We Must Contend with IVF

Despite the odious use of the term “reproduction” to describe the loving generation of children, most of us, secular or religious, would agree in principle that children are not products. However, since the advent of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), we have treated them that way. Unfortunately, the moral ambiguity bill is coming due: more and more families are turning toward IVF in their despair and more and more people of good will are remaining silent.

In this article, I will suggest to you that IVF and surrogacy, its uncomfortable bedfellow, are morally wrong across all places and all times, despite any good intentions of the seekers of such services. However, I will not beat you with the moral stick and leave you without resources. Scroll down to the end of this piece for those — there are other ways to tackle infertility out there, despite what the media would have you believe.

The Secular Case Against IVF

For the uninitiated, IVF is an assisted reproductive technology that usually involves the surgical retrieval of an egg, or several, from a woman’s ovary. This egg is then fertilized in a laboratory setting with donor sperm. Then, the created embryo(s) is placed back into a woman’s uterus to gestate for nine months.

Let’s start small with the incidental evils generated by IVF. As couples struggling with infertility know, the procedure is extremely costly with very little promise of success. In fact, infertility clinics may only accept the easiest cases of infertility to treat in a bid to boost their success metrics they plaster on their advertisements. These misleading statistics drag a woman through a grueling process of egg retrieval that may damage her uterus, among other life-threatening complications, and leave the couple bereft of children in the end, with a long line of discarded embryos behind them. Precious time may have been wasted in the interim, wherein less invasive and less expensive therapies may have been employed.

If the infertile couple’s particular biologies render them sterile, they may seek out sperm and egg donors, thus depriving their child of its biological father and mother. The Atlantic asks, “Does everyone have a right to know their biological parents?” Many sperm donor babies, now grown up, answer with a resounding ‘yes’ as they continue the fight to eradicate anonymous sperm donation in America. It is only natural that these adults want to know who they share half of their DNA and personality with.

After the illicit donations are made and the child is created, the winning embryos are selected and the genetic weirdos are tossed. Anyone who believes in human rights should have some serious qualms about this screening and selection process. Already, Western women are aborting their children due to the (often incorrect) chances of them having Down syndrome or another chromosomal condition, in what I can only describe as eugenics. With the increasing prevalence of genetic testing and new technologies like this tool, (only $99), who is to say that women will not abort their children because they are a girl, not a boy, or because they will have brown hair versus blonde.

After the embryo is implanted in the infertile mother and genetically screened, the pregnancy is ago. However, some mothers can’t carry a pregnancy to term. In this case, they must seek out a surrogate. Definitionally, gestational surrogacy is where a woman will carry a child conceived through IVF if a birth mother cannot or will not do so. Unfortunately, surrogacy usually results in the commodification of low-income women and their wombs in a form of sex slavery. The examples in the media of Western women graciously offering their uteruses for the sake of another Western woman are a smokescreen. The reality is much cruder, as evidenced by the situation in Ukraine, where surrogacy is legal and prolific.

Besides the slavery of the mother, surrogacy is unethical because it deprives a child of their mother. Immediately after birth, the child will be taken away from the woman whose voice she recognizes, whose breasts she desires to feed at, whose heartbeat she feels. This will be painful for mother and baby, even if they do not share any genetic material.

Biology matters, contrary to those who would say otherwise. On the purely practical front, how can IVF-made children predict what genetic proclivities or diseases they may be susceptible to without the knowledge of their parentage? How will they feel when they discover that their mother — or carrier — is someone that they have never met? How will they reconcile their parents’ choice to have them at all cost? And what of their discarded siblings?

The Religious Case Against IVF

Now that my secular readers are (maybe) gone, let’s get down to brass tacks.

The use of IVF or a surrogate usually necessitates masturbation — either of a third-party sperm donor or the husband. Masturbation and the conception of a child outside of a loving, contraception-free act of marital intercourse are both grave evils that further degrade men and women. For more on the reasons why this is so, I point you to this wonderful essay out of the University of Notre Dame, which describes this Brave New World way better than I could.

What about the millions of children frozen on ice? Currently in the US, between 600,000 to 1.5 million embryos are frozen in storage, with many of them likely to be destroyed in the event that a patient does not want to have more children or genetic abnormalities are discovered. Are these embryos persons with all the natural rights to life entitled therein? A court in Alabama certainly thinks so.

Justice Jay Mitchell recently ruled that unborn children were in fact children, no matter the location or development stage. The fallout of the ruling, of course, was overwrought, with many respondents missing the true, pro-IVF implications of the case. One dejected IVF customer stated that she would now “probably go through several more miscarriages before I even had an option of having a baby that is my own.”

While her statement emotionally touches those of us who have carried the cross of infertility, we must also recognize that her motivation to seek out IVF is, in part, an attempt to avoid possible sorrow in her future. Other sorrows trotted out by less sympathetic couples reek of entitlement. One couple stated, “If you are among those who do have the desire to procreate, no one wants to be told there is no way to achieve that.” Too right. In the majority of these statements, the concerns of the child (or children) are not considered.

If frozen embryos cannot be destroyed in light of court rulings such as Alabama’s, what about embryo donation? For the couple who is against IVF, but is still struggling with infertility, surely embryos could be adopted just like their born counterparts. Sadly, this situation is also untenable as Stephanie Gray Connors details here and here, because the necessary implantation process is still extramarital, among other moral quagmires. The question of whether these embryos can be used for research has also been answered in the negative by the Church.

If the Catholic Church has to go alone on the IVF issue like it has had to with contraception since 1930, so be it. But I hope that secular and religious, Jew and Greek, Protestant and Catholic, can see through Reason that what some call “products of reproduction” and others call children should not be made in test tubes. You cannot buy children from the shelf, even if your desire for children is a holy one.

Hope and Resources

For those who skipped down to this section because you are in need, I am genuinely sorry. I would not wish the sorrow, pain, and frustration of infertility on anyone. I am suffering with you and praying for you, as infertility hits closer to my heart than you may know.

But there is hope! If you are a woman or man struggling with infertility, I suggest finding a doctor who specializes in Natural Procreation Technology (NaPro). A list of providers is here. Also, the Pope Paul VI Institute will help anyone dealing with infertility through morally solvent and scientifically advanced means.

For Church documents on contraception and the value of human life, I point you to these three: Donum Vitae, Evangelium Vitae, and Dignitas Personae. Dignitas Personae specifically tackles IVF, so perhaps start there if you’re interested in learning more. Read more about Pope Francis’ take on surrogacy here. For my take on contraception, you can read my piece over on

Reactionary Feminist

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One of my favorite writers on Substack,

Emily Stimpson Chapman

, also left some great adoption and bioethics resources on her recent piece about IVF, which you should all go read. As an added bonus, she is more pastoral than I am.