Multiple Injustices Of IVF, The
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Melissa, I am finally getting a chance to write and let you know that we had a son! Sorry I have taken so long to write. We had some problems with sleepy baby syndrome and losing too much weight. I am still pretty sleep deprived but things are going much better now.
MANY MANY THANKS for your part in making this happen. We are completely smitten with our son.
Sincerely,
(Names omitted) Source: Jones Institute, Eastern Virginia School of Medicine
The word "this" in the effusive testimonial letter quoted above refers to in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a technology that for over twenty years has been used to artificially conceive children in parents who had difficulty becoming parents. The birth of English baby Louise Brown in the disco age signaled the advent of the "test-tube" baby predicted two generations earlier by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. It also clearly demonstrated that the error of separating the unitive and procreative ends of marriage, warned against by Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, had come to term and was about to give birth to a whole host of ethical catastrophes, disasters which are now overwhelming society.
If abortion and contraception have generally eluded the attention of preachers in the past half-century, IVF hasn't even appeared on their radarscopes. Most think that IVF is so rare as to be inconsequential. Yet (JAMA, 11-17-99) Schieve et al. reported being able to study the results of nearly 36,000 IVF procedures documented by only 300 clinics during the year 1996, only a small part of the total. Almost 10,000 live births resulted in that study. Since that time, the number of IVF clinics and procedures has increased.
The reason for this increase is largely demographic. The postwar generations married later and started families later than their elders did. Moreover, they were more likely to have experienced multiple sexual partners, and to have contracted infertility-causing venereal diseases. In fact, blocked fallopian tubes in the woman, caused by gonorrhea or pelvic inflammatory disease, is a common cause of female infertility. Abortion scarring can also make it difficult or impossible for a woman to conceive. Similar problems can occur in the male. The result is a higher rate of infertility, and an increased desire in the couple to have a child by any means possible. Higher demand results in greater supply. IVF clinics are now found in almost every major city of the U.S., and in most developed countries.
IVF, therefore, exists for two reasons. First, there is a consensus, at least in the developed world, that human beings have a right to absolute control of their own fertility. They have, so the story goes, the right to make themselves infertile while engaging in the marital act (married or unmarried). They have the right to destroy the human being created in the marital act. And, to complete the story, they have the right when there is some condition blocking fertility-at-will, to do whatever it takes to become fertile again.
Second, there is a consensus among medical technologists that they can perform any action that intervenes in the human reproductive process, perfect any means, as long as there is a "good end." The only ethical question allowed is Dewey's. It is assumed that the end justifies any means, as long as the means actually has something to do with accomplishing the end. The good end in the case of IVF is the conception, gestation and delivery of a baby. Anything is allowed that accomplishes that objective. It is presupposed by the technologist that the construction of a baby is like the construction of a car — matter, energy and design combine to make a sentient being. Of course, this ignores the CDF statement "Respect for Human Life" (1987), which affirms:
[B]y virtue of its substantial union with a spiritual soul, the human body cannot be considered as a mere complex of tissues, organs and functions, nor can it be evaluated in the same way as the body of animals; rather it is a constitutive part of the person who manifests and expresses himself through it.
The Immoral Means
As the CDF statement implies, the problem with IVF as a means to pregnancy is that multiple injustices are perpetrated in every IVF procedure. Every IVF is preceded by an act of masturbation, either by the husband or the "donor." This action is intrinsically disordered morally, and damages the actor. It usually involves the use of pornographic images, which depersonalize both the viewer and those who produce the images. The masturbator himself is performing the sinful act, which, as St. Paul says, is a sin in his own body, in order to satisfy the demands of another person (or, worse, for compensation). The act of masturbation is by its very nature anti unitive. It therefore damages the marital union. Injustice, then, is an essential part of the masturbatory act oriented toward producing sperm for IVF.
Injustice happens whenever a person or collection of persons seizes on a power that is not due them. Ironically, the very concept of IVF is based on an erroneous assumption. As CDF says, "marriage does not confer on the spouses the right to have a child, but only the right to perform those natural acts which are per se ordered to procreation." David Bohr (Catholic Moral Tradition at 290) rightly notes that the "child always remains a gift of love, and can never be considered an object of ownership or an object to which one has a right."
