When my wife and I said “No” to in vitro fertilization, we assumed that we were rejecting our last hope of bearing children. Our years of infertility were unexplained and unresolved, despite the best efforts of the Catholic Ob/Gyn practice we had been going to. They had been thorough, and the physician who offered us a second opinion had nothing to add—except pushing us to try IVF.
We did not.
Despite this apparently being the final nail in the coffin of our hopes of conceiving children together, it was not a difficult decision; we had long ago concluded that the suffering of being barren was not a justification for sin.
Believing that IVF is wrong is a minority view, as demonstrated by the response to a recent Alabama Supreme Court decision. The court sided with a couple whose embryos had negligently been destroyed, ruling that human embryos, whether in the lab, or in the womb, are persons under state law. This decision did not ban IVF, but having to treat human embryos as, well, human, would crimp the style of the loosely regulated IVF industry. Democrats quickly pounced, denouncing embryonic personhood as a mortal threat to IVF, and Republicans, led by Donald Trump, folded as fast as they could, loudly proclaiming their love for IVF and disclaiming efforts to regulate it. Alabama Republicans quickly passed a law protecting IVF clinics from lawsuits brought in response to negligence or misconduct.
We should not expect much courage from politicians, but Christians are called to bear witness to the truth, regardless of what opinion polls show. And the truth is that IVF is wrong. As practiced, IVF is a moral catastrophe in which the fertility industry manufactures and destroys human embryos on a vast scale—tens or even hundreds of thousands every year in the US alone. This is done because creating more embryos offers more chances for a successful pregnancy. However, this also ensures a lot of discarded human lives, especially because the industry is aggressively eugenic, from providing sex-selection to culling embryos suspected of being inferior in some way. Additionally, IVF is integral to the evils of surrogacy, in which the well-to-do order children and gestate them by renting the wombs of poor and working-class women—the same people who endlessly invoke the specter of The Handmaid’s Tale cheer when homosexual men lease the wombs of poor women in Eastern Europe.
And in a bitter irony, the prevalence of IVF may hinder the actual treatment of infertility. Many couples who have endured fertility problems have observed a tendency for doctors to use IVF as a crutch, often turning to it quickly without much effort at diagnosing or treating the root cause of infertility, such as endometriosis. IVF does not address the sources of infertility; it attempts to sidestep them by moving conception to a laboratory. Furthermore, as even fertility clinics must admit, IVF is hazardous, from the risks of egg retrieval to a doubled rate of ectopic pregnancy.
Nonetheless, despite the evils of the IVF industry and the perils of the process itself, some Christians (including Catholics who disregard the clear teaching of the Church) still defend and use a sanitized form of IVF. In practice, this means limiting embryo production and attempting to implant every embryo, rather than producing as many as possible, screening them for the “best” and then destroying or indefinitely storing those deemed defective or surplus. This more deliberate approach avoids the casual creation and destruction of human embryos that is the IVF norm, and it does entail some sacrifice, insofar as these limits may cost more while reducing the likelihood of a successful pregnancy.
However, IVF cannot be so easily purified, and Christians should be skeptical of a tree that has produced so much evil fruit—babies are good, but wanting a baby does not excuse any and all evils, especially the mass killing of human embryos. Furthermore, even without the intentional destruction of human life, the inherently high risks and failure rates of IVF should give pause to Christians who claim to respect human life.
But even if IVF could be separated from its deadly practices, it would still be wrong. Children, however conceived, are of inestimable value, and this is why it matters so much how we go about conceiving them. God’s design is for children to be begotten in the committed, loving relationship of marriage, with the one-flesh union of husband and wife—which Scripture repeatedly uses as an image of the union of Christ and the Church—made literal and eternal as gametes combine to form a new person. Children are not things to be ordered, they are persons who should be received as gifts from God, whom they are meant to know and enjoy forever.
Instead of persons begotten in a union of love that is an image of our eschatological fulfillment, IVF makes children as if they were commodities. IVF replaces the loving intimacy of the marriage bed with a laboratory technician manipulating harvested eggs and sperm. But making people to order in a laboratory shatters the divinely-ordained bond of marriage, sex and reproduction. The begetting of new persons should not be depersonalized.
