IVF AND SPERM DONORS
The Catholic Church forbids In Vitro Fertilisation for it is unnatural.
That is presuming that God has set nature up so it is against his plan.
For atheists or naturalists, nature is all there is and nothing non-natural ever
happens. So if we have to alter nature we are not really altering it.
It lets it happen. For atheists if we can change nature for our good we
should.
Because the natural argument is going to backfire the
Church tries again. It argues that it is bad because the man has to
masturbate to provide sperm. The main reason though is because it supposedly
involves murder! What is in the petri dish or whatever is regarded as a human
being with the same rights as an adult!
The Catholic Church forbids abortion under all circumstances and even when it
could save the mother's life. In IVF, a lot of embryos have to be created most
of whom are destroyed or die. That is inconsistent with the Church teaching that
life begins at conception and is never to be taken or aborted.
If there are embryos to spare, then why not implant them in somebody? Why not
adopt the embryos then? The Church says that would encourage infertile couples
to adopt them and thus promote the means by which those embryos were made. They
end up treated as commodities. But is all that correct? If embryos need to be
saved you save them even at the risk of encouraging further IVF. You do not
argue, "I cannot save the lives of a poisoner's victims and thus protect him
from murder charges for that will only lead to him poisoning others." The Church
does not really care about those alleged human beings at all. It even allows
letting the embryos to be brought from the fridge and allowed to die.
The Church says that a child is a gift not an entitlement thus IVF is wrong. The
Church says that people don’t have a right to have a child thus it is wrong to
go that far to have a baby. But this has nothing to do with IVF at all or using
a sperm donation. You could have no right to a child but have the right to use
this method. You have the right to choose to try for a baby even if you do not
have the right to a baby. The Church is judging IVF users as thinking they have
a right to have the child. You can use IVF without that attitude. You might not
have a right to a child but you have a right to try for a child - page 36,
Questions of Life and Death.
The Church opposes British law which requires that embryos conceived by IVF may
be stored ten years and then destroyed. We don't see the Catholics campaigning
to buy them and keep them alive or even implant them.
The Church insanely thinks that the embryos are as sacred and have as much of a
right to life as fully grown people. Heaven must be full of these IVF babies if
that is where they go when they are destroyed!
The Church says that the more humans intervene in reproduction by using IVF and
similar techniques to bypass nature, the less room there is for God. But most
people think that God makes the world make itself. They say that us interfering
with nature is God's way of doing it. Instead of nature being allowed to run its
course, we often fight against it.
However, when you consider that the theologians now believe that we sin because
of God and not in spite of him for he is in control of all things and sustains
all it follows that nature running by itself is virtually atheistic. It puts God
into a cage and won't let him be really God. Also, if God takes a step back then
it follows that IVF is a sin. It means he lets bad things happen against his
will so we cannot assume IVF is his will. The notion that natural law is set up
by God to run by its own processes is nonsense and nobody really accepts it. If
God is that much in control then maybe IVF is the way he chooses to bring new
life into the world. Indeed it would have to be. Thus God is an argument for IVF
- not against it.
IVF is right whether there is a God or not.
A book the Catholic Church added to the