By Tom Venzor
Before jumping into this week’s article, a brief reminder that Primary Election Day is Tuesday, May 15. Last week’s column encouraged everybody to read Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility from the Catholic Bishops of the United States. There is still time to review this document, if you have not already. Pray that the primaries glorify God!
The legislative session has been completed for nearly a month. While numerous legislative bills are discussed in this column throughout the legislative session, it is impossible to cover every piece of legislation the Nebraska Catholic Conference actively lobbies. But thankfully this column can continue to discuss legislative bills, even after the session has ended. One such legislative bill is LB726, which the NCC opposed as an attack on marriage, family, and life.
LB726, introduced by Senator Justin Wayne (Omaha), sought to require health insurance providers to cover in vitro fertilization (“IVF”) under certain conditions. The conditions would have limited coverage to scenarios where there was a history of infertility or infertility associated with conditions such as endometriosis, blockage of the fallopian tubes, or oligospermia. It would have also limited the coverage to spouses. While the legislation offered a religious liberty exception, the exception was problematically written.
During the committee hearing testimony, the Nebraska Catholic Conference offered numerous reasons why LB726 constituted bad policy for the state of Nebraska.
At the outset, we communicated the Church’s commitment to accompanying couples who struggle with infertility. As a Church, we are no stranger to the plight of couples who face infertility issues. Infertility can be difficult—and even crippling—for a marriage. It is unquestionably a cross that many couples receive, which though it can produce many graces, provides no shortage of suffering and agony. It is in these trials and tribulations that the Church seeks to shed the healing light of Christ on the wound of infertility. This comes through accompanying couples, offering spiritual, moral, medical, and psychological guidance and counseling. By doing so in a manner that is consistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Church ultimately respects the supreme dignity of marriage and the human person.
The most critical point made during the committee hearing was about the nature of the marital (i.e., sexual) act. While medical intervention that helps or assists the marital act to achieve pregnancy could be considered a moral good, an intervention that displaces the marital act to bring about a human life cannot be considered a moral good. This disrupts the marital union between spouses. This holds true even if the couple has the most pure intentions to conceive a child.
In other words, as was simply stated during the committee hearing: children should be created as a result of the sexual union between their mother and father, even if our technologically advanced age can create any other number of combinations for bringing about human life. While this was a basic statement about the “birds and the bees,” the statement seemed revelatory to some and offensive to others. Some were offended that the NCC would take such a harsh position against those who struggle with fertility and wholeheartedly desire a child. The basic tenor of their disgust with the NCC was the notion that parents have a “right” to a child—rather than seeing children as a “gift” from the Creator with Whom the couple cooperates in the co-creation of a human life.
The NCC also drew attention to the fact that IVF regularly requires the creation of numerous embryos to bring about a successful implantation and viable pregnancy. This means that all too regularly, human lives are “selectively reduced” through abortion, if “too many” unborn children progress later into the pregnancy. As well, embryos are regularly frozen or, worse yet, simply discarded as medical waste.
Overall, while the legislation was brought with good intention to assist couples who struggle with infertility and desire their own child, the legislation was problematic at a fundamental level as undermining the goods of marriage, the family, and human life. The state should seek other ways to morally assist infertile couples achieve viable pregnancies.