Indeed, the reasons why infertility is so painful are also the reasons why IVF is wrong. Infertility hurts because children are persons; the anguish of infertility arises from a frustrated longing for love and relationship. The fullest sorrow of being barren is about a love that is unfulfilled in its natural longing to see itself instantiated in children, to be fruitful and to multiply love by adding people.
Nonetheless, this suffering does not excuse wrongdoing. Christians especially know that suffering can be sanctifying and redemptive, and that suffering in Christian witness joins our pains to those endured by Christ. For those who have or are mourning over infertility, we may recognize in our longing for children an echo of the divine longing of God for His children, who have turned from Him and are lost.
Christians also know that, through God’s grace, our stories do not always end how we think they will. Years after we had given up hope, my wife became pregnant. It was an unexpected exhilaration that turned to an even deeper anguish as we endured a miscarriage. And then, finally, children were born to us who had been barren. They are treasures given to us far beyond what we expected or deserved.
Yet even the greatest blessings and love are mingled with sorrow in this sin-marred world—in our case, the blessing of unexpected fertility has come with the pain of losing children to miscarriage. The Christian witness is often clearest in suffering, which testifies to something beyond even the very best that this life has to offer. Thus, in our culture of consumerism, despair and death, the Christian witness for life and marriage requires more than just not killing our babies. It also demands that we not order them from laboratories. Children are meant to be begotten, not made.
(Editor’s note: This essay was posted originally on March 22, 2024.)
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I could not agree more. Yes, it is a very sophisticated depersonalization, of the embryos and of the parents as well, by the process of IVF.
I read about another kind of anguish, of those who had successful IVF: many of them cannot decide what to do with the frozen embryos so they just pay yearly. As some of them put it “they cannot let them go” even if they do not wish for more children. Often those people did not think of this problem when they decide to go to IVF. Indeed, most clinics do not mention psychological/moral problems, their language is usually very oblique and positive.
Thank you Anna. For more about a licit approach to infertility versus IVF, see: https://naprotechnology.com/infertility/
Mr. Blake,
We are about to enter the last year of the first quarter of 21st century .People are eagerly waiting to hear about new developments being discovered to help people escape from the curse of infertility. IVF is the only alternative presently available for people.. Now you have written a full page against the use of IVF. There are protests against abortion which is understandable. Strangely, you have argued at length against the use of IVF. It is a new development arguing about the killing of embryos. It seems you don’t care about the agony of the childless couple and their concern about the end of the family after their death. .People are trying to get a child to continue the family.. Do not, please do not, write anything that will drive the faithful;l away from the Church
If you read the article, you see that he did not in fact need IVF to conceive. Most people are too impatient to wait for God’s timing. There are lots of babies who need to be adopted as well if you simply cannot conceive naturally.
KJ GEORGE: You meant this satirically, yes? I fear you have little or no understanding about the Church’s teaching on marriage and its ends.
May God richly bless you but please consider:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church(CCC 2376, 2377) clearly teaches that IVF is gravely immoral. This is not a recent development. If people are driven away from the Church founded by Christ, it will more likely be due to their rejection of Catholic teaching, and not because of anything written here.
It is hardly a “new development” that IVF is problematic on account of the destruction of embryos. They are considered human beings entitled to protection, from the moment of conception, again, per Catholic teaching. IVF of necessity, will entail the destruction of the vast majority of these embryos conceived. Maybe folks weren’t aware of that fact. Hopefully they will be now.
Christ our Lord would have us speak in defense of the most vulnerable among us. Those treated as disposable pieces of garbage must certainly qualify.
read the article again.. ponder & you will see what it is you missed…..
People get in agonies all the time about wanting things that are contrary to God’s will, or about wanting things that seem faster and easier to get by means that are contrary to God’s will.
Somehow, that doesn’t change the will of the Omniscient One who loves us and works for our good and delight. He cares far more than I do, and is even more inflexible on the point. Nor will pretending that His will has changed draw people into the Church – it will only enable them to pretend that they are in it, when they aren’t.
There are other ways. There’s simply engaging in the marital act more frequently. There is https://naprotechnology.com/infertility/, which has a success rate over 90% within the first 2 years. And there’s adoption. If nothing else, stand outside an abortion mill and offer to adopt the unborn child for mothers going in.
