Part-Time Pundit: Reuters Distorts Vatican View on Fertility Treatment

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June 20, 2005

Reuters Distorts Vatican View on Fertility Treatment

Vatican may campaign abroad against IVF - expert

The Roman Catholic church is liable to launch a global offensive against infertility treatment following its victory in an Italian referendum last week, a leading expert said on Sunday.

Um, IVF is one type of infertility treatment and there are many others, including things like fertility drugs and hormone therapy which do not fall afoul of the Vatican or Catholic teaching.

Let's be direct. When I bring my child into the world, I don't want to say it started by me looking at some porn in a side room of the doctor's office while masturbating into a dixie cup so a doctor can make a cocktail in a petri dish to inject into my wife. That's just not such a fun story to tell your kids when they are older. "Well, son, Vasoline and Playboy had much more to do with your conception..."

The other irony is that the Church is accused of wanting its members to breed like rabbits, yet somehow isn't for "infertility" treatments that would yield to more kids. Strange, isn't it? Which stereotype is it again?

Here is what the Cathechism has to say on the issue:

2375 Research aimed at reducing human sterility is to be encouraged, on condition that it is placed "at the service of the human person, of his inalienable rights, and his true and integral good according to the design and will of God."[165]

2376 Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child's right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses' "right to become a father and a mother only through each other."[166]

2377 Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that "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. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children."[167] "Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses' union .... Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person."[168]

Emphasis mine.

It's just THIS FORM of infertility treatment that is condemned, not all forms. And there is more than one treatment but you wouldn't know that from reading this news article.

Posted by John Bambenek at June 20, 2005 2:54 PM