catholicexchange.com
2025-05-08
When President Trump signed an executive order on February 18, 2025 calling for a 90-day policy review and recommendations to lower the cost of IVF, he launched a discussion about the morality of assisted reproductive technology. The Catholic Church has declared this procedure illicit ever since 1897 when scientists first considered extending artificial insemination from livestock to humans. When the first test tube baby, Louise Joy Brown, was born in 1978 in England, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) followed up with Donum vitae ("The Gift of Life") in 1987.
Magisterium on Rights of a Child
President Trump's administration seeks to "make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children." But this statement begs a lot of questions, particularly those related to the rights of the child. Should anyone who wants one be able to buy and make a baby with IVF? To answer this question, I will rely on the instruction from the CDF. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) cites Donum vitae on the familiar passage about the gift of a child.
A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The "supreme gift of marriage" is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged "right to a child" would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right "to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents," and "the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception. (CCC 2378; citing Donum vitae, II.8.)