The Centers for Disease Control (CDCs) define the general class of "assisted reproductive technologies" as those procedures where eggs or embryos are handled. This involves surgically removing eggs from a woman's body, combining them with sperm in the laboratory, and then returning them to the woman (or another woman). The CDCs do not keep track of procedures where only the sperm is handled, such as intrauterine insemination (IUI), or procedures where the gametes are not removed from the body.1 The vast majority of all such ARTs consist of the simplest and longest-used procedure, in vitro fertilization (IVF).
The first IVF procedure was performed by Doctor Robert Edwards and abortionist Patrick Steptoe in 1977 and resulted in the birth of Louise Brown. This success was preceded by more than 200 failures and was financed primarily by revenues from abortions.2
There are many profound ethical issues involved with the use of IVF and other ARTs. These include:
The general attitude among reproductive technology professionals is that there is a fundamental human right to have a child , and anyone who dares to disagree is met with the usual emotional attacks from people who say that those who would deny a child to a couple suffering from the heartbreak of infertility are heartless monsters. ART technicians absolve themselves of any moral consideration by deeming themselves mere instruments whose job is to fulfill the human desire for a child.
Unfortunately, this attitude reduces the child to a mere possession that can be acquired at will. Donum Vitae says that this is
...contrary to the child's dignity and nature. The child is not an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered as an object of ownership: rather, a child is a gift, "the supreme gift" and the most gratuitous gift of marriage and is a living testimony of the mutual giving of his parents. For this reason, the child has the right to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents; and he also has the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception. (II,8)
In order to clarify the teachings of the Catholic Church on assisted reproductive technologies in general, we again turn to Donum Vitae , which teaches:
These interventions are not to be rejected on the grounds that they are artificial. As such, they bear witness to the possibilities of the art of medicine. But they must be given a moral evaluation in reference to the dignity of the human person, who is called to realize his vocation from God to the gift of love and the gift of life. (Introduction, 3)
People who do not like to think critically and instead rely on mere emotions to make their moral decisions tend to accuse the Catholic Church of randomly deeming certain acts immoral. However, we must point out that the teachings of the Church are always supported not only by theology, but also by science.
So we may rightfully ask: "How do we determine if one of the dozens of different ART procedures is licit or not? What are the guidelines?"
Once again, Donum Vitae comes to the rescue. The document provides us five specific and unambiguous guidelines designed to safeguard against abuses in the field of ART that commodify and dispose of children and abuse the marriage bond:
Under the CDC's definition outlined above, all assisted reproductive procedures, including in vitro fertilization, always violate the fourth guideline and often disregard all five.
In summary, there are three general moral principles that should be applied to each type of ART or other procedure to assist pregnancy in order to determine whether or not it is licit;
But there is certainly hope for infertile couples. Under the above parameters, we are happy to note that there are a growing number of procedures that can be used licitly to help married couples overcome difficulties with their fertility. Even better news is that these procedures often have a higher success rate than IVF and its variants.
These methods include:
But if these procedures are licit and as effective as we say they are, why are they not used more often?
The answer is the same one that applies to many such ethical questions - money . The natural methods require effort by the infertile couple, who often cannot be bothered. And because they are labor-intensive but not money-intensive, the medical professionals do not make a profit.
