Consistent with its pro-life teaching, the Catholic Church opposes in vitro fertilization (IVF) because it destroys embryonic life, distorts the purpose of marital sex, and treats children as a commodity.
IVF involves harvesting unfertilized eggs from the mother and fertilizing them with the father’s sperm collected by masturbation. The unique human life which begins in a test tube is then implanted in the mother’s womb.
Children are a gift from God and not owed to anyone. A child created in a laboratory by doctors and scientists is denied the right to be conceived inside of their own mother’s body by the natural sexual union of their parents.
Sex within marriage is designed to be both unitive and procreative. It is a physical and spiritual union that brings a husband and wife closer together, with the possibility of bringing children into the world at the same time.
IVF separates the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage, replacing the intimate union of a man and woman with a medical or biological procedure, while allowing children to be treated as a piece of property produced by scientific techniques.
In vitro fertilization often ends in miscarriage and the death of the child. Because of this high failure rate, several embryos, each one a living human, are created while only a few will be implanted in the uterus.
Most embryos fertilized in vitro are unused. These children are indefinitely frozen, eventually discarded, or used for scientific experimentation before being killed. Children developing in the womb who are considered extra or imperfect are aborted.
In vitro fertilization using donated eggs or sperm, or involving a surrogate uterus is even more objectionable and can further complicate the process, leading to mistakes, scandal, and lawsuits.
Any child who has been conceived through IVF is still a child of God, made in his image and likeness. They should not viewed as mistakes, but should be shown love and treated with dignity.
The Church encourages couples who have difficulty conceiving a child to consider adoption or more ethical alternatives to IFV which respect human life and do not interfere with God’s plan for human sexuality.
In vitro fertilization is ethically problematic:
IVF is contrary to the Church’s vision of marriage and childbearing:
The act of love and the act of life go together:
God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the Earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the Earth.
Genesis 1: 28
The Church prohibits in vitro fertilization for various reasons:
Not all means of bringing children into the world are good:
IVF is harmful to parents and children:
The various techniques of artificial reproduction, which would seem to be at the service of life and which are frequently used with this intention, actually open the door to new threats against life. Apart from the fact that they are morally unacceptable, since they separate procreation from the fully human context of the conjugal act, these techniques have a high rate of failure: not just failure in relation to fertilization but with regard to the subsequent development of the embryo, which is exposed to the risk of death, generally within a very short space of time. Furthermore, the number of embryos produced is often greater than that needed for implantation in the woman’s womb, and these so-called “spare embryos” are then destroyed or used for research which, under the pretext of scientific or medical progress, in fact reduces human life to the level of simple “biological material” to be freely disposed of.
Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 25 March 1995
Every fertilization results in a unique human life:
Children conceived by IVF are children of God:
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.” “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.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2377
Natural alternatives to IVF exist:
A Church-approved treatment for treating infertility:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
Being faithful instead of successful:
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