “The Instrumentalization of Human Life,” 177.
15 Cf. ftnt no. 7.
16 In footnote 11 in “The Instrumentalization of Human Life,” 167, Rhonheimer notes: “In Zeffirelli’s film The Champion this is precisely the response of the father, who is separated from his wife, when asked by his son why his parents had given him life: ‘Because we loved each other’ (and not because ‘because we wanted a child’).”
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Wow! All I can say is wow to such an erudite and philosophically and beautifully presented article on NaPro and IVF. As a permanent deacon, you have given me and, certainly, many others, a deeper basis in which to defend life. Thank you Sister Renee!
Cardinal Caffarra said that IVF is one of the clearest signs of the degradation of the human person and the darkening of people’s moral consciousness regarding the dignity of the human person. The essence of artificial procreation is that people are produced, whereas until a certain period in history, only things were produced; now people are also produced. And herein lies the intrinsic malice, the grave malice, of this procedure. The person is degraded to being a thing, which destroys the distinction, nullifies and negates the essential difference between being someone and being something. If I introduce a productive process in the origin of life, I introduce a logic of efficiency that inevitably and always ends up destroying human beings. When I produce something, I must ensure: first, that it is worth the cost, so the process I implement must be effective; second, having produced the object, I have the right to judge the produced object; third, based on this judgment, to keep it or not. In the field of artificial procreation, these three fundamental production laws are ruthlessly observed. The inherent logic of this type of activity asks: what is the safest and most effective way to conceive? Second, having obtained it, I immediately check if it is ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal,’ and if it is abnormal, I do not implant it; I eliminate it.
There is nothing more dramatic, more tragic than this in our society. Moreover, this activity involves a very high risk to innocent human lives: for every IVF “child,” at least 25 embryos, children, die.
We know with what rigor protocols are prepared for the testing of new drugs and the checks to which a new bridge is subjected before allowing vehicles to pass. But here it is known, because those who perform IVF know it, that a process is being implemented in which the aforementioned disaster occurs.
Yet it is done anyway. How is such contempt for human life possible? No one accepts that to have one human life, dozens of innocent human lives must be sacrificed! No entrepreneur would accept such a production method! The awareness of the dignity of the person has truly darkened in the ethos, in the consciousness of many people.
Properly used reason, as well described by the Author, makes it clear that being a person is infinitely more than not being a person, so the leap from being something to being someone is an infinite leap. However, it is also true that the human person, man, has not reached this awareness of his dignity historically, except in the light of the Christian message. Without a clear proclamation of the Gospel, this perception inevitably darkens.
Further, we cannot help but say that the anthropological, ethical, and legal logic of abortion is the same as that of IVF. The view of human sexuality as a function equivalent to any other function of the human body and therefore to be governed in light of individual, psychological well-being. We observe an increasing subordination of human action to the principle of utility or pleasure; Aristotle’s great intuition distinguished three types of goodness: the goodness that belongs to what pleases; the goodness of what is useful; and the goodness of what is good in itself and for itself.
From a legal perspective, well highlighted by the Author, the fundamental point is individual happiness, for which it is said: “I have the right.” Note well: the individual happiness to which I have a right. Therefore, the law increasingly coincides exclusively with my desires: right equals desire. What I desire is my right to have. Either the child is what I need for my happiness, in which case I have the right to have it, at any cost, or the child is what hinders my happiness, in which case I have the right to eliminate it, at any cost. IVF and abortion ultimately, if we look at things in depth, arise from the same cultural root.
I ask the legislators: do you realize the devastating impact that the legal justification of the separation between the exercise of sexuality between a man and a woman to create the conditions for conception and the conception itself in artificial form had within a legal system?
Do you realize what this meant? The devastating impact? Because if I affirm with a civil law that sexual activity and creating the conditions for the conception of a new human person can be separated, no one tomorrow will be able to prevent the state from saying: I need people, I create them in the laboratory. That is, we must see every law not only as a wise response, as much as possible, to a current problem, but we must also see every law in the long run, the effects it can have on the ethos of a people and what this law means within the overall civil order of a people. This ultimately means being able to justify a state intervention that, in a truly democratic society, would be unacceptable.
This is why the title of this essay is dramatically true, prophetically true.
“The couple lose sight of the reality that a child is a gift, not property.”
I think sister is on to something here.
However, I am not sure that theological-logical arguments from reason are the best way to persuade an erring couple who is thinking about IVF, as I have personally known (not a Catholic). Analytically, I think arguments from basic Christian morality and doctrine are more persuasive.