The probability of a single transplanted embryo surviving the entire assisted reproduction process, as defined by the CDCs, are unfavorable to say the least. Even when using multiple eggs, the probability of achieving pregnancy per ART cycle is only about one in three.12
Pro-life activists object to assisted reproductive procedures not only because they violate the dignity of the marriage act and commodify human life from its very beginning, but also because they require the intentional killing or abandonment of many "surplus" human embryos. In the mid-1980's, two large studies showed that only about 4% of embryos used in ART procedures survived to birth. These numbers have improved somewhat, but even now nearly three million embryos worldwide fail to survive the ART process every year.4
If a woman becomes pregnant with multiple embryos, an abortionist often commits a "pregnancy reduction," or selective abortion. "Surplus" or defective children are killed outright with a shot of potassium chloride to their hearts and are then reabsorbed by the mother's body.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) defines multifetal pregnancy reduction as "a first-trimester or early second-trimester procedure for reducing the total number of fetuses in a multifetal pregnancy by one or more," and says that "fertility treatments have contributed significantly to the increase in multifetal pregnancies," thereby attempting to justify the need for such a procedure.5
Two doctors described the "pregnancy reduction" procedure in the New England Journal of Medicine :
Using ultra-sound to locate each fetus, the doctors would insert a needle into the chest cavity of the most accessible fetus and place the needle tip directly into the heart of the baby. Potassium chloride was then injected into the heart and the heart was viewed on the ultrasound screen until it stopped beating. Even at 9 weeks, 3 of the 12 fetuses selected for elimination presented problems. The heart continued to beat and the procedure had to be repeated.6
Other abortionists described how they killed two of five babies with a slightly different procedure:
At ten weeks gestation, a reduction in the number of embryos was performed at the Clamart Clinic in Paris. Guided by real-time ultrasonography and under abdominal local anesthesia (lidocaine 1 percent), ten milliliters of amniotic fluid from each of the two sacs was aspirated [drawn out] through a ten centimeter long, 21-gauge needle. The tip of the needle was then directed into the thoracic [chest] cavity of the fetus and a mixture of 1 milliliter of dolosal and 3 milliliters of xylocaine was injected. The needle was left in place for up to ten minutes until cessation of cardiac activity was seen. If the initial injection was unsuccessful, it was repeated after ten minutes.7
Some three decades ago, the U.S. Congress' Committee on Small Business found that many unregulated assisted reproduction enterprises deliberately implant too many embryos just to increase their chances of success:
IVF success rates are so discouraging that there are some centers trying to do better in terms of creating babies by using multiple [embryo] implants. It shows at the forty-one [leading] centers that there were an average of three embryos used. Some centers use more than that. When they do, they sometimes create multiple pregnancies, three, four, five or six babies. Then they use fetal reduction, which is killing some fetuses to preserve the health of the mother and to help the other fetuses survive.8
In the usual scenario, a doctor claims a woman is carrying so many babies that her life or theirs may be endangered. However, the "reproductive specialists" are often wrong. One of them told a woman her five babies would all die, but she chose to carry them all to term. They were all born healthy and the entire family appeared in a 1991 People Magazine cover story.
As always, abortionists lead with the " hard case " arguments, which are invariably based upon emotions and not facts. Some women seem to think twins are too much to handle, and abortionists (who, of course, will make plenty of money by humoring them) will invariably agree. The " mother's health " argument, in general, does not hold up when twins can be "reduced" to one child with a sort of abominable reverse "Sophie's choice." In other words, the mother is not choosing which of two children will live , but which one will die . Of course, pro-abortion people can "justify" all abortions with the same flimsy arguments used to rationalize "pregnancy reduction." After all, most abortions are just the reduction of one preborn baby to none.
In fact, most "pregnancy reductions" involve killing one of a set of twins. Even in such apparently simple cases, "pregnancy reduction" is an abysmal failure at delivering its intended result. A 1989 article in a medical journal admitted:
The first six twin pregnancies to undergo selective termination at Mount Sinai Hospital "worked out very badly," with the unintended miscarriage of four unaffected fetuses as well as the six targeted for abortion. These first attempts involved the use of exsanguination [draining all of the blood from the preborn babies] or injection of saline or an air embolism [to cause heart attacks], Dr. Berkowitz said.9
Reproductive specialists also simply discard as mere biological waste any embryos that appear to be defective in any way, with absolutely no respect for their human dignity or worth.
Naturally, many researchers are reluctant to see all of these perfectly good embryos go to waste, so they extract them alive and experiment upon them. As a result, the availability of so many thousands of "spare" embryos has lent great impetus to the field of embryonic stem cell research , or ESCR ― an area of research that has yet to yield a single cure after decades of effort and billions of dollars spent.10
In 1995, the Centers for Disease Control released its first complete annual ART consumer report, which examined the success rates of 281 fertility clinics. It has followed up this initial report with a detailed annual survey of all fertility clinics in the United States.11
These reports show:
As with all immoral acts, medical personnel and mothers need euphemisms ("Newspeak") to insulate themselves from the reality of what they are doing. The term "pregnancy reduction" is an example.
Others take this self-deceptive language even further. Dr. Seymour Romney suggested in 1989 that we call the roulette killing of some of the babies in a multiple pregnancy "enhanced survival of multifetal pregnancies," or ESMP for short.18