Two issues have been in the press in recent weeks that put the Church’s teaching about the intersection of sexual morality and medical ethics front and center. In January, Pope Francis strongly and unequivocally condemned surrogacy as “a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child.” A child should “never [be] the basis of a commercial contract,” said the pope, calling for universal prohibition of surrogacy. And in February, the Alabama Supreme Court declared that frozen embryos are children under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. This precipitated widespread debate not merely about the problem of frozen embryos, but also about in vitro fertilization (IVF), the procedure that created the embryos.
Aside from the legal issues related to surrogacy and the disposition of frozen embryos, both these issues force us to confront the terrible burden of infertility. And, in turn, they call Catholics both to reaffirm our commitment to the Church’s teaching on procreation and to acknowledge the pain and suffering of couples who desire, but have been unable, to conceive or to carry a child to term. Lent, with its general mandate to assume and endure suffering, is an opportunity to revisit both.
Working against marriage
Any assisted reproductive technology, including IVF, that bypasses sexual relations between a married man and woman is forbidden as a violation of the unitive and procreative nature of marriage. Artificial fertilization, “in seeking a procreation which is not the fruit of a specific act of conjugal union objectively effects [a] separation between the goods and the meanings of marriage,” explains Donum Vitae, the 1987 instruction on respect for human life and the dignity of procreation from the Dicastery (then Congregation) for the Doctrine of the Faith. Thus, “procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not desired as the fruit of the conjugal act.”
Broadly speaking, two moral principles are at work in this teaching. The first is that IVF almost always involves the deliberate destruction of some human embryos, in violation of the prohibition of abortion. Typical IVF protocols discard some embryos in the course of the procedure or later when they are no longer wanted or needed. Second, as intimated above, IVF separates the unitive and procreative nature of marital sexual intercourse. Instead, IVF concedes the power over the creation (and destruction) of human life to morally unfettered technological processes. This, explains Donum Vitae, “entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into … the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person.” Such procedures are “contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children.”
The typical surrogate arrangement is all of these things and worse. Surrogacy is not only an attack on the dignity of the child through IVF, but also a debasement of the woman who carries the child. Simply put, surrogacy is the rental of a woman’s womb followed by the purchase and sale of a human being. The typical surrogacy contract calls for the surrogate mother to exchange the child for a sum of money at the end of the term. In any other context, this is known as child trafficking.
Technologically assisted slavery
The transaction itself is indistinguishable from the purchase and sale of a chattel slave in a 19th century slave market. Of course, the moral difference between what the slave holder and surrogacy beneficiary will do with their acquired human property is vastly different. I am not suggesting that the life of the slave is the same as the life of the child procured through surrogacy.
What I am suggesting, however, is that the transaction is the same in both cases. Contracting for sale and purchase of a chattel slave or a surrogate child is a morally indistinguishable action. In both cases one person offers for sale, and another offers a sum of money to purchase, a human being. It is no different if the transaction is between a 19th century plantation owner or a 21st century cabinet secretary. This is why Pope Francis said that a child cannot be “turned into an object of trafficking” through “the deplorable practice of so-called surrogate motherhood.”
Thus does Donum Vitae condemn surrogacy for three reasons. First, it is “an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal fidelity and of responsible motherhood.” Second, “it offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents.” And third, surrogacy “sets up, to the detriment of families, a division between the physical, psychological and moral elements which constitute those families.”
It is important to note that in neither case (IVF or surrogacy) do we diminish the inherent dignity of the child. These procedures are an assault on the child’s dignity, not an abrogation of it. A child created or born as a result of these procedures is no less a bearer of the image and likeness of God than a child conceived and born through natural marital relations. Similarly, surrogacy is an assault on the dignity of the mother whose womb is rented, but it is not a denial of that dignity.
The need for compassion
But while the Church’s teaching is well-founded and clear, we must not smugly declare it and move on. Many people suffer from the cross of infertility, desiring but being unable to conceive and bear children. For these people frustration, confusion and even anger are understandable. And the Church’s doctrine of solidarity suggests that such people have a claim on our sympathy, prayers and support.
As these issues have come to the foreground on the eve of and during Lent, they are the occasion for Catholics to reach out to those who suffer from infertility and to assume their suffering with them. Yes, of course, there are alternatives to IVF, such as adoption or licit varieties of assisted reproductive technology. These should be commended and encouraged. Even so, however, we must be willing to share the burden of the infertile couple.
Rather than simply celebrate Francis’s clear statement and the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision, we should use these events as a time of introspection into our own attitudes toward human life. And in the spirit of Lent, we can reach out to our neighbors, friends and parishioners who need our prayers, comfort and spiritual and material support as they struggle with the vexing issue of infertility. It is a cross for them to bear. Let us help them bear it.
