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"To put it briefly, every person's secure sense of identity and belonging is based on his parentage."

I was adopted as an infant under the old (and I believe, superior) "closed" adoption method. I have no idea who my biological parents are, and I don't know if I'm biologically related to anyone living on this planet. I also don't care, because my adoptive parents were terrific. So I consider that point to be horse hockey (to put it as sweetly as possible).

IVF uses biological material from at least one of the parents, so there's at least a biological connection, and you can't say that people willing to go through such an arduous and expensive method to become parents are not doing it with a great deal of thought and purpose. So if you and your church don't like it, fine, but I don't see people demonstrating loudly outside of IVF clinics to stop the procedure, or marching on Washington to end the tragedy of IVF.

Quite often, IVF is from both biological parents. IVF is a wonderful technology for those who cannot conceive children naturally. I'm positive a good many freepers have had children this way.

As for the theological argument, I've been involved in those, particularly on the thread where the lesbian sued because he Catholic doctor would perform AI on her. Lots of condemnation for the lesbian but little for the Catholic doctor who is making money by violating his religious beliefs on creation.

It's been my experience on FR that those who throw around the morality paint are the ones who need a good dousing themselves.

I rejoice with you that you had great adoptive parents and I understand that you don't care one way or the other about your biological parents. My husband and I are adoptive parents to a son of a different race (we are the typical Euro-mix, and he is Asian) and he has not yet, at age 14, expressed any curiosity about his birth parebts.

Not everyone feels the same way, of course. But my argument isn't based on feelings per se.

If if a baby has been deliberately brought into existence in such a way that his or her parental origins are ruptured or violated, that is an injustice to the child. We should all respect a child's right to be brought into existence by the loving marital union of his mother and father.

Many children lack this. Millions do. Tens of millions lack something --- married parents, for instance ---and yet they're not miserable: they still live and get along and are daily grateful for what they've got.

But let me offer an analogy. If a child is born deaf, he lacks "something" and yet he adapts, and his parents adapt, and life can be wonderful. But to deliberately conceive a child so as to make him deaf (hypothetical: if you could create an IVF embryo deliberately designed for deafness) that would be wrong because it would burden the child with an intentional (not just an inadvertent) defect.

The keyword here is "intentional."

Do you see how it is wrong to premeditatedly design the situation so that, by your intention the child lacks something important? For instance, if he is deliberately conceived to be deaf? Or if he is deliberately conceived to be bereft of his biological mother?