Just to give a documented example, the annual report for the year 2013 from the Italian Ministry of Health on the implementation of the law that legalized artificial fertilization in 2004, showed how there had been a real “massacre of embryos”. In 2013, 158,672 ova (embryos) were fertilized, to which were added 2,896 embryos produced by thawing. However, on page 113 of the report, the number of embryos dropped to 110,016, of which 22,143 (20.1 percent) were cryopreserved. Where did the remaining 51,552 embryos go? The failure rate of the technique and the related loss of life is staggering, given that in 2013, 99,267 embryos were transferred into the uterus. Of these, only 10,217 were born alive. In addition to these, there were other embryos sacrificed even before being implanted in the uterus, as the report mentions 143,770 embryos sacrificed among those produced and those thawed.
The impact of this silent holocaust is devastating for the future of society. If the impact of the sexual revolution (i.e., the destruction of the family willed by God) has been so tragic on Western society in terms of exponential increases in loneliness and suicide, abortion, drug addiction, mental illness, and homosexuality, what will be the psychological, moral, and spiritual impact on society when the number of people born from IVF reaches a critical level?
(“When the embryo is frozen, these tiny human beings, they are very small — one millimeter and a half in dimension … you can put them in canisters by the thousands. … Putting them inside a very chilly space, [these] tiny human beings are deprived of any liberty, of any movement … they are even deprived of time — time is frozen for them. Then to survive, so to speak, in a suspended time, in a concentration can, not as hospitable and prepared for life as would be the secret temple inside the female body’s womb.”( J.Lejeune))
The culture of death and rejection affects women and couples who practice it or kill their children in this way. Remember that alongside the figures of fertilization in Italy, we must add those from abroad and the 53 million abortions per year worldwide.
But we were those embryos. They are our weak children. Artificial fertilization, like abortion and euthanasia, are only wrong responses to the fear of weakness and suffering. Except that by trying to eliminate them, we only amplify them. The dogma that the elimination of suffering and weakness must occur through the elimination of the sufferer and the weak is wrong. On the contrary, to be alleviated, they need to be welcomed and embraced. Healing and caring are the vocations of the physician, not procuring death. And if not everyone understands that the answer to pain can only be found in God, everyone can recognize that without solidarity society becomes terrible. Pope Francis has said that without it, faith dies, and humanity as a whole dies.
“Homosexual men lease the wombs of poor women in Eastern Europe.”
For someone writing an authoritative piece on assisted reproduction, it’s surprising the author is unaware that surrogacy for the LGBTQ is specifically illegal in Eastern Europe. Ukraine allows surrogacy only for married heterosexual couples with documented infertility and Georgia is slightly more lenient allowing it for unmarried heterosexual couples. Ironically, homosexuals are undergoing surrogacy in heavily Catholic countries including Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina.
This writer and his wife are courageous, no virtuous, examples of what it means to give witness to their Catholic faith and God’s law written on our hearts..
For our “third culture,” which is postmodern and deconstructionist:
1) Nothing exists outside the Universe;
2) There are no qualitative leaps in the animal scale: everything, even in humans, is a game of genes;
3) Human ethics has no immutable principles: “it represents and reflects the customs accepted by society”;
4) Science is neutral: “The scientist discovers, society applies: values are involved in the latter, not the former.”
The “technological production” of human embryos, science, and technology have prevailed, are prevailing, and will continue to prevail irreversibly over procreation. Due to the loss of the sense of limits and therefore of responsibility, science and technology have triumphed through transgression. But in this transgression, “man” has been defeated, reduced to a mere “available object” in the initial and crucial period of his existence.
It is truly difficult to understand how it was and is possible to be indifferent on both sides, both the requesters and the doctor, to the intentional multiple homicide that accompanies each birth. The embryo, from the zygote stage, is a well-defined human individual.
Procreation—a profoundly meaningful event due to the myriad of reflections it has for the couple, for the conceived, for the family, and for society—has become a consumer good akin to other consumer goods; it has been reduced to an event with risks that must be avoided and thus must be ultra-controlled; it has been degraded to a mere production of beings who must meet market or personal preference criteria and are therefore subject to selection. Hence the modernization of procreative behaviors to have a child when, where, and how one wants.
An effective expression, because personally experienced, of this radical upheaval is the essay *”L’enfant derrière la vitre,”* written by the French artist Dominique Grange after two failed IVF attempts and her refusal of a third proposed attempt. Here are some of her thoughts:
“I had experienced enough by then to have a clear conscience about it. I could no longer allow my desire for a child to serve the narcissistic interests of science.”
