Sed Contra: An Essay on the Modern Culture

A “sed contra” essay is to engage a cultural concern and to address it with the help of some philosophical or theological authority.

Allegiance to Jesus Christ transcends all other allegiances. Something that happened during the 2024 elections should remind us of this truth. 

In an otherwise divided moment for our country, both of the major political parties united in promising to promote two actions: contraception and IVF (in vitro fertilization, in which an embryo is conceived artificially, outside of the marital act). 

One party did so in the name of reproductive freedom: “We will strengthen access to contraception so every woman who needs it is able to get and afford it. We will protect a woman’s right to access IVF.” The other party did so in the name of being pro-life: “We proudly stand for families and Life. . . . We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”

While both political parties want to make IVF more available, the Catholic Church holds IVF, like contraception, to be a serious sin against marriage and sexuality. 

In his 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, Pope Saint Paul VI upheld an unpopular truth and suffered as a result. He saw that using contraception opposed something essential and beautiful about marital love and human life. Thanks to his witness, many Catholics have at least heard about the Church’s teaching against the use of contraception. Many Catholics, however, do not know the Church’s position on IVF, and would have difficulty explaining why this kind of “fertility treatment” is not pro-life. To speak the truth, in love, about IVF, we must form our consciences well.

Our choices depend on our consciences, our judgments about right and wrong. But these judgments always depend on knowing what is truly good for us and for others (see Veritatis splendor, 32). We must conform our judgments to the truth about reality, because only the truth has freedom: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

There are several reasons why IVF, as an action, is gravely wrong.

First, IVF claims an unthinkable number of human lives every year. In the United States in 2021, an estimated 1.5 to 1.8 million embryos were conceived but not born through IVF. This means that the destruction of human life in IVF is perhaps twice that caused by abortion. Often, this killing is not accidental, but targeted and eugenic: if multiple embryos survive the transfer, ones that are less healthy or the wrong sex will be selectively aborted.

Further, IVF often involves using “donor” sperm or eggs, so that the child conceived is the biological offspring of two persons who are not married to each other and who will not raise him or her. Every child, however, has a “right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage,” and spouses have “a right to become a father and a mother only through each other” (CCC 2376, citing Donum vitae). Similar reasoning applies in the case of surrogacy, which is a commercialization of both the woman and the child.

The main reason why IVF is wrong, however, is not for any of the reasons above. It is because IVF takes childbearing out of the context of marital love. By definition, it removes conception from the marital act. Thus, it denies the child’s “right to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents” (CCC 2378). IVF is wrong for the same reason that contraception is wrong: it separates the procreation of the child from the marital love of husband and wife. Contraception seeks to have the union of the marital act while removing the possibility of a child; IVF seeks to have the child while removing the act itself. But human beings are not products to be made and bought. They are a gift to be welcomed from God in the context of the loving union of husband and wife.

Now if we’re going to speak the truth in love, there are three concerns we should immediately address.

First, every child is good and worthy of love—regardless of who the parents are and the circumstances of the child’s conception. Every child (including every child conceived through IVF) receives an immortal soul directly from God at conception and is called to eternal life with him in Heaven. Sometimes, the situation in which a child is conceived involves serious sin. The child, who does not choose any of this, shares none of the guilt of the parents’ sin at the time of its conception.  

Second, God’s mercy is inexhaustible. Couples who have used IVF have often been uninformed, or not fully aware of the Church’s teaching. Bringing this topic to confession is not at all a rejection of the child.

Third, there is the pain of infertility, which is a great sorrow for many couples. The Church continues to promote the many fertility treatments that, unlike IVF, do honor the rights of the child and the spouses. She earnestly desires to support those who cannot conceive a child of their own. In her love for these couples, however, she must speak the truth about IVF.

IVF does not bring true freedom, it is not pro-life. Thankfully, there are a growing number of resources from Catholic leaders on this topic, including from bishops, collectively and individually. 

It falls to all of us to learn the truth of this issue, and to pray and make sacrifices, asking God to give his grace and light for the conversion of hearts. We pray that our country may one day be renewed with true justice and charity for all, from conception until our final breath. 

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Photo by Martha Dominguez de Gouveia on Unsplash