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IVF and Our Pro-Life Beliefs

Father James Reutter

[This article is intended for an adult audience] 
The Catholic Church is well-known for her strong pro-life teachings.  That is because the teachings on God’s creation of mankind as male and female; the complementarity of man and woman made for marriage; the fruitfulness of marriage in bringing forth life to give God glory; and the sacredness of the human person created by God in His image and likeness are all very close to the core of our faith.

So it is that the Church’s teaching is well known that deliberately attempted abortion of a child in the womb is always a grave moral offense against God and the dignity of the person.  The Church has stood resolutely against this from the beginning and affirmed the teaching strongly when many nations (including the U.S.) legalized this procedure and protected it in law. 

What is unfortunately far less well known is the Church’s teaching on reproductive technologies, including In Vitro Fertilization (IVF).  This has been in the news recently as the issue has become political, with both major parties and our president very supportive of it and seeking to enshrine it into law.

The Church teaches unequivocally that IVF is always morally wrong and an intrinsic evil (technical term meaning, “by the act itself, with no circumstances able to justify it.”).
To understand why, it is important to know what IVF is: It begins with the fertilization of a woman’s egg by a man’s sperm, where both are obtained outside the marital act.  This fertilization is done in a laboratory setting so that the egg is later replanted into the woman’s womb.

There are multiple layers of reasons this procedure is always wrong, any one of which would make it morally impermissible.  The first is that it separates the conception of the child from the act of love of mother and father; second, that it requires the man to produce the sperm via immoral means; third, that in practice, multiple eggs are fertilized with some fertilized eggs either destroyed or frozen indefinitely.  In the former case, this is morally equivalent to an abortion (the deliberate killing of a human being) and in the latter, a grave indignity against the human person.

Many people, even some well-meaning Catholics, become confused and argue that it is always good to have a child and build a family, so it must be good.  However, the Church has always upheld the principle of “the end doesn’t justify the means.”  That is, it offends the Lord when we do something evil even to obtain a good.

The Church does not deny the grave suffering of couples experiencing infertility, but that can’t justify an evil action.  Additionally, a child who is conceived via IVF is still a precious gift from God.

If you have questions about this, please contact your local priest.

For further reading, please view the U.S. Bishops' letter on the topic from 1998.
https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/reproductive-technology/begotten-not-made-a-catholic-view-of-reproductive-technology