“The couple comes out destroyed. They lose control of their desire. I knew women who attempted IVF up to 14 times, women who undergo psychoanalysis to cope with the experiment.”
“I do not want to come across as a champion of anti-in vitro fertilization, but there are things that must be said. It must be said that the woman is reduced to a superovulation machine. (…) They first take away our sex, then our heart, and finally our mind. To serve the narcissism of science.”
“This mechanism came between my husband and me, and we became its victims, further estranged from each other.”
Here, science and technology must stop. The value of this constant cannot be calculated or estimated with their methodologies. It is therefore necessary that the scientist and the technologist, who today undeniably wield power in the direction and implementation of social development, do not remain closed within their reductive axiomatic system but open themselves—while preserving the prerogatives of science and technology—to the stimuli of a “sapiential” system.
In this “sapiential” reflection, scientists and technologists will never find a brake on their irresistible desire to “know” and “do”; on the contrary, they will find a “guide” that will illuminate the right paths—perhaps even more brilliant and promising—to provide the most appropriate solutions to many serious problems of human pathology, one of which is infertility. Society, in turn, will rediscover the true sense of family and the child as a gift of true love.
I know couples who were barren and knew that God was directing them to adopt. God was closing one door and opening another…they have been blessed beyond their imagination.
Thank you for your witness.
Many couples (Catholics included) have conceived with Doctors who have clients use The Creighton Model FertilityCare™ System (CrMS). The Creighton Model is more than natural family planning (NFP). The Creighton Model “provides women the added benefit of being able to monitor and maintain their procreative and gynecologic health over a lifetime.” The Creighton Model is often used by those suffering infertility. Many (most) of these couples are not Catholic. They are simply seeking a natural solution for the cross of infertility. For more, see:
https://creightonmodel.com/
https://naprotechnology.com/
Dear K J George. The Catholic Church has the FINAL say on moral issues. IVF is intrinsically evil. End of story. If any Catholic leaves the Church because of it’s opposition to IVF, then it says more about their lack of faith than the Church.
Initially I thought it was an interesting opinion written by someone who decided to remain childless rather than use IVF. But they are not childless. The author and his wife do have children. It is written by someone who in the end did not need IVF and has a family. How many millions of naturally conceived embryos are lost because they did not attach to the womb? Only God knows. How many are lost because the mother was physically imprudent? Only God knows. Easy to judge those who suffer through the decision to use IVF and suffer through the process as a last hope, and when successful thank God for the gift of having a family each and every remaining day of their lives.
The view of human sexuality that is common to contraception, artificial fertilization, and abortion, unfortunately, is the same: it is seen as a function equivalent to any other function of the human body and therefore must be governed in light of my individual well-being, psychologically understood.
From an ethical perspective, we observe an increasing subordination of human action to the principle of utility or pleasure. The great insight of the Greeks, who distinguished three types of goodness—goodness that belongs to what pleases (good is what pleases me), the goodness of what is useful (good is what is useful to me), and the goodness of what is good in itself and for itself (which Christianity has fully embraced)—is increasingly being subordinated to the criterion of utility.
From a legal perspective, what does all this mean? It means that the fundamental point is my individual happiness, hence the assertion: I have a right. Note well: the individual happiness to which I am entitled. Thus, rights are increasingly equated exclusively with my desires: right equals desire. What I desire, I have the right to have.
So, what is a child then? Either the child is what I need for my happiness, or the child is what prevents my happiness. In the first case, I have the right to have it, no matter the cost; in the second case, I have the right to eliminate it, no matter the cost. Artificial procreation and abortion, in the end, if we look deeply, stem from the same cultural root. Now, I want to be clear: I am obviously not saying that a person who has sought artificial procreation is an abortionist! I am trying to understand why, in the same society, there is the glorification of abortion, understood as a choice of civilization, and also the desire to have a child at any cost.
Now I ask myself, how is this possible? My answer is that it is possible, indeed logical, once that anthropological, ethical, and legal vision is assumed. Therefore, to conclude, we as a Christian community have a great task: we are faced with a culture that is no longer Christian, no longer inspired by the Gospel. Thus, an extraordinary mission arises, a challenge addressed to the Christian community, calling us to truly rethink our way of living because the great challenge that this culture is presenting to us is this: we will prove to you that with or without God, life is the same, that is, it is good all the same. This is the great challenge that is being posed to us today, as we see the esteem for man as a “thing,” not as a “child,” endowed with dignity far superior to things, to what is useful.
