IVF, Conjugal Love and Marriage 

On January 22, Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, issued a pastoral letter called “The Christian Family, In Vitro Fertilization and Heroic Witness to True Love.” In his letter, Bishop Burbidge seeks to guide people of good will and the faithful to better understand the respect that is owed to the human person by addressing the inherent dangers and immorality of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church regarding marriage, procreation, and family life. 

The bishop begins by discussing fertility and IVF, acknowledging that they are “incredibly sensitive topics” which are often misunderstood. Because of this, they “deserve to be treated with a spirit of accompaniment, compassion, and understanding,” Bishop Burbidge says. To this end and to help ensure the Church’s bioethical principles are understood, the bishop cites numerous sources, including the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council, papal writings, and Catholic bioethicists, while also providing several resources for couples struggling with infertility.

Related: IVF Ethics and Infertility Treatment Options for Catholics

Bishop Burbidge points out that there is wide acceptance of IVF, with 82 percent of the general American population believing there is nothing immoral with the practice. And according to a recent Pew Research Center survey cited by the bishop, 65 percent of American Catholics view IVF as a good. This mindset, along with its accompanying actions, poses a grave threat “to human dignity and human rights,” which are both “very obvious” and “at other times quite subtle,” says Bishop Burbidge. Tragically, a majority of people fail to see or even acknowledge the humanity of the preborn child or how IVF commodifies life. For example, of those surveyed, 49 percent believe it is morally acceptable to destroy embryonic human persons created through IVF procedures. 

Recognizing that IVF has become widely accepted, despite its harmful and immoral nature, and because of his concern for souls, Bishop Burbidge felt the need to address the topic. He acknowledges that what the Church teaches about IVF represents a “hard saying,” but warns that acceptance comes at a tremendous cost – the eugenic destruction of millions of embryonic children, the severing of the bond between childbearing and conjugal love, the erosion of a child’s right to natural parents, and the commodification of children. 

Because of a high incidence of infertility in our society, many couples resort to IVF or other similar technologies. They do so because of an understandable natural desire to bring new life into the world. However, “despite the good intentions and aspirations of many married couples, IVF is contrary to justice and remains replete with moral difficulties,” Bishop Burbidge wrote. 

The Immorality of IVF

The Church teaches that every child is a gift from God. Human life begins the moment a male sperm cell fertilizes a female egg cell, and is sacred, bearing the image of God. From that moment onwards, what exists is a genetically distinct, living human being who is equal in dignity to their parents and is always to be respected. Never is a human being to be used as a means to an end. IVF contradicts this understanding.  

Catholics must avoid using or supporting IVF. And as expressed by Bishop Burbidge, Catholics should also understand why it is morally wrong in every circumstance.

IVF does harm to the marital union and to the couple themselves. It goes against God’s plan for the way children are to be conceived—to be conceived exclusively through the loving embrace of a husband and wife, to be “begotten, not made.” Instead of assisting the martial act to achieve its natural end, in IVF, doctors and technicians, rather than spouses, bring about a life – achieving pregnancy by actions performed in a laboratory, in a petri dish, where the reproductive cells (sperm and egg) of the husband and wife (or from a donor) are combined.  

Second, IVF always results in the destruction, or killing, of some embryos. In most IVF procedures, many more embryos are “conceived” than will be used for implantation in the mother’s womb. Doctors select only the embryos they deem to be healthy to place in the womb. The “excess” embryos are then either destroyed or are frozen in an embryo bank for future implantation or to be used for experimentation. As a consequence, there are literally millions of embryos frozen in labs all around the world, with their eventual destruction likely. 

Another reason the Church opposes IVF is because of the extremely close connection between IVF and elective abortion. It is a common practice to maximize the “success” of an IVF procedure by implanting multiple embryos in a woman’s womb at the same time, hoping that at least one will implant. However, in cases where multiple embryos “take” (where only one child is desired), it is common for couples to “selectively reduce” (i.e., abort) the “unwanted” embryos. So, the doctors will kill one or more of the other children in the womb. Or, if they are not all deemed healthy, doctors will kill the ones who are not developing well.  

This is no way to treat human beings, even tiny embryonic ones.  

IVF, which creates life, leads to the death of embryonic human beings who, for whatever reason, are not desired after they have been engendered, often subjected to the arbitrary choices of those who have brought them into being. Its utilitarian mindset considers children as commodities, products to be produced for adult needs and consumption. This view and its approach dehumanize children, leading to immoral practices like genetic engineering, “designer babies” and “material” for experiments. Millions are frozen in liquid nitrogen, preventing them from reaching their full developmental potential. This is “a great moral injustice,” Bishop Burbidge says.  

The Church affirms that every child conceived and born through IVF possesses inalienable human dignity, possessing equal dignity and value as a child begotten through the marital act. They are precious in the sight of God, as are all children. Because these children have inalienable dignity and are loved by God, the Church opposes this immoral practice. Children are not products or property. In other words, it is because of their innate dignity that the Church opposes “their being instrumentalized and made into objects by means of IVF, which eugenically selects some to live and others to die,” states Bishop Burbidge.  

To support IVF, therefore, is to support an industry that harms married couples, destroys countless millions of embryonic human beings worldwide, commodifies children, and supports an act that is intimately connected to the abortion industry. We must oppose this immoral practice, as well as oppose any government mandates that would promote IVF as a solution for couples struggling with infertility or as some “good” for married couples to welcome more children, or to resolve a growing demographic problem caused by low birth rates.  

