Posted on 08/11/2004 6:34:48 AM PDT by NYer
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Catholic teaching has called in-vitro fertilization techniques immoral for decades. But most Catholics still haven’t heard the news.
California attorneys Anthony and Stephanie Epolite found out the hard way that in-vitro fertilization wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. After years of marriage, and facing her 39th birthday still without a baby, Stephanie turned to a fertility clinic.
Two years and $25,000 later, the couple had nothing but frustration and embarrassment to show for the time spent on in-vitro fertilization (in-vitro fertilization).
"We were emotionally, financially and spiritually spent," Stephanie Epolite said. "The clinic did no diagnostic tests. They loaded me up with fertility medication and determined the right time for retrieval of my eggs."
But, after the retrieval and the mixing of the eggs with Anthony’s sperm in the laboratory, still no embryo developed. "In the end, they told me I just had old eggs," Stephanie said.
She wishes she had known at the beginning what she has since learned: The Catholic Church forbids fertility techniques that try to make babies outside of marital intercourse. "There is no education out there about the alternatives," she said, "so Catholics are flocking to the fertility clinics."
According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, infertility affects more than 6 million American women and their spouses, or about 10% of the reproductive-age population. About 5% of infertile couples use in-vitro fertilization.
As to how many Catholic couples are among them, figures are hard to come by. But many Catholics seem unaware of the immorality of the procedure.
"Anecdotally, from our consultation experience here, Catholics using reproductive technologies are generally unaware of the Church’s moral teaching in this area," said Dr. Peter Cataldo, director of research with the Boston-based National Catholic Bioethics Center. "They’re not hearing it from the pulpit or elsewhere."
In her teaching on human reproduction, the Church seeks to safeguard human dignity. God wants life "to be the result of an act of love by those committed to loving each other," philosophy professor Janet Smith has written. Anything that assists the conjugal act achieve its purpose of procreation is licit; anything that substitutes for it is not.
In No. 2377, the Catechism explains why the Church opposes methods that separate marital love-making from baby-making.
"They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children. Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses’ union."
In successful in-vitro fertilization, a human life comes into existence outside the conjugal act and outside the womb. Conception is the result of a technician’s manipulation of "reproductive materials." The process for the collection of sperm often necessitates masturbation, which is itself immoral.
Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, explained that the Church teaches that the procedure is immoral for several reasons. "It undermines the meaning of sex. It violates the exclusivity of the couple’s marriage covenant," Father Pacholczyk said. "It says that it is okay to manufacture life in a laboratory as if it were a commodity, when it should be the result of human love."
"There’s also the ancillary evil of freezing embryonic humans that are later abandoned or poured down the sink if they are not useful," he added.
In addition, Father Pacholczyk noted that babies created through in-vitro fertilization have an elevated risk of birth defects.
"Studies have shown a sixfold elevated risk for in-vitro fertilization children contracting an eye disease called retinal blastoma versus normally conceived babies," he said. "In-vitro fertilization is very unnatural. You’re extracting ova from the woman, culturing them and inspecting the developing embryo in a laboratory setting. They are in a completely unnatural environment for a very long time before they are put back into the womb.
"Commercial interests offer in-vitro fertilization as standard practice," Father Pacholczyk said. "The Catholic Church is the only voice opposed to it."
But there are morally acceptable alternatives to in-vitro fertilization, and Dr. Thomas Hilgers is trying to let more Catholic couples know that.
In response to Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical reaffirming the Church’s opposition to contraception, Hilgers devoted his life to the study of human reproduction, developing the Creighton Model System of Natural Family Planning and eventually opening the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction.
In 1991, Hilgers coined the term NaProTechnology (Natural Procreative Technology), a reproductive and gynecologic medical science that seeks to evaluate and treat a host of women’s health problems without the use of contraception, sterilization, abortion or artificial reproductive technologies, thereby making it consistent with Church teachings.
NaProTechnology first identifies the causes of infertility and then seeks to treat them. That’s not always the case at fertility clinics.
"The aim of most fertility clinics is to skip over the abnormality to try to get women pregnant," Hilgers said. "Yet when you skip over the causes, you end up dealing with them one way or another.
"It’s ludicrous to promote in-vitro fertilization as the help for the vast majority of 6.62 million with impaired fertility," he said. "When you listen to the national news and morning television shows, you think that in-vitro fertilization is the only thing available to infertile couples, yet less than 0.5% of infertile couples in the U.S. are helped by in-vitro fertilization each year."
Catholic theologians and ethicists would agree that NaProTechnology is morally acceptable, Cataldo said.
Cataldo pointed out that "certain drug therapies and egg-stimulating medications at doses that don’t have disproportionate risks for the children engendered or for the mother" also are acceptable. But other technologies, such as intrauterine insemination (IUI) and gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT) fall into a "gray area."
"Some moral theologians and ethicists see these techniques as assisting the conjugal act. Others see it as replacing it," he said. "Until such time as the Vatican speaks, Catholics contemplating the use of IUI or GIFT should inform themselves of both sides of the moral and theological argument and then make a decision in good conscience."
Regardless of the artificial method chosen, the cost of such techniques remains high and the success rates low. According to the 2001 Assisted Reproductive Technology Success Rates report compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a survey of 384 fertility clinics showed a clinical pregnancy success rate of 32%.
In a 1990 article published in Social Justice Review, then-associate director of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ Pro-Life Secretariat Richard Doerflinger noted that a survey of in-vitro fertilization clinics discovered that half of the clinics had never had a live birth after being in business at least three years, collectively treating more than 600 women and collecting $2.5 million for their services.
