The Immorality of IVF

Children are not a commodity

If you opened this email, wondering where part 2 of the Women’s Bible Study is, I assure you that it is coming. They will be released bi-weekly so I can still release posts for free subscribers in between. Part 2 of the study will be out one week from today! (If you haven’t read part 1, here is the link.)

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As I was finishing my recent post on Covenant Theology, I had anticipated that my next long post would be on the meaning of “Church”, but right after that post went live, I just knew I was being nudged towards writing on IVF (in vitro fertilization). Even as I write the last part of that sentence, I feel my arms go stiff with some dread. I know this is a controversial topic, as there is a lot of emotion (and hurt) wrapped up in it, so I will try to be charitable; however, I ask that you hear me out, even if you disagree.

“[S]cience without conscience can only lead to man's ruin. ‘Our era needs such wisdom more than bygone ages if the discoveries made by man are to be further humanized. For the future of the world stands in peril unless wiser people are forthcoming’.” - Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith

Infertility is a Cross

I am going to come right out and say what many of you may be thinking: no, I have never had to bear the cross of infertility. My husband and I have been blessed with two children (so far) in our four years of marriage. This fact has led me to be hesitant in regards to speaking out against IVF in the past, but just as I believe my husband can (and should) speak out against abortion as a man, despite the fact that he will never be pregnant or give birth, I believe I can (and should) speak out against IVF. I do not have to personally experience infertility to know whether IVF is right or wrong.

The desire for a child is a good desire. However, like many good things in life, we are not owed a child. A child is a gift. IVF makes children into a commodity (aka: a product to be bought or sold). The ends do not justify the means.

The Circumstances of a Child’s Conception Does NOT Determine Their Worth

If you are reading this as a child conceived through IVF, or if you have children conceived through IVF, I want to be abundantly clear that every single child is a gift. Just as I would see a child conceived in rape as having the same worth as a child conceived through the loving embrace of husband and wife, children conceived through IVF are deeply loved by God and worthy of life and love.

What is IVF?

“In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a type of assisted reproductive technology (ART) where sperm and an egg are fertilized outside of the human body. IVF is a complex process that involves retrieving eggs from ovaries and manually combining them with sperm in a lab for fertilization. Several days after fertilization, the fertilized egg (now called an embryo) is placed inside a uterus.”¹

One of the first steps in the process is to collect the eggs and sperm:

The woman will “be given fertility drugs that will begin a process called stimulation — or superovulation…In other words, the drugs — which contain Follicle Stimulating Hormone — will tell [the woman’s] body to produce more than just the normal one egg per month.” “A little more than a day before your eggs are scheduled to be retrieved from your body, you'll receive a hormone injection that will help your eggs mature quickly. Then, you'll have a minor surgical procedure — called follicular aspiration — to remove the eggs.”²

“A sperm sample is best produced by masturbation.”³ There are other methods that can be utilized to collect sperm, too. “These procedures are designed to collect sperm directly from the testicles or epididymis when there is a problem with the production, transport or ejaculation of sperm.”⁴ If used, “Condoms should be specific in type, since regular condoms are coated with spermicides and chemicals that are toxic to sperm. After intercourse the contents of the condom are emptied into a specimen bottle.”⁵

Without proceeding, we already have a moral dilemma. Neither masturbation or the use of condoms⁶ align with God’s law:

masturbation is to be understood [as] the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action." "The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved."⁷

and:

"every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil:

Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality.⁸

There are two meanings of the conjugal act: procreation and unity. Both must be retained to maintain cohesion with natural law. Masturbation dissociates these two meanings because “even when it is done for the purpose of procreation, the act remains deprived of its unitive meaning: ‘It lacks the sexual relationship called for by the moral order, namely the relationship which realizes 'the full sense of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love'‘.”⁹

Read more on the topic of contraception in my post Isn't NFP just "Catholic Contraception"?

The Creation of Embryos

“Now comes the part of IVF that everyone's the most familiar with — combining the best sperm with your best eggs. This stage is called insemination.”¹⁰ “Such fertilization entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person.”¹¹ The Catechism of the Catholic Churches expresses the issue with this as follows:

Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child's right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses' "right to become a father and a mother only through each other."¹²

In many cases, many embryos are created. “[T]he number of frozen embryos sitting in storage in the United States has risen…to an estimated 1.5 million. British couples are freezing 100,000 embryos per year. Western Australia alone reported 30,000 frozen embryos in 2022. Many of these embryos—fertilized eggs in their first stages of development—remain from IVF treatments, indefinitely chilled in canisters of liquid nitrogen with no plans for their future.”¹³ There is an embryo crisis.

“The freezing of embryos, even when carried out in order to preserve the life of an embryo - cryopreservation - constitutes an offence against the respect due to human beings by exposing them to grave risks of death or harm to their physical integrity and depriving them, at least temporarily, of maternal shelter and gestation, thus placing them in a situation in which further offences and manipulation are possible.” - Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation

The extra embryos are considered property of the couple. One option is to keep the embryos frozen, but this must be paid for. “Embryo storage at an embryo bank or cryopreservation facility typically costs between $350 to $1,500 per year.”¹⁴ Other options include donating the embryos to science or having them destroyed. It’s easy to read that and move along, but when we consider the fact that an embryo is a beginning stage of development for a human being, that sentence becomes rather chilling. There’s also cases such as this one where something goes wrong and embryos are thawed unintentionally, leading them to die. These stories should make us seriously question this path the fertility industry has taken. Storing human lives, frozen in time, leads to disaster.

