The Moral Status of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)

Case in point: this response to a reader at CatholicInsight.com .  Eric Rose asked John B. Shea MD. FRCP the following question:

I was brought up Catholic, but I have a question:  If two married people cannot bear children of their own, the Catholic Church would rather see that couple fruitless than have IVF performed?

This is a very common sentiment among Catholics and other pro-lifers.  Dr. Shea does a great job of explaining the process of IVF:

Infertile couples sometimes resort to IVF in order to conceive a child. IVF is a laboratory technique by which human embryos are conceived in a petri dish which contains a culture medium. The woman is given hormones which stimulate her ovaries to produce up to 30 or more oocytes (ova). These are retrieved by inserting a needle into the ovaries via the vagina with ultrasound guidance. These oocytes are mixed with sperm. The sperm is obtained by masturbation and is usually donated by the husband. If the husband is infertile, however, the sperm may be obtained from another man. If the woman is infertile, likewise, the oocytes may be obtained from another woman, whose ovaries have been similarly stimulated. The embryos thus conceived are usually allowed to grow up to the four to eight cell stage over three to four days, at which time some of the embryos are implanted in the woman’s uterus.

I think the problem with the answer comes in the part where Dr. Shea explains why the Church finds IVF immoral.  His answer is very accurate.  The problem I believe is that he uses the same language that leaves many Catholics scratching their heads:

The Church also teaches that from the moral point of view a truly responsible procreation vis-a –vis the unborn child must be the fruit of marriage.  

Pope Paul V1 has taught that there is an “inseparable connection, willed by God, and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning.”

IVF violates the rights of the child: it deprives him of his filial relationship with his parental origins and can hinder the maturing of his personality. It objectively deprives conjugal fruitfulness of its unity and integrity; it brings about and manifests a rupture between genetic parenthood, gestational parenthood, and responsibility for upbringing. This threat to the unity and stability of the family is a source of dissension, disorder, and injustice in the whole of social life.

I have used this kind of language in the talks I have given and most people just look at me with blank stares.  I have to admit that it even makes my eyes glass over.  And next to the breaking hearts of infertile couples, this language, I hate to say, just sounds hollow and elitist.

While less academic, I like to explain Church teaching on IVF this way:

1.  The Church teaches that all life from the very beginning, meaning conception, deserves dignity and respect.

2.  The Church also teaches that human life should be begotten not made as a result of the sexual union of a husband and a wife.

3.  This is because there is no more loving and safe place to be conceived than in a mother's womb as the result of a specific act of love.

4.  IVF is immoral for many reasons, but foremost because it creates human life in a dish.  This life is made by a stranger, a lab technician, not a mother and a father.  The dish is a cold and dangerous place, devoid of love.  Human embryos made in labs are in a precarious position.  IVF embryos are at greater risk of genetic disease.  These embryos may make it into a mother's womb where they belong.  But, they often end up in the deep freeze, or in the hands of researchers to be ripped apart.  They may be abandoned or even end up in the womb of another woman by accident.  IVF embryos are, in many states, considered to be property.  More and more, they are viewed by society as valueless biological material.

5.  As a result, creating life outside the body, outside the act of love between a husband and wife does not uphold the dignity inherent in each of us from the moment we are conceived.

While Dr. Shea's response is accurate and appropriate, I believe it does not drive home that we all deserve to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect at every stage of life and IVF, by creating embryos in a lab, does not treat all human life with respect.  Instead, it puts these little lives at risk and undervalues their worth.  IVF, even though it can give infertile couples the children they so desperately want, is immoral because of how it treats human life at its earliest and most vulnerable.