This brings us to the gravest injustices perpetrated by IVF: the outcome of the fertilization itself is usually multiple blastocysts. Three ends are possible for these; and an injustice is involved in all three outcomes.
First, one or more of the blastocysts are judged suitable, placed into the uterus of the woman attempting conception, and some survive. The child who develops to full term and is delivered is, of course, the desired "consumer product." I use that term intentionally, to heighten our awareness of the injustice. Every child has a right to be conceived in an embrace of love between his mother and father. This child is denied that right. He will for all time be a "test-tube baby." He has been treated as a commodity.
Second, some blastocysts are judged unsuitable and are discarded (literally thrown into a biohazard container) or are placed in the uterus and are flushed out by the body's natural systems. These have even more clearly been treated as disposable commodities, as objects with no inherent human dignity. The culling of "problem" children is justified by avoiding the inconvenience of caring for more than one child at a time.
Third — and this has led us to the whole embryonic stem-cell debate — some blastocysts are deemed "in excess" and are frozen for future use. These tiny human beings are also treated as commodities to be warehoused, without human dignity. This, too, is dehumanizing, a profound injustice.
The various injustices perpetrated on the tiny children "manufactured" through IVF have been highlighted by a number of civil litigations. There are variations on the same theme — these embryos are property, not people. In divorce, one party wants to destroy the children; the other wants to keep them frozen or implant them to give them a full chance at life. A grieving widow wants to implant to bring children up for her dead husband; the rest of the family wants to destroy them. In many of these cases members of the press cluck their tongues over the foibles of the human beings involved. The real problem started with the IVF procedure that created these vulnerable humans in the first place. An action designed to foster human life has in fact furthered the agenda of the Culture of Death.
Of course, it is easy to understand the injustice done to the woman who will carry the child. She is treated like a baby factory. She is denied her husband's unitive, procreative embrace. (In fact, some protocols have prohibited sexual contact in the days or weeks before the IVF masturbation.) She is subject to a number of demeaning, medically unnecessary procedures. She has to live with the knowledge that of two to twenty children conceived from her eggs, most will be killed.
The Pastoral Response
A pastor I know has within the past couple of years baptized at least one set of multiple-birth babies resulting from IVF. Although the birth of children is a cause for joy, and receiving those children into the Church is an example of bringing good out of evil, there is a real danger of scandal in such circumstances. Frankly, when triplets or quads result from fertility drugs or IVF, there is no keeping the secret. If, then, the Church is seen as welcoming the children into the world, many will wrongly infer that there is no moral problem with IVF.
This should be unacceptable. A pastor or other preacher can respond to the situation sensitively without ignoring the moral issues raised. One way to approach this is, some weeks after a high profile multiple baptism, to focus the Sunday homily on the right to life and the ways we can unintentionally cause injustice. IVF could then be given as one of several examples of actions to avoid. Any Scriptural passage that enjoins the hearer to avoid injustice (and there is one of those every couple of weeks) could be the unifying element in the homily.
Parish counselors should also prepare themselves to work with the children of IVF. At some point in life, just as adoptees discover their origin, IVF "products" will learn of theirs. Adopted children have an advantage in this case — they know that they resulted from a natural union of a man and a woman. IVF children may, perhaps even should, have a problem knowing that they started off as an act of self-abuse in a Petri dish. It is essential that the counselor have a clear understanding of the moral issues involved, and be convinced that all human beings, however illicitly conceived, have a God-given dignity that no procedure can efface. Then the IVF child can be guided toward a healing experience with Christ.
IVF is a reality, and probably one we will have to endure into the foreseeable future. But with the help of the Holy Spirit, we may be able to use our pastoral ministries to reduce its incidence and repair the damage it has done to parents, children, and the Church.
Mr. W. Patrick Cunningham is a deacon of the Archdiocese of San Antonio. He serves as principal of Central Catholic High School and ministers in Holy Spirit parish. He is a graduate of St. Mary's University and of Stanford University and has written for Catholic publication for over 25 years. His last article in HPR appeared in April 2002.
© Ignatius Press 2003.
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