This is not an embryo rights article. It’s merely saying that IVF creates lots of embryos and moral dilemmas. I have had 4 miscarriages. I mourned those babies, but they died of natural causes so it was not a moral dilemma like destroying embryos. I’m sorry that you made a hasty choice, and of course, I am grateful to God for the life of your daughter. But you didn’t have to do an end-around God play to get your way. You could have adopted or persisted in prayer and waited on God’s perfect timing.
No one is judging the people for doing IVF. They are judging that IVF is intrinsically evil. That is quite different. To create embryos and then destroy embryos is evil. We can judge the action not the person.
You cannot separate a person from an action. People sin; people commit evil acts; actions are manifestations of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Evil is embodied.
True… if they act with full knowledge and consent, which is often not the case. And we generally don’t have enough information to conclude, for any individual, that they have that full knowledge and consent. That is why we judge the evil act (or lifestyle), and do not judge the person unless we have such particular information. Judging with insufficient information is called rash judgement (that is, careless or unwise). And if we judge rashly, we shall be judged rashly.
IVF is a truth. Revelation did not stop with the death of Christ. In fact, the magnificence of His creation continues every day with the discovery of previously hidden truths. IVF is but another of God’s great gifts. It is its abuse by flawed humanity that is the problem as with the multiple other abuses of the great gifts our creator has given us.
Think again John.
Sin wounds Christ again. We owe him so much.
Christ our Lord, speaking through the magisterium of the Church which he founded, wills otherwise. Per the Catechism, IVF is considered gravely immoral. CCC 2376, 2377. It entails the destruction of innocent human life. The vast majority of manufactured embryos; human beings all, will be discarded. When Man plays God, things will go bad. Very bad.
It’s very difficult to believe that IVF is from God when embryos are created then destroyed. God may have given the intelligence to man to be able to do that but even so, just because you CAN do something does not necessarily mean that you SHOULD do something. Does the end result justify the means?
Hello Linda. IVF used as a treatment for pathological infertility in a couple, joined by God in sacramental marriage as His means of creation of the human beings He loves, is very different from the storage of IVF ova for sale for profit to whomever wishes to have a child outside marriage i.e. outside God’s creative plan – particularly when the wish for a child is for personal status as happens for example with same sex couples or in surrogate motherhood.
Public Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle (St. John). That is a part of the Catholic Faith.
IVF has other immoral aspects. Viewing pornography and masterbation are usually used to obtain sperm.
We have lost the understanding that Conjugal love is a sacred and holy human activity. Let me say it again. The union of Conjugal love is a sacred and holy activity because Baptism elevates all human activity to the level of the Divine. (St Thomas Aquinas) Look that up for further understanding. Also read Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality 1980 Vatican Congregation for Marriage and Family. SacredHeartsPublications.com
Thank you for the article and good comments that narrate and clarify the issues , for the charism of prophesy in The Church who in Godly wisdom give warnings before science catch up with what comes – just as in the case of contraception …so much of infertility and other issues in our times …has the generational effects of use of contraception and the death culture led to children having ‘antibodies ‘ as autoimmune agents that are either unrecognized or even if known , denied even intentionally… that are at the root of many of these issues of our times …sin makes one own enemy – autoantibodies one such manner …
Promoting a culture of chastity in families as preventive to be seen as a priority .. and that becomes possible when families can also be domestic churches of worship to take in His holiness as Love and mercy …thank God that there are many centers esp. those who promote devotion to The Mother who report surprise answer to prayers for gift of children ..’be of one flesh ‘ – couples to discern that it is as one flesh in holiness in The Mother as well narrated here –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpRs39jm9iw&t=2232s
May the graces of the Immaculate Conception be the fire that burn out the carnal flood waters in all realms to help families and nations to cherish life for its mission and goodness in holiness ! FIAT !
God did not create man to crank out babies like a photocopy machine. Rather God created man as a person who is meant to love as God loves. Our God is not a machine; our God is love.
Aren’t babies precious human lives no matter how they were conceived?