While the Catholic Church strongly opposes in vitro fertilization ("IVF"), many Catholics disregard this teaching. I even heard a story about a pre-Cana session in which a teaching couple proudly told the engaged couples about their IVF use. Our clergy need to echo Cardinal Sean O'Malley's exhortation to shout loudly from the mountaintops against IVF. Here is what clergy should be saying.
First, assisted conception separates sexuality from life creation. The Church has consistently taught that sexuality is linked to an openness toward life. The last thirty years have shown what happens when sexuality and life creation are disconnected. In the 1970s, the culture came to view sex principally as something that feels good. Adultery became more common and the expectation that marriages would endure through challenging periods has waned. Divorce rates spiked and have remained high since. Now the culture has come to view children as something else that will make us feel good, and not as a gift from God. If we view life as a commodity to satisfy us and create children without physical intimacy, and through the actions of a mediating technician, the basis for sexual exclusivity in marriage declines and the sacred bond of marriage is further attenuated.
Second, IVF entails the mass production - and mass destruction - of life and engenders an "ownership" orientation to life. Because it is economically efficient to do so, IVF practitioners make multiple embryos, use as many as their "owners" want, freeze the rest for years and eventually destroy them. In addition to making hundreds of thousands of frozen, disposable embryos, IVF clinics routinely implant multiple embryos to increase their success rates, and their profits, and "selectively reduce," i.e., abort the extra unwanted fetuses that implant in the womb by injecting postassium chloride into the hearts of the unwanted.
Third, IVF enables high tech eugenics. IVF embryos are genetically screened for defects and gender. Only those considered suitable are implanted. This quality control process intensifies monthly as genetic interpretation accelerates. In a high tech version of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," genetic profiling enables parents to prenatally purge the defective.
Fourth, assisted conception is a high tech fix for the social problems of sexual promiscuity and postponed marriage. STD or abortion scarring causes much of the demand for IVF. Most remaining infertile couples have waited until after their prime childbearing years to attempt conception. Instead of addressing the underlying issues of premarital sex, commitment-phobia and hyper selectivity of suitable mates, we ask technicians to bail us out, just as we do - with similarly dubious results - with so many other social problems.
Fifth, IVF is extremely expensive. Each round costs over $12,000 and, given the complications that often arise in IVF pregnancies, it often costs over $100,000 couple. These costs are paid by mandated insurance premiums that add over $600 each year to the cost of insurance and put coverage for basic care out of the reach of millions of people.
Sixth, IVF clinics are facilitating human cloning and human genetic engineering, both technologically and morally. Much of the same the equipment, techniques and research developed for IVF is used for cloning. And if such human-controlled reprotech as IVF is accepted, on what moral basis could society oppose other forms of reproductive choice, such as selecting a child's sex, genetically designing the unborn or cloning? On the surface, each of these processes might produce healthy looking offspring that please parents and their family and friends. But, then, wouldn't those who built their dream houses on Normandy Beach or in Yosemite Valley enjoy the view?
Either God is sovereign over life, or humans are. IVF makes humans sovereign over life.