Have the courage to be a witness and evangelist for the Gospel of Life
By Bishop James Conley
President Donald Trump recently announced actions to expand access to and reduce costs associated with in vitro fertilization (IVF). Unfortunately, this morally compromised action comes as no surprise. During his campaign and earliest days in office, President Trump promised such actions.
The IVF action was announced as a pro-family and pro-life effort to help “American families have more babies.” While the intention and goal are indeed noble, IVF, in fact, undermines human dignity, marriage, and family life for a variety of reasons.
Before exploring those reasons, I would like first and foremost to speak to those conceived through IVF, those struggling with infertility and, by extension, those wrestling with this aspect of the Church’s teaching, which can seem counterintuitive, confusing, and even harsh.
To those conceived through IVF
For anybody conceived through IVF, know that you are a gift, not just to your parents but to all of us. Regardless of how somebody was conceived or was born, each and every human person is made in the image and likeness of God and therefore is loved by God and shares in the same unique and inviolable dignity as each one of us.
To those struggling with infertility
For those who struggle with infertility, please know that—as your shepherd and pastor—I walk with you in your sufferings. There is a deep yearning within the human heart to love and to be loved. In that experience, spouses desire to come together in marital intimacy and bring new human life into the world. When that desire is unfulfilled, this can cause disappointment, stress, shame, envy, anger, and desperation.
Even though 1 in 10 couples experience infertility, it was not part of God’s original plan for man and woman. Like so many other sufferings, infertility is part of the mystery of Original Sin and the wounded, fallen world in which we live. Yet God calls us to bear these crosses with grace and dignity.
However, we need not carry our crosses alone. Jesus meets us in our sufferings. He walks with us. He desires to make us whole. He hopes we see the good He can bring out of suffering. As the Sisters of Life so beautifully state: “Jesus is intimately familiar with the barren wilderness (cf. Mt 4:1-11; Lk 4:1-13) and yearns to meet us there until we can rest refreshed in the Promised Land with Him.” As your bishop, I seek to walk with you in this same way.
It is also important to know that the Church supports technologies and medical interventions, such as restorative reproductive medicine, that help married couples address the root causes of infertility and naturally achieve a pregnancy through sexual union. These interventions are often very successful. Given the number of people with reproductive health issues, these efforts deserve a greater commitment of our scientific and medical resources.
Infertility is not always resolved successfully, whether the attempt is made to heal it through restorative measures, or to bypass it with IVF. But restorative options provide great hope and opportunity to couples, while respecting the dignity of human life, marriage, family life and the teachings of the Church.
If you are struggling with infertility and have not considered these options, I highly encourage you to do so. In our diocese and throughout Nebraska, we have many incredible medical professionals and other experts ethically assisting couples with infertility. They stand at the ready to walk with you in faith, hope, and love, imitating Christ the Healer, with the tools of science and medicine that God has given us.
Moral problems of President Trump’s IVF action
To return to President Trump’s recent executive action expanding access to IVF, there are several key reasons why this action is ethically compromised and morally misguided.
IVF & the ‘Throwaway Culture’
As the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops recognized in its response to the President’s action, “The IVF industry treats human beings like products and freezes or kills millions of children who are selected for transfer to a womb or do not survive.”
It is important to understand that in nearly every IVF cycle, many more embryos are created in the lab than is possible or desirable to implant in the womb of the intended mother. Those who are not implanted are either destroyed, frozen indefinitely, or abandoned, which often results in those tiny human beings becoming victims of medical experimentation.
Often with IVF, multiple embryonic human beings are implanted into the womb and survive, but are eliminated because they can pose a danger to the life and health of the mother. As a result, these babies’ lives are terminated through what is called “selective reduction” abortions.
None of this is pro-life, nor is it pro-family. It is dismissive of human dignity and the real value of individual human lives. It is one of the clearest examples of the “throwaway culture” Pope Francis warned us against.
IVF undermines marital act, children’s rights
More theologically fundamental, IVF undermines the marital act as the natural means for achieving a pregnancy. Rather than begetting new life through an act of love between a husband and wife in accord with God’s design for life-giving love, IVF relies on medical professionals and other technicians to manufacture new lives—some to be kept, some to be thrown away—through the fusion of sperm and eggs in a laboratory Petri dish.
As John Haas, an ethicist with the National Catholic Bioethics Center, details, “[i]n IVF, children are engendered through a technical process, subjected to ‘quality control,’ and eliminated if found ‘defective.’ In their very coming into being, these children are thoroughly subjected to the arbitrary choices bringing them into being.”
At times in the IVF process, the sperm or egg used are from a “donor”—a person who donates genetic material for pay and then walks away forever—which raises deep concerns for the inherent rights of children to be brought into existence through the loving embrace of their biological mother and father.
Countless other moral conundrums
Another moral dilemma generated by IVF is what is to be done with the millions of babies in their embryonic stage who are frozen in liquid nitrogen and then banked in some laboratory warehouse. Are they to be thrown away? Should they be preserved until ethical technologies or interventions can bring about their gestation and birth? What should be done about experimentation on these tiny human embryos? Who will regulate the sale of embryos to other people for their use?
These practical conundrums—which occur within an almost completely unregulated IVF industry—shed further light on the inhumane and immoral practice that is IVF, and demonstrates why this path is fraught with moral dilemmas.
Silver lining
Concerning President’s Trump action, there is, however, some silver lining. Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, notes that this action is “the least bad we could have hoped for.” At least there is no mandate on employers, government subsidies for IVF paid for by taxpayers, or infringement on religious liberty or conscience rights, as was initially feared. The action also promises some policy actions for “comprehensive and holistic restorative medicine,” which can help advance ethical options for addressing infertility.
Called to evangelize
Moving forward, we are each called as Catholics to continue witnessing to the Gospel of Life and the Culture of Love that God desires for our state and country. Conversations about the dignity of human life, marriage, and family, such as those pertaining to IVF, can be difficult and delicate. But God is calling us to winsomely witness to the goodness, truth, and beauty of the human person and human relationships. In the words of Jesus: “Be not afraid!” Have the courage to be a witness and evangelist for the Gospel of Life in its fullness.