Sex and Procreation

In Donum vitae, the Church explains that sex between married persons is meant not just to be unitive, bonding the couple in love, but also procreative, meant for the begetting of children. According to Donum vitae, fertility treatments meant “to replace” the marriage act are morally wrong, while those meant “to assist” it in conceiving life may be permitted (§ 7). Donum vitae identifies two principal criteria for the evaluation of interventions in procreation:  

The fundamental values connected with the techniques of artificial human procreation are two: the life of the human being called into existence and the special nature of the transmission of human life in marriage. The moral judgment on such methods of artificial procreation must therefore be formulated in reference to these values (§ 4).

In IVF a child is not engendered from the fruit of the conjugal act, the union of spouses becoming one flesh, but is “brought about outside the bodies of the couple through actions of third parties” (Donum vitae, § 5). With IVF, technicians perform the actions that bring about life, rather than the husband and wife. Instead of begetting a child by an act reserved to husband and wife, the spouses are merely sources of “raw materials” that are manipulated by a technician to cause fertilization. Such fertilization “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.”  

Related: 5 Infertility Support Groups for Catholics: Find Yours

Children are to be conceived exclusively through the physical expression of love between a husband and wife. IVF goes against God’s plan for marriage and the way children are to come into the world. It eliminates the marriage act by which pregnancy is to occur, instead of helping it achieve this natural end. It treats the child and couple as if they were part of a manufacturing process.  

“A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, adding that: 

The ‘supreme gift of marriage’ is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged ‘right to a child’ would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right ‘to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents,’ and ‘the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception’ (no. 2378). 

Couples struggling with infertility (or persons of the same sex using IVF and surrogacy) may believe they have a right to children, when in reality they possess no such right. As the Catechism explains, children are a gift freely given by the Giver of gifts – God. Through the marital act, husbands and wives are in a way “petitioning the Giver for Life for His gifts.” However, through IVF, the couple is insisting upon the gift. No longer is the child a “gift” but is looked upon as a kind of entitlement. The begetting of life becomes a project to be realized. 

Even though the means by which they were conceived are immoral, children conceived through IVF are precious in the sight of God, as are all children. They are loved by God and should be loved and cherished by us as well. What the Church is concerned about is that the inner logic of IVF and similar technologies conduces towards viewing a child as a right, rather than a privilege; as a commodity, rather than a gift; as a thing to be bought according to specification, rather than welcomed and embraced without any conditions.  

Nothing that the Church says about IVF or artificial reproductive technologies in any way calls into question the worth or dignity of the child or the love of the parents for that child. Instead, the Church’s teaching simply points towards certain objective facts about the IVF process that cannot be ignored, like the harm done to the marital union and to the couple themselves.  

“Each person’s life is a unique gift,” said Bishop Burbidge, and “we cannot condone procedures like IVF that breach this bond and these rights, treating human beings like products or property.” The bishop warned of “the allure of IVF” which seeks “to bring about new life and to do so in a way that addresses the desire of those who wish to have children.”  

In response to those suffering with infertility, there is great need for a broader conversation about the ethical implications of assisted reproductive technologies. Discoveries in genetics, embryology, etc. have allowed the development of technological interventions upon human procreation. And as technology continues to advance, this dialogue will be crucial in ensuring that the dignity and value of every life is respected. However, what is technologically possible is not therefore automatically right, moral, or ethical.  

Science and technology must remain at the service of the human family, and their accomplishments and abilities need to be assessed in light of moral criteria. Medical efforts that “help” or “assist” procreation “are not to be rejected on the grounds that they are artificial,” Dignitas personae states. However, “with regard to the treatment of infertility, new medical techniques must respect three fundamental goods,” the document teaches, and “as such, they bear witness to the possibilities of the art of medicine” (no. 12). 

For couples facing infertility, the Catholic moral tradition provides guiding principles, as found in The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERDs). The ERDs make a distinction between techniques and interventions that “replace” conjugal love from those that “assist” the marital act in achieving its end, namely conception of new human life.  

When the marital act of sexual intercourse is not able to attain its procreative purpose, assistance that does not separate the unitive and procreative ends of the act, and does not substitute for the marital act itself, may be used to help married couples conceive (no. 38).  

Those techniques of assisted conception that respect the unitive and procreative meanings of sexual intercourse and do not involve the destruction of human embryos, or their deliberate generation in such numbers that it is clearly envisaged that all cannot implant and some are simply being used to maximize the chances of others implanting, may be used as therapies for infertility (no. 39).  

In our utilitarian culture, IVF and other techniques that address infertility and seek to generate life have become normalized, even among Catholics. Despite the good intentions and aspirations of many married couples and of the medical and scientific community, IVF is harmful, immoral, and contrary to justice. It is never morally permissible. Moreover, married couples experiencing infertility should not be preyed upon. 

I commend Bishop Burbidge for his pastoral letter that addresses a most difficult and sensitive topic. I add my voice, calling upon the medical and scientific community to pursue moral means that respect the sanctity of life, the sacredness of marriage, and the rights of children, while addressing the root causes of infertility. 

Related: Catholic Teaching on Infertility Treatments

Let us pray for married couples facing the cross of infertility, for effective, life-affirming fertility care, and for a reorientation of mind, heart, and action toward the Giver of Life, trusting in His divine will.