"Those with the extraordinary emotions that engulf infertile couples are extremely vulnerable," Hilgers said. "They are easy prey."
Not only do natural and morally acceptable alternatives such as NaProTechnology cost far less, but they also are more successful. The Pope Paul VI Institute boasts success rates ranging from 38% to 80%, depending upon the condition being treated.
Following the Epolites’ experience with in-vitro fertilization, Stephanie learned about the Pope Paul VI Institute from a Natural Family Planning counselor. In the fall of 2000, the couple applied to the institute, gathered charts they had kept that outlined vital signs related to fertility, and underwent diagnostic testing.
As it turned out, both had reproductive issues that their previous fertility clinic had never diagnosed. Anthony’s sperm count was low, and Stephanie suffered from endometriosis and blocked fallopian tubes.
Six months later, following treatment of their conditions at the Pope Paul VI Institute and at the age of 42, Stephanie conceived naturally. Their daughter, Claire Marie, was born Oct. 31, 2002.
"At the Pope Paul VI Institute, we saw compassion, concern, help and love," Stephanie said. "They provided individualized treatment, versus the empty feeling that we felt from the fertility clinic. Whereas the fertility clinic bypasses all the laws of nature, the Pope Paul VI Institute works with the laws of nature."
Moral license to take the life of another human being not posing an immediate threat to oneself and property or to others can only come from the government, since they are the only ones who hold power over life and death.
"No person shall be deprived of life ... [by the government] without due process of law."
So long as Osama was not immediately threatening another person, a random stranger could not legitimately just go up and kill him, even knowing his intent. A government could, as an act of war or self-defense.
The right to life comes from God but is mediated through the just laws and actions of human society, which is why the death penalty, war, and defensive killings, can be morally done.
I already admitted they were wrong assumptions.
Do you and you wife engage in this homosexual behavior?
No, my wife is beautiful enough that I have no need of such services to arouse me.
In addition, a woman's orgasm contributes to impregnation by distorting the cervix so that it reaches the expected seminal fluid. By giving your woman an orgasm without having an ejaculation, you are defeating this function.
Not true. Women can become pregnant without an orgasm on their part. Without having to ask who has been faking it, we can bring up the example of impregnation via rape.
Anyway, on its face, the entire oral sex act with a woman is no different than lesbian behavior since no pregnancy will result.
I agree, if it is seperated from the overall context of a completed act of sexual intercourse. There is no difference then.
Perhaps we might summarize this very succinctly. The Church teaches that husband and wife may do as they please with each other provided the man climaxes in the normal way inside the woman. Its just one simple and sensible rule, but apparently such nearly unrestricted freedom of action is far to stifling for many.
This is the part that confuses me too.
If consciousness, intelligence, and reason were given to man by God, how is it wrong to use those gifts to assist in the creation of another gift from God?
Isn't it wrong not to acknowledge and consequently *use* those gifts?
To have those gifts but be prohibited from using them seems rather wasteful.
Okay, why not just grow children outside the womb all the way to conception, ala "Brave New World". Just man using his intelligence, right?
The subject of the thread is in-vitro, which results in the woman giving birth,
not some fictional horror story you've read.
First, procreation should not be separated from the conjugal act. To do so is to treat human procreation as something less than it is.
Second, the unitive aspect of human procreation is not to be separated from biological reproduction. Such a separation is contrary to what human reproduction is by its very nature.
Third, no human should be produced or manufactured by technology. Such treatment is contrary to the dignity proper to humans by their very nature. (This is also the reason why human cloning is unethical.) The use of technologies that supplant the natural process of human reproduction inherently treat the child as a mere artifact, which is to treat the child contrary to what he or she is.
- A8
What you chose to read in what I wrote is a total distortion beyond a straw man. Your shrill tone suggests that you are incapable of a rational discussion on this matter.
So you don't have an answer to my question?
We've already said many times what is wrong with IVF.
You have done a great job in presenting the truth here. As usual, too many reject the truth because accepting it would mean changing the way they lead their lives.
"At the Pope Paul VI Institute, we saw compassion, concern, help and love," Stephanie said. "They provided individualized treatment, versus the empty feeling that we felt from the fertility clinic. Whereas the fertility clinic bypasses all the laws of nature, the Pope Paul VI Institute works with the laws of nature."
There's evidently an option to donate unimplanted embryos to other needy infertile couples.
We're not talking about buying a nice car, buddy, we're talking about being denied the miracle of bearing children. Your response may still be a cold "tough luck" -- but that doesn't say much for your ability to love thy neighbor and walk in their shoes.
It's simple, but it seems pretty arbitrary. I certainly wouldn't call it sensible.
Why not indeed? That is probably how children will be gestated in the not-too-distant future. I don't see a problem.
But with infertile couples, by definition procreation is separated from the conjugal act. That's how they know they're infertile.
As for reproductive technology, where do you draw the line? If I take medication to help me ovulate, I am relying on technology to help get me pregnant. Is that wrong too?
Finally, the creation of life cannot happen without God. Anyone who thinks otherwise is giving human doctors 'way too much credit.
If I ever underwent IVF, I assure you I would never, *never* "toss" those precious embryos. The act of tossing them is indeed vile -- but many don't. So, it's important to make the distinction. Heck, I would have no problem with a law mandating that any embryos not implanted by the parents must be donated to a needy couple.
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