IVF and Catholic Teaching

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Editorial Courtesy: Imagefile This issue contains an article on a very sensitive topic: IVF [literally “In glass fertilisation”]. For one thing, it is a highly emotional topic. Many childless couples experience a deep desire to have children, something positive and good in itself. But this desire is sometimes complicated by the very modern attitude that, if somebody wants something as good as children, then they should get it – whatever the cost. Some even speak of a “right to have a child”. This feeling of having a ‘right’ to get what I really ‘want’ is fostered by developments in science and technology. What in former generations was impossible, science has made possible – namely making children in a laboratory. Some argue that the State should help science respond to such a basic ‘right’. These feelings have been fuelled by the media coverage of IVF ‘successes’, with little or no attention to the even greater number of failures – still at about 80 percent per cycle (and even higher, if we disregard superovulation). Rarely will the media highlight the trauma of the whole procedure, especially on the woman, and the devastating disappointment for both partners when, after such a huge emotional and financial investment, they fail to produce a baby. On the other hand, it is difficult to discuss this topic publicly with any kind of objectivity, since there are many couples in society today who have succeeded in producing a child (even twins or triplets) thanks to IVF. Any criticism – especially any objective moral assessment of the procedure that might be in any way negative – may easily be misunderstood as a criticism of them. Please be assured; no such criticism is implied. The Church teaches that IVF is “morally unacceptable” (Catechism 2377). But few people know why this is so. The article below attempts to clarify the issue. However, we would like to assure any reader who has been through the procedure that no judgement of them is intended. Many of those who undergo this procedure may have been innocent of the fact that there is any moral ambiguity about it and so they have not incurred any moral culpability. All children, no matter how they are conceived, are beloved of God. Most people – including even politicians, who should be more informed – are usually largely ignorant of the whole story about IVF. Few are aware of the fact that IVF is the product of extensive, destructive experimentation on human embryos and that more experimentation is needed to improve the still astonishingly low rate of success. It is therefore an issue that cannot be avoided. Silence would amount to collaboration. Even fewer people are aware that there IS a morally acceptable alternative to IVF: NaPro Technology. As we have already shown in The Word (‘Hope for Infertile Couples’, Sept 2005: http://www.theword.ie/cms/publish/article_280.shtml), this is a technique which puts science and technology at the service of morality (and so of God). It would also appear to be more successful than IVF. D. Vincent Twomey, SVD Editor in Chief Theology Interface D. Vincent Twomey, SVD, considers the question – may a couple use IVF? Courtesy: imagefile What is IVF? It is a laboratory procedure which involves collecting sperm from the man and harvesting usually 12 or more ova from the woman and mixing them in a Petri dish to achieve fertilisation and produce many embryos in the laboratory. The human embryos are screened and subjected to ‘quality control’ to select the best two for transfer to the woman’s womb in the hope that one or other will successfully implant and actually come to term. IVF is the product of extensive, destructive experimentation on human embryos. The main reason why the British Government passed a law to allow destructive experimentation on human embryos is the need to perfect what is still a very imperfect procedure, namely IVF. But even if destructive experimentation is excluded, the process is still morally dubious. Every step of this procedure – which has all the characteristics of making things – has moral implications. Sperm, though it can be got by morally licit means, is usually got by masturbation, which is immoral. Because of the low success rate, the medical technicians seek to harvest a large number of ova or eggs through the dangerous procedure of superovulation, a hormonal treatment to make the woman produce more than one ovum in a cycle. Placing a woman in such a dangerous situation (some have died) is itself morally questionable and can only be justified by a proportionate reason. More serious is the fact that the tiny human embryos usually undergo a kind of quality control to select the best two for transfer to the womb. The others are either used in embryonic experimentation (in the UK), or frozen for possible later use, or are allowed to perish if deemed of poor quality. Even if only one ovum were fertilized, it only has, at best, a 20 percent chance of coming to term. But in practice, with superovulation and the production of multiple embryos, less than 5 percent of IVF embryos come to full term. In round figures, available from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) in the UK, only 35,000 children have been born despite producing 750,000 embryos. There is no moral justification for exposing a human being to such a risk. By implanting two or more embryos, the technicians are in fact saying: the cost of the survival of one child is the probable death of another. Apart from these moral difficulties, the main moral objection (which also applies to artificial insemination) is summed up in the title of a book by an Anglican theologian, Oliver O’Donovan, Begotten or Made? Are children to be begotten by a married couple as the result of their mutual self-giving or are they to be made by technicians in a laboratory? If you examine the way God the Creator has designed our humanity, it becomes obvious that the only way a child should be conceived that is in keeping with its dignity is through the conjugal act of love. The child is the gift of life that supervenes on the spouses’ mutual gift of self. It is not the direct product of their wills. What we intentionally make are things, property at our disposal. What we beget, are persons equal in dignity to us. The term procreation is used only of the way human beings come into existence. It draws attention to God the Creator who is active in the coming into being of each child, who directly creates each soul. It is His design that each child should be conceived within the conjugal act that expresses the love of the spouses. Couples may desire a baby. They should not make them or cause them to be made by others. Is there no hope for infertile couples? There is indeed. Medical experts in fertility, adhering to Church teaching, have devised a method of assisting couples to have a child within the natural process designed by God and which, it is claimed, is even more successful than IVF. This is NaPro Technology, developed by Dr Thomas Hilgers, a professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. A full list of European doctors who are NaPro practitioners is available from www.fertilitycare.net If you do not have internet access there are three doctors providing NaProTechnology treatment from Suite 11, The Galway Clinic, Doughiska, Co Galway. Although it is impossible to help every couple to conceive, their fruitfulness can be expressed in other ways, in an increased love for each other, adoption, in hospitality, and in caring for nieces, nephews and godchildren, and in drawing closer to God who is love. The bottom line is that children should be begotten not made. An article entitled ‘Hope for Infertile Couples’ on NaPro and published in The Word (September 2005) can be seen at: http://www.theword.ie/cms/publish/article_280.shtml D. Vincent Twomey, SVD, is the author of The End of Irish Catholicism? Veritas, 2003.

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