First Thoughts on IVF, Part IV

This next section directly addresses the question of IVF and whether it can ever be appropriate. It addresses some of the indirect objections to IVF, such as the moral quality of the industry and its actors, the question of the Procreative and Unitive natures of sexuality, the relationship of the Church's ban on IVF to its ban on Contraception, a misconception that both my father and wife had that the Church felt that using IVF would somehow deprive my wife's and my sexual union of its Unitive aspect, and the Church's notion that the use of IVF will give us into the "domination" of technology.

I’m finally turning to your discussion of IVF. Much of what I say here will be me thinking out loud, so some of these thoughts may change or be discarded. When you turn to IVF directly, you quote Bishop O’Malley, saying, “Marriage and its indissoluble unity are the only venue worthy of truly responsible procreation,” and mention that you agree. So do I.

Regarding the talk of the domination of technology, I agree that this seems like an overstatement of the case. One possible way of understanding it is a distrust of the people involved in the business, who readily offer disposal as an option for fertilized eggs that will not get used, or who may make on-the-spot decisions about the viability or worth of a particular embryo without your consent, or who may try to persuade you that certain of the embryos are not worth implanting because they are in some way faulty even though they have not ceased to grow (i.e., died). But I realize that this is not a reason for a ban on the action – it’s simply a call for tighter rules and guidelines surrounding the practice, and for Catholics to have nothing to do with those who will not abide by those guidelines. You wouldn’t put your born children into the custody – under the domination – of a babysitter you knew nothing about – but that’s not an argument against babysitters as such.

IVF is an act of procreation alone. Sex with a condom is an act of unification alone, of which pleasure is an important part. But the Church rules that these must be unified in the sexual act in part because they are essential to each other. The unification caused by giving each other pleasure still exists – witness the pain caused by modern breakups in which the participants are sexually active. But the unification is not as complete as it would be because there is no willingness to procreate, there is no willingness to give a physical part of oneself to the other, and not just to the other but to a third who is part the husband, part the wife. You quote the following: “The Church has always taught that there is an ‘inseparable connection established by God between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act’ (Humanae Vitae 12). In this sense in Vitro fertilization, by doing away with the unitive meaning, is the mirror image of contraception which suppresses the procreative meaning of the conjugal act.” You then ask, “Why and how does In Vitro fertilization do away with the unitive meaning of the marriage act.” I’m not sure what the source of this text is, so I can’t look at the whole context, but I do not think the text is saying that IVF does away with the unitive meaning of the conjugal act. I think it is simply saying that IVF does not contain the whole of the unitive abilities that the sexual act does. It doesn’t destroy the unity gained by the married couple’s participation in the sexual act, but it doesn’t have that ability either, and so, analogously to the act of sex with birth control, it leaves out one of the essential aspects.

After some more language about domination and dignity, you ask, “Again, what domination? Only you and your wife have the power. You have the power over technology. You are the one using it, it is not using you.” I understand what you are saying here. Here’s a potential explanation of this, which sort of aligns with what I said above about distrust of those companies that are willing to dispose of embryos. As mentioned, sin is about intention; sin is not mortal unless one knows one is doing something wrong. But as you know, there is a concept known as “the near occasion of sin,” and entering into such an occasion is held to be a sin itself. For instance, it is probably not a sin to play poker and risk only $5 in a night. But it may well be a sin if you know the people you are playing with are generally much more serious gamblers, are interested in getting you to play more often and for higher stakes, have shown themselves to be persuasive in other venues to the point that you have trouble resisting them, and if you have relatives, especially a parent or sibling, with a gambling problem. Twenty years down the line, when you blow a third successive rent payment and get yourself and your family evicted, it might be true that you were so in the grip of your addiction or compulsion that you cannot be legitimately blamed for what you did. But you would not be able to argue, based on what you were aware of at the time, that you deserve no blame for putting yourself in the situation.

My point? In Humanae Vitae, section 16, Paul VI wrote, “Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality.” Now, I don’t know how many Catholics had pre-marital or extra-marital sex before the Sixties versus how many did after the Sixties. But I do know that since then divorce within the Catholic community has become far more rampant, that most Catholics my age, including most of your parents’ grandchildren, think nothing is wrong with pre-marital sex, that abortion is far more common, that homosexuality is basically approved of and often celebrated by our society, and that our Church has been mired in a sexual scandal that very few bishops were willing to speak out about, in part because of fear for their jobs or the jobs of their friends, but perhaps also in part (as some have theorized) because of more permissive attitudes about sexual acts and experimentation. I know that the pre-Vatican II Church wasn’t heaven on earth, because that will never exist without the Second Coming. But I do think either one of these situations was the case: that fewer people were involved in these situations, that those people who were involved in those situations were involved less often, or that however often these things did happen, people felt far less complacent about them and sought healing for their souls by confessing their wrongs – and if there’s any truth to the Church’s designation of confession as a sacrament, then that’s a very important distinction.

My point here is that at least part of the argument by the Church consists not in the inherent wrong of birth control or IVF (although that is part of it), but in the danger it causes us by setting up temptations in a position that they can far more easily achieve dominance over us. Thomas Aquinas is lauded for rejecting the advances of the beautiful harlot his family thrust into the locked room with him; he would be ridiculed if he had had himself locked into the room with her just to see how strong he was. So we should not, the Church is saying, put ourselves in a situation where, perhaps not today, but someday, the creation of an embryo is viewed not as a child, a living being created by God through the loving act of its parents, but as an object that has many uses, one of which is to satisfy the natural and justifiable urges for parenthood, but another of which is to mine for stem cells or body parts, or to make experiments on, or to effect some ersatz resurrection of a person of whom the embryo is a clone. Obviously this world is already upon us in part, and may be supported and encouraged by Catholic acceptance of even those aspects of it that are viewed as more innocuous.

The rest of the letter, which I'll probably post in two more selections, goes back to side issues raised by my father's letter, including masturbation, the way in which the Church changes or "develops" dogmatically, and a conclusion.