The Dignity of the Person and the Evil of In Vitro Fertilization
by Fr. Roger Landry - January 16, 2009
Last week we focused on the general outlook of Dignitas Personae, the December instruction of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on bioethical issues at the beginning of life. We noted that the document positively reaffirmed its esteem for scientific research and medical progress, but stated that society must ensure that scientific know-how remain always at the service of the human person from the beginning of his life to his natural end. It must be directed toward healing, not harm.
Bioethics is the general discipline meant to ensure that scientific and medical knowledge advances good, not evil. For bioethics to serve this function, however, it must itself be bound to the truth about the dignity of the human person. This dignity is not a creation of the government or the whims of parents or others — because then it could be easily taken away by the government or the whims of parents or others — but it is something intrinsic and innate to who we are.
The instruction powerfully affirms this dignity and what its consequences are for those involved in science and medicine. The Congregation says, first, that we bear that dignity at conception; human dignity is not something that we gain when we reach a certain size or age or mental capacity. "The reality of the human being for the entire span of life, both before and after birth, does not allow us to posit either a change in nature or a gradation in moral value, since it possesses full anthropological and ethical status. The human embryo has, therefore, from the very beginning, the value proper to a person." The Congregation then goes on to say that scientific research and medical interventions need to be evaluated on the basis of how this dignity is respected. "The ethical value of biomedical science is gauged in reference to both the unconditional respect owed to every human being at every moment of his or her existence, and the defense of the specific character of the personal act which transmits life."
The document discusses several biomedical procedures that respect human dignity, but dedicates most of its attention to those that do not: in vitro fertilization, embryonic stem cell research, the "morning after pill," the freezing of human embryos, therapeutic and reproductive human cloning, human-animal genetic hybrids and some other techniques of genetic engineering, and the facile use of human materials gained through the practice of fetal or embryonic abortions.
With regard to these practices that violate human dignity, the instruction says, by way of introduction, "Various techniques … that would seem to be at the service of life and that are frequently used with this intention actually open the door to new threats against life." Among all of the techniques discussed, the capital sin would be the practice of in vitro fertilization, which not only has led directly to many of the other evil practices, but has created a mindset over the last 30 years that embryonic human beings are merely raw materials to be used at the total discretion of those who are older, bigger and stronger. That is why it behooves all Catholics, who have the mission to defend the dignity of their all their brothers and sisters made in God's image and likeness, no matter how small, to review what the document says about in vitro fertilization and renew their private and public opposition to it and to all that flows from it.
"All techniques of in vitro fertilization," the document points out, "proceed as if the human embryo were simply a mass of cells to be used, selected and discarded. " It mentions that the Church understands the suffering of couples struggling with fertility problems and lauds their desire for a child, but adds that "such a desire should not override the dignity of every human life to the point of absolute supremacy. The desire for a child cannot justify the 'production' of offspring, just as the desire not to have a child cannot justify the abandonment or destruction of a child once he or she has been conceived." Children are supposed to be begotten, not made. They are meant to be the fruit of enfleshed love between a husband and a wife, not the man-made creation of doctors in a laboratory. Not even the most loving parents have a "right" to a child by any means whatsoever. The practice of in vitro fertilization not only demeans the mother and father, involving them in degrading activity to obtain their sperm and eggs, but violates the dignity of the children manufactured by the practice.
The term "children" in the previous sentence is intentional and it points to a further moral problem with in vitro fertilization: the production of multiple "spare embryos," which is done to eliminate the need for men and women repeatedly to undergo the abasing process of sperm and egg extraction if the practice fails, which occurs two-thirds of the time. Multiple embryos are produced, often up to eight at a time; several are implanted in the womb, often leading to the "reductive" abortion of one or more in the case of quadruplets or more; other embryos — their fraternal twins — are discarded, especially if they're found to have any genetic disorders; others are frozen for future use if necessary. All of these techniques further compound the evil of in vitro fertilization: spare children are not like spare tires, capable of morally being stored in case they're needed later.
The instruction says, about the sacrifice of so many embryos, "these losses are accepted by the practitioners of in vitro fertilization as the price to be paid for positive results. … One is struck by the fact that, in any other area of medicine, ordinary professional ethics and the healthcare authorities themselves would never allow a medical procedure which involved such a high number of failures and fatalities. In fact, techniques of in vitro fertilization are accepted based on the presupposition that the individual embryo is not deserving of full respect in the presence of the competing desire for offspring which must be satisfied." It goes on to add, "The blithe acceptance of the enormous number of abortions involved in the process of in vitro fertilization vividly illustrates how the replacement of the conjugal act by a technical procedure — in addition to being in contradiction with the respect that is due to procreation as something that cannot be reduced to mere reproduction — leads to a weakening of the respect owed to every human being."
That lack of respect carries over to other questions that derive from the practice of in vitro fertilization: embryos are tested and if they are of an undesired sex, or do not have the right personal qualities, are simply destroyed in a eugenic pursuit of personal perfection; others are used as raw material for experimentation, like harvesting their stem cells for research; other are frozen and left in cryopreservation for years, with no morally acceptable outlet. We also have the evils of human cloning, which the instruction says takes "the ethical negativity of the techniques of artificial fertilization to their extreme" by seeking "to give rise to a new human being without a connection to the act of reciprocal self-giving between the spouses and, more radically, without any link to sexuality." Whether the creation of one's identical twin is done simply out of egomaniacal self-love (reproductive cloning) or in order to kill one's twin to harvest his or her biological material (so called therapeutic cloning), it is obviously against the human dignity of the twin.
We will take up other parts of the document in future editorials. It is important to pause here, however, to recall that the instruction was written to mobilize Catholics and all people of good will to "urgent action" against these modern practices that are trampling human dignity and creating a culture of death that seeks to justify that disregard. Catholics, in particular, are called to raise up an "evangelical cry" against the evil of in vitro fertilization and all the evil it spawns.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
