The topic of in vitro fertilization (IVF) has recently come to the fore of media coverage. Given that IVF is used to help women who have had difficulty conceiving a child get pregnant, many are under the impression that it is a pro-life procedure. Thus, many pro-life advocates are puzzled by the Catholic Church’s teaching that IVF is sinful. After all, the Catholic Church is a world leader in pro-life advocacy. If IVF leads to more babies being born, then why would IVF not be seen as a good thing?
The reasons for the Church’s stance are manifold. While a comprehensive treatment cannot be offered here, I would nevertheless like to summarize key components of Catholic teaching about IVF.
First, there is a general moral principle that the end (goal) does not justify the means. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) puts it: “One may never do evil so that good may result from it” (1789). This principle is tied to the truth that certain acts are intrinsically evil. “There are some concrete acts . . . that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil” (CCC 1755). As will be shown, the procedures involved in IVF involve a series of intrinsically evil actions.
To begin with, the collection of sperm and eggs (ova) for fertilization in a laboratory separates the procreative and unitive dimensions of the marital act. During the process, the woman takes “medicines to spur the growth of sacs in the ovaries that each contain an egg” and “a procedure is done to collect the eggs.”1 For the man’s part, “most often, the semen sample is collected through masturbation,” although other procedures are sometimes used such as “testicular aspiration” which “uses a needle or surgery to collect sperm directly from the testicle.”2 Of course, masturbation is an objectively grave sin, as the Catechism teaches (see CCC 2352). The eggs are then fertilized with the collected semen in the laboratory. This is where the term in vitro comes from. It literally means “in glass,” referring to a laboratory dish.
For the woman to have the chance of carrying a single child, many more are created that will either die after being thrown out or directly killed after implantation.
The separation of the unitive and procreative aspects of the marital act are contrary to natural and divine law. As Humane Vitae §12 states: “This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.” Rather than procreation occurring through the intimate union of husband and wife, as John Finnis points out, “generation by IVF . . . involves a series of irreducibly separate acts of choice of different people,”3 such as those collecting and mixing the sperm and eggs and those who transfer them into the woman’s uterus. As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) taught in Donum Vitae: “Even in a situation in which every precaution were taken to avoid the death of human embryos . . . IVF . . . dissociates from the conjugal act the actions which are directed to human fertilization.”
The above procedures alone render IVF intrinsically morally illicit (i.e., objectively sinful), but the moral evils do not stop there. In order for IVF to be successful, multiple eggs are fertilized—that is, multiple humans are created—but only some of them are implanted in the womb. The rest are discarded or frozen indefinitely, which is contrary to their human dignity. Sometimes, multiple embryos (humans!) are transferred to the uterus to increase the likelihood of at least one of them successfully implanting. As the Mayo Clinic admits, “If more than one embryo is placed in your uterus, IVF can cause you to have a multiple pregnancy. . . . A surgery called fetal reduction [read: selective abortion] can be used to help a person deliver fewer babies.” In other words, in order for the woman to have the chance of carrying a single child, many more are created that will either die after being thrown out or directly killed after implantation. Such acts are evil.
As Donum Vitae insists: “The human being must be respected—as a person—from the very first instant of his existence,” that is, from the moment of conception. Hence, the document continues:
Human embryos obtained in vitro are human beings and subjects with rights: their dignity and right to life must be respected. . . . It is immoral to produce human embryos destined to be exploited as disposable ‘biological material.’ In the usual practice of in vitro fertilization, not all of the embryos are transferred to the woman’s body; some are destroyed. Just as the Church condemns induced abortion, so she also forbids acts against the life of these human beings. It is a duty to condemn the particular gravity of the voluntary destruction of human embryos obtained ‘in vitro.’
Additionally, eugenics is not uncommon either. As the Mayo Clinic also admits: “Embryos are allowed to develop in the incubator until they reach a stage where a small sample can be removed. The sample is tested for certain genetic diseases or the correct number of threadlike structures of DNA, called chromosomes. . . . Embryos that don’t contain affected genes or chromosomes can be transferred to the uterus.” As our very own Mark Bradford has written regarding IVF, “the ‘defective’ ones, like those with genetic anomalies like Down syndrome, are discarded,” as if their condition reduces their human dignity and renders them less worthy of life. In its condemnation of IVF, the CDF’s document Dignitas Personae notes that “all techniques of in vitro fertilization proceed as if the human embryo were simply a mass of cells to be used, selected and discarded” (§14), adding later that “embryos produced in vitro which have defects are directly discarded,” a grave evil. Furthermore, it notes that, “given the proportion between the total number of embryos produced and those eventually born, the number of embryos sacrificed is extremely high” (§14). In fact, the well-known pro-life advocate Lila Rose offered a staggering statistic during a recent video (around the 11-minute mark): only 7 percent of embryos resulting from IVF will make it to live birth.
To put it bluntly, IVF includes abortion, sometimes in multiple forms. As Dignitas Personae states: “The blithe acceptance of the enormous number of abortions involved in the process of in vitro fertilization vividly illustrates how the replacement of the conjugal act by a technical procedure . . . leads to a weakening of the respect owed to every human being” (§16).
The conclusion is clear: despite appearances, IVF is NOT pro-life. It involves a series of intrinsically evil actions that cannot be justified under any circumstances.
1 “In vitro fertilization (IVF),” Mayo Clinic website, https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/in-vitro-fertilization/about/pac-20384716. I draw from a secular medical resource here, not to encourage its use for sinful actions, but to show that the information about IVF procedures is not fabricated but factual
2 Ibid.
3 John M. Finnis, “Personal Integrity, Sexual Morality and Responsible Parenthood,” in Why Humanae Vitae was Right: A Reader, ed. Janet E. Smith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 190.