Pastor's Column 3-3-2024
-
March 3, 2024Dear Parishioners,
I would like to pause my usual Lenten reflections to comment on a recent news headline and the corresponding Church teaching. A few weeks ago, an Alabama supreme court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered “extrauterine children.” In other words, embryos, whether inside or outside the womb, are human beings. This ruling came in response to a lawsuit by several parents who used a process known as “in vitro fertilization” or IVF. IVF extracts sperm and egg from a man and a woman, and then those are joined in a lab to conceive an embryo. In this process several embryos are formed. These embryos are then either implanted in the woman, or they are stored using cryogenic freezing. The lawsuit came about because a patient at a hospital with a cryogenic nursery entered the nursery and dropped embryos on the floor, killing them. The parents of those embryos sued. The ruling of the court made a simple claim: “The Wrongful Death of a Minor Act applies to all unborn children, regardless of their location.”
For decades the Church, following science, biology, philosophy, and scripture has taught that life begins at conception. Conception is the moment that the sperm and the egg come together as an embryo. Hence, an embryo is a human person. You and I came into existence not when we left our mother’s womb, nor at fifteen weeks of pregnancy, but at conception. Whether that conception happens in the womb or in the lab, location does not determine one’s humanity.
While the Alabama court’s ruling follows from this principle, it still created a firestorm of coverage, debate, and confusion. One issue in particular stands out: what are the moral implications of using IVF? IVF is a rather recent innovation in science. For parents longing to conceive a child and unable, it has given them the opportunity to bring new life into the world. That is a wonderful goal. Yet, in philosophy we have an important principle: the end (or the goal) of a process does not justify its means. For example, I have the goal of curing cancer, but in order to accomplish that goal I experiment on unwilling patients (the means). That would be an immoral act even though the goal is a great good (the curing of cancer).
In the case of IVF, using it as a means to create life is morally wrong for at least three reasons. First, it takes the conjugal act out of the process of creating life. Love making and life making go together (procreation and love go together). Second, in taking the process of creating life outside of its natural context, it treats the human person as an object rather than as a subject. Objects are manufactured, bought, and sold. Hence a chair is an object and not a subject because it is manufactured. Creating an embryo in a lab treats that human person as an object. Of course, no human being is actually an object, even someone conceived using IVF. However a person is conceived (in a lab, in the context of a loving family, in the hookup of strangers, or even through the violence of rape) that person is still a person. Finally, IVF often results in the conception of multiple embryos which may be destroyed at the end of the procedure or frozen for indefinite periods. The question we will have to face someday: what do we do with the hundreds, possibly thousands of frozen embryos in cryogenic storage?
We use technological means to accomplish wonderful ends. But not every means we employ is morally good. Children conceived using IVF are still children to be loved and cherished. We thank God that in using means that we may not have known have these moral consequences, He was still able to bring something precious into this world. Hopefully we will be able to discover or invent another means to bring forth life and help couples who struggle with infertility. But, based on biology and philosophy, IVF is not a morally good means.
God bless,
Fr. Barrow
