Why IVF is Gravely Immoral

IVF replaces the procreative act of love reserved for married spouses with lab technicians in order to bring children into being in vitro (in glass). Many of these lab-conceived-children are held in cryo-storage indefinitely or used for experimentation. Others are sometimes implanted in a womb only to be removed later through selective abortion. Still others are discarded because they’re the wrong sex.

By Deacon Frederick Bartels
26 March 2024

Senator Ted Cruz often has lots of good things to say. But in this video recording of a hearing titled “I support IVF. It is protected under law. It will remain that way,” he takes a few serious missteps, especially with his support for IVF, apparently because it’s legal and people want it.

However, the fact that IVF is legal doesn’t mean it’s morally good, just as because abortion is legal in many states doesn’t make it morally good. As abortion murders children, IVF frequently leads to their murder as well.

Furthermore, the moral law is not determined by a democratic process. It flows from God to man; it is not established by man’s wishes. Simply because many Americans apparently see nothing wrong with IVF doesn’t mean it should be “up for a vote” and declared legal by a majority decision. The whole idea of such a process is about as dark and destructive as it gets.

Unfortunately, most Americans are ignorant of the moral ramifications of IVF mainly because of ignorant media personalities masquerading as experts, half-truths and lies, useless and erroneous talk, arrogance, and propaganda they’re exposed to each and every day.

The fact is, IVF is evil.

IVF replaces the procreative act of love reserved for married spouses with lab technicians in order to bring children into being in vitro (in glass). Many of these lab-conceived-children are held in cryo-storage indefinitely or used for experimentation. Others are sometimes implanted in a womb only to be removed later through selective abortion. Still others are discarded because they’re the wrong sex.

Then there are people who deliberately use IVF to create children—children who have a right to a father and a mother in marriage—only to objectify them by inserting them into disordered same-sex unions where they will, without doubt, suffer long term psychological damage and likely grow up with a distorted sense of morality.

Are people thinking about the rights of children in the IVF debate? Unfortunately, the answer is all too often “No,” for emotions outweigh reason and “I have a right to a child” attitudes supplant the moral law.

A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The “supreme gift of marriage” is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged “right to a child” would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right “to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents,” and “the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception.”

CCC 2378

As the Church teaches vis-à-vis procreating children, the dissociation of husband and wife is gravely immoral, as is the separation of the sexual act in marriage from the procreative act:

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.”

CCC 2376

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.”

CCC 2377

Of course, none of this is to say that the children brought into being through IVF are anything less than beautiful gifts from God. However, man must never do evil to bring about an intended good.

Based on the moral law and God’s plan for procreating children, IVF is intrinsically evil. Not only should it never be encouraged as a viable option for spouses who suffer from infertility issues or otherwise cannot have children, it should be illegal.