"From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a new life is begun which is neither that of the father nor of the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already. To this perpetual evidence ... modern genetic science brings valuable confirmation. It has demonstrated that, from the first instant, the programme is fixed as to what this living being will be: a man, this individual-man with his characteristic aspects already well determined. Right from fertilization is begun the adventure of a human life, and each of its great capacities requires time ... to find its place and to be in a position to act". - Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation

Choosing the Best Embryo

When my husband and I conceived, we knew that we had no choice when it came to what that baby would be like. There is beauty in choosing to love, regardless of gender, health characteristics, multiples, etc. Some couples who undergo IVF choose to have preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) done. “[PGT] involves screening embryos for genetic abnormalities before embryo transfer” and “can also reveal the sex of each embryo.” “The only countries that explicitly allow non-medical sex selection (without restrictions or guidelines) are the United States and Mexico.”¹⁵ We should consider the existing children around us when we hear of things like this. What are we telling our daughters/sons when we say something like: we want a boy/girl, then we are done having kids. The way I hear people speak about the children they have often breaks my heart. Our kids our listening. We need to be grateful for the children we’ve been given. When will they be enough?

Another problematic piece of the IVF process is embryo grading. “Embryo grading systems provide a framework for embryologists to assign ratings based on specific morphological¹⁶ features. And while these systems are standardized, the grading system used can vary depending on the clinic.” I find it alarming that “these grading systems provide a standardized approach,” but “there may still be some variability in interpretation between embryologists and clinics”.¹⁷ This means that different clinics may choose different embryos as the “best”. Now, I know one might say that this process is important to create the highest chances of a successful pregnancy, which is the end goal of IVF, but what about the embryos that weren’t “good enough”? What will happen to those human lives? We shouldn’t have gotten into a position where embryos need to be graded. A husband and wife should never be choosing an embryo, nor should an embryologist be choosing an embryo to implant.

Human embryos obtained in vitro are human beings and subjects with rights: their dignity and right to life must be respected from the first moment of their existence. It is immoral to produce human embryos destined to be exploited as disposable "biological material". In the usual practice of in vitro fertilization, not all of the embryos are transferred to the woman's body; some are destroyed. Just as the Church condemns induced abortion, so she also forbids acts against the life of these human beings. It is a duty to condemn the particular gravity of the voluntary destruction of human embryos obtained 'in vitro' for the sole purpose of research, either by means of artificial insemination of by means of "twin fission". By acting in this way the researcher usurps the place of God; and, even though he may be unaware of this, he sets himself up as the master of the destiny of others inasmuch as he arbitrarily chooses whom he will allow to live and whom he will send to death and kills defenseless human beings.¹⁸

Embryo Transfer

Though it is no longer the norm, multiple embryos could be transferred, leading to a higher chance of twins. Since a pregnancy with multiples is considered higher risk than a singleton, doctors will commonly encourage a reduction (aka: abortion), meaning the end of one life.

What is Licit?

Couples with the cross of infertility do have options when it comes to treatment. “Donum Vitae teaches that if a given medical intervention helps or assists the marriage act to achieve pregnancy, it may be considered moral; if the intervention replaces the marriage act in order to engender life, it is not moral.”¹⁹

Some couples have had success in achieving pregnancy after a period of infertility with the help of Natural Reproductive Technology.²⁰

Conclusion

Human life is meant to be created within the bounds of the marital embrace.

Masturbation (the most common way for sperm to be collected), even when done with procreation in mind, violates the unitive aspect of married love.

“The doctor is at the service of persons and of human procreation. He does not have the authority to dispose of them or to decide their fate.”²¹

There are around 1.5 million embryos frozen in the United States; 1.5 million human lives with an uncertain future, likely to be destroyed.

"What you do to one of the least of my brethren, you do unto me" (Matthew 25:40). “Embryo” is just a name for a stage in the development of a life. If the parents are human, that embryo is a human life.

“[E]very human being is to be respected for himself, and cannot be reduced in worth to a pure and simple instrument for the advantage of others.”²²

Embryo grading does not uphold the dignity of human life.

There is a limit to how far we can go to achieve what we desire, even if the desire is good.

There is a disturbing connection between IVF and the destruction of human embryos.

Further Reading

• This post by

  Emily Stimpson Chapman

• Conceived by Science: Thinking Carefully and Compassionately about Infertility and IVF by Stephanie Gray Connors (I have not read this yet, but feel confident that it would be a great read)

• Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith

Recent Free Posts from The Gentle Nudge that You Might Enjoy

1. IVF (In Vitro Fertilization): Procedure & How It Works

2. A Step-By-Step Look at the IVF Process - Penn Medicine

3. IVF - Sperm collection - IVF-Worldwide

4. How is sperm collected for IVF and ICSI? | IVF Doctors, Treatments, Costs, Side Effects and more

5. IVF - Sperm collection - IVF-Worldwide

6. There are perforated condoms that can be used without disrupting natural law, but I was unable to find information stating whether these can be used for IVF.

7. CCC 2352

8. CCC 2370

9. Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith

10. A Step-By-Step Look at the IVF Process - Penn Medicine

11. Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith

12. CCC 2376

13. Frozen Embryos Are the New Orphan Crisis - Christianity Today

14. How Much Does It Cost to Keep Embryos Frozen? [Embryo Options] - American Surrogacy

15. Gender Selection: Can You Choose Gender With IVF? | RMA Network

16. Within the field of biology, morphology is the study of the shapes and arrangement of parts of organisms, in order to determine their function, their development, and how they may have been shaped by evolution. (Morphology Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster)

17. Understanding Embryo Grading: What It Means, Why It Matters, and How to Evaluate "Good" Grades

18. Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (emphasis added)

19. Begotten Not Made: A Catholic View of Reproductive Technology | USCCB

20. Read more here: NaProTechnology – MyCatholicDoctor

21. Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith

22. Ibid.