In Vitro Fertilization

The practice of in vitro fertilization is a subject that needs serious discussion.

Typically we see a childless couple who are unhappy at their inability to have a child of their own, who contract with an in vitro fertilization clinic to bring about a union of sperm from an identified or unidentified donor with multiple ova from the patient. The union, of course, results in the production usually of several embryos. The embryos are placed in frozen storage and one is chosen for further experimentation. If the chosen embryo is found to be suitable it is implanted into the patient’s uterus and encouraged to grow and mature to term. If the effort is successful, the typical patient usually has no further interest in the remaining embryos.

The disposal of these remaning embryos is a matter of considerable importance.

It is being used as an argument in favor of embryonic stem cell research to say that these unused embryos are otherwise useless and that, instead of discarding them, it makes more moral sense to use them for stem cell harvesting that might benefit patients suffering from various degenerative diseases. This is a difficult argument to counter on its face. Certainly if we discard the embryos, we are killing innocent human life just as much as we would if we used them as stem cell sources.

It is clear that the embryos can be dealt with in one of three different ways. They can be discarded as unwanted and useless. They can be used as sources for embryonic stem cells or they can be donated and implanted into other childless women and brought to maturity and delivered in the normal manner. The first two are clearly morally unacceptable in that they involve the destruction of embryos. What of the third alternative? It does not involve death but life for the embryo. It is the only acceptabe way to deal with those embryos now alive but unwanted by those who are responsible for their generation. This does not mean that continued generation of such embryos and adoption of unwanted ones by other couples will solve this serious moral problem.

Lost in the controversy over the use of unwanted embryos as a source for stem cells, is the moral status of the primary procedure, the in vitro fertilization process.

The Magisterium of the Catholic Church, - like it or not the only legitimate guardian and final arbiter of the Moral Law, the law that deals with human behaviour - has clearly spoken and defined its position. The Catholic Catechism, #2376 and 2377, states “ Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus) are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and a mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses’ right to become a father and a mother only through each other.”

“ Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. The act which brings the child into existance 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”

It is past time for the pro-life movement to devote as much time and effort in opposition to the false principle underlying in vitro fertilization as it does in opposition to abortion. This use of an unnatural and morally unacceptable method for artificial generation of human life clearly also involves abortion in that it involves abortion of unwanted embryos or embryos used in embryonic stem cell ‘research’. Donation of embryos unwanted from IVF will only tend to perpetuate the primary evil.