Dealing with Infertility while Respecting Life

IVF makes babies then kills them before they can ever hold their parents' hand.

By: Luis Nava

Children are true gifts from God. Every human being is created by God, and as every person is a child of God, every person has a right to life. From conception, until they are taken to be with the Lord, every person deserves to live. This right does not spring forth from any deed, rather, it emerges from the love God has for His people. God has given humans the immense power of free will and consciousness, and as stewards of His creation, we are called upon to protect His children.

What is the issue? Before attempting to formulate a response, we must first define the question. The issue is infertility; specifically, adults that want to have children are not able to do so through the marriage act. Today, in the United States, 12-15% of couples are not able to have children after one year of trying, and 10% of couples are not able to give birth after two years of trying. Additionally, 11% of women and 9% of men in the reproductive age struggle with conceiving (NIH). The inability to have children is a heartbreaking problem, as the joys of raising children are great.

The Bible has many stories of infertile women, and I say this not to downplay the emotional hardship of infertility, but to emphasize its severity. Sarai (whose name is soon changed to Sarah), Abraham’s wife and the mother of Isaac, was among the women who struggled to have children. In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, Abram - whose name is later changed to Abraham - complains to God: “‘Lord GOD, what can you give me, if I die childless and have only a servant of my household, Eliezer of Damascus?’” (15:2). God tells Abram, “‘Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so, he added, will your descendants be’” (15:5). Sarah, though her old age made her incredulous when she first learned that she would have a son, gave birth to Isaac. However, it is important to note that Abraham’s happiness and faith in God did not stem from the gift (the son) he received. In chapter 22 of Genesis, God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac to Him in the land of Moriah, and Abraham takes Isaac to the said place, and is about to kill him, when an angel sent by God intervenes: “‘Do not lay your hand on the boy,’ said the angel. ‘Do not do the least thing to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you did not withhold from me your son, your only one’” (12). Abraham is willing to give up his precious son to God. As this verse illustrates, Abraham’s love for God transcends the fact that God granted his desire for a son.

Similarly, adults who pray to overcome infertility may be granted children by the grace of God, but it is also possible that the problem remains. It is one of the crosses that they must bear, but uniting it to Jesus’ suffering on the cross is fruitful - the suffering has a purpose!

Before advancing in this article, it is worth establishing that life begins at conception. Science backs this up, and the following is an excerpt from a non-Christian, purely scientific organization.

The predominance of human biological research confirms that human life begins at conception—fertilization.  At fertilization, the human being emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop. The difference between the individual in its adult stage and in its zygotic stage is one of form, not nature. This statement focuses on the scientific evidence of when an individual human life begins. (American College of Pediatricians)

Unfortunately, some couples who are not able to have children through sex turn to artificial means, like IVF. Most people turn to IVF simply because they have an ardent desire to have a child, however, the intent behind choosing IVF does not justify the perpetrations that it commits against that dignity of human beings. The importance of this point CANNOT be understated. Many people try to defend IVF saying that its purpose is to create life, but the fact that it is trying to create life does not make it acceptable, nor does it bypass the evil it does to children. 

Now, that is not to say that children born via IVF are not children of God, or that they should be loved any less; those children are deeply beloved, and God wishes nothing more than to cradle them in His arms, like He wishes to comfort all His children.

What this does mean, however, is that IVF is wrong. We must first dive into what IVF is to understand why IVF is not only considered incorrect by Catholics, but why it violates the dignity of human beings - and note, this dignity is not “made up” by Catholics and does not require Christian faith to understand; followers of other religions cannot deny human rights, which are even outlined in government constitutions, including the US’ (the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). In vitro fertilization “is a complex series of procedures that can lead to a pregnancy.” Firstly, hormones created in a lab are used to make the woman’s ovaries produce more eggs than normal. Then, a thin needle with a suction device is entered into the woman’s ovaries, and the eggs are extracted.

To extract sperm, masturbation (a sin and an immoral act because it uses sexuality for selfish purposes instead of as a total giving of oneself to another person out of love [more on that here]) is employed in most cases. Sometimes, sperm and also eggs are collected from donors, which can create confusing situations for the child, as they will lack a biological identity, and therefore have a diminished sense of self. In the words of Katy Faust, a pro-life author and defender of children’s rights, “it is very hard for children to answer the question: ‘Who am I?’ if they cannot answer the question, ‘Whose am I?’” (Lila Rose Podcast). However, even if masturbation was not used to extract sperm, and it was instead drawn using a needle, like the eggs, and then fused to the egg in a petri dish, and even if the parent’s own sperm and egg were used, there are still many problems with IVF.

For starters, in 1987, Donum Vitae (“The Gift of Life”) was created by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It states that technologies that replace the marriage act are immoral, whereas technologies that help the marriage act lead to pregnancy may be considered moral. IVF is already violating an important principle of determining whether a technology is moral or not. By removing the egg from the woman’s body, and by fusing it to sperm in a test tube, the marriage act is bypassed, and that is wrong. It is wrong because the love that a husband and wife have for each other, given form in the marital act, is what should bring a child into existence. By removing the loving act from the equation, the process of having children becomes a manufacturing process, and kids become products of laboratories. They are no longer conceived in a loving embrace, but in the cold refines of a petri dish. That is inhuman (Haas).

Still, people who do not believe in the Catholic faith may not see the harm in using artificial means to conceive, but IVF has more serious faults that everyone can and must admit to be unjustifiable.

For starters, only seven percent of embryos created by IVF are born alive. That means that of all babies that are created by IVF, 93 percent of them are perpetually frozen or are just killed outright. Laboratories that provide IVF are not seeking to promote life; they might care about a patient having a baby, but they do not care that they are murdering and ending countless other lives. IVF is a business, and it yields profits for clinics that kill 93 out of every 100 embryos that they produce. The babies that are killed are sorted through as if by quality control, and often they are eliminated because of their sex, faults, and sometimes they are sent to research. Research! People wonder if performing tests for new medicines on animals is ethical, yet they are blind to the human children that are being exploited in the name of science.

Despite the good intentions and the loving hearts that infertile couples may have, IVF is not the answer. Having children is not a right, it is a privilege, and as painful as it may be to be infertile, it is not correct nor fair to the babies being interfered with to attempt to create babies in laboratories, especially when so many other babies are being killed in the process.

As teens, please continue to pray for the people who are infertile, that they may find peace and comfort in God’s abounding love, and for the children’s lives who are destroyed by IVF. 

Post-Article Note:

The depravity of the IVF industry and the horror behind the curtain of birth control is gargantuan, and attempting to cover everything in one article would not be fair. For this reason, I urge readers to get more information from pro-life sources about this topic, and I will also write another article about this topic in the future.