Does the almighty and good God condemn masturbation as sin? If yes, then IVF is immoral too. Otherwise, the Christian making use of IVF would need to admit that God allows the evil of masturbation as an intervening cause for the generation of new life, not to mention a host of other gravely sinful subsequent acts (i.e the manner of conception and the destruction of embryos), the malice of which most Protestants and not a few Catholics fail to comprehend.
This article demonstrates the horrific extent to which Christianity can be perverted. IVF is a beautiful gift from God. ALL children are gifts, regardless of how they were conceived. This viewpoint absolutely sickens me. The same theology could be used to justify abortions for rape victims, or even deny adoption as the parents “desire” to have a child. Celebrate parent’s desire for a child, and support their efforts to have a child. To say one born from UVF is our of desire not love is flat out evil in my opinion. It is not your right, or anyone’s, to deny loving parents a child. I reject this hateful viewpoint, and hope it changes as it does nothing but promote the view that Christians want to control people and deny their basic rights just to justify archaic beliefs that have been superceded by modern technology.
All children, regardless of how they were conceived, are made in the image of God, are intrinsically good, though having a fallen nature, and are beautiful and desired by God from all eternity.
That is hardly an argument for all possible means of conception being moral. Rape is not moral, but many have been conceived in it. Adultery and fornication are also objectively, gravely evil, and do not become good simply because God brought the good of a child out of the evil of the parents. Even if the fornication or adultery were done for the express purpose of a child. I have heard, even, of a Satanist who deliberately got pregnant with the express purpose of having a ritual abortion. That child was in God’s image. The mother’s actions, start to finish, were utterly abhorrent, including the means she used to conceive the child. IVF is merely yet another way that parents do evil in order to get what they want, in a way that particularly harms their offspring – who are God’s own children and ought to be treated accordingly even in the means of their conception.
All of this hemming and hawibg about abortion, contraceptives, and IVF. Yet I never , ever see anyone who proclaims themselves to be a devout catholic attack Viagra or other drugs that “treat” ED. It’s very telling that you all want to control the bodies of women at every turn but when it comes to controlling the bodies of men.. it’s crickets.
If IVF and contraception are artificial, so then are ED drug treatments. Every time you men pop your ED pills and get down with your wives, what you are doing is committing r@pe. It would be nice if any of you would acknowledge this fact.
Drugs that cause the human body to work in the manner that it was designed to do are perfectly legitimate. That is the reason NaPro treatments, including the ones that involve giving the woman regular hormone treatments, are perfectly moral – while the same hormones, given at different times and doses as contraception, are immoral. In addition, NaPro treatments treat the woman like *all* of her is supposed to be healthy, whereas in IVF her health problems are treated merely an obstacle to a baby, not an obstacle to her flourishing.
Similarly, drugs that treat pain are perfectly moral when used within that context and for that purpose, but the same drugs are not moral when used for pleasure, or out of addiction. Similar things could be said about steroids. The men who make use of them just to get the body they want are immoral, but they are also legitimate treatments for a variety of problems.
And in the same way, ED drugs that are treating a real problem can be moral, while the same chemicals used by a healthy man to enhance pleasure are not (which in any case would not be rape, but more likely an offshoot of fornication).
IVF, in addition to manipulating, rather than mending, human physiology, requires the man to masturbate (intrinsically and gravely evil) and includes the deliberate killing of many of the children the patients are supposed to be loving. That’s a total perversion of parenthood.
No Amanda. You are incorrect. ED drugs are entirely immoral and exist only for the purposes of committing sin.
When a man is blessed with ED, that is God’s way of telling him he no longer needs to worry about the exertion of physical intimacy and the toll it takes on his body. When ED occurs it is the beginning of a new and beautiful chapter of life in which a man should spend his timefully devoted to his wife and loved ones in a wholly emotional and intellectual intimacy. ED is freedom from the labor and physical burden of love to a much higher, deeper and more powerful love.
ED is a natural state for men. Treatments for ED are singul because it is a rejection of God’s gift to love more deeply and wholly. The physical conditions it creates for men to participate in the marriage act is artificial and not of God. Therefore he can only cause harm to both his wife and himself if he uses these drugs and treatments.
It is also sinful because gay men involved in the clubbing lifestyle utilize these drugs to perpetuate an evil and sinful lifestyle. Men who use these drugs to be intimate with their wives are enabling other men affiliated with same sex attraction to do very sinful activities.
The biggest load of ignorant codswallop I’ve read in a long time and completely contrary to God’s great gift, namely, the immutable covenant He has made with those consecrated in the sacrament of marriage as the instrument of His creation. IVF is one of the greatest of God’s gifts but, like all such gifts, some human beings will throw it back in His face by abusing it. I suspect the day will come when God judges the culpability of such abuses of his great gift of life.
Actions/choices have consequences. No one has a right to reproduce. It’s God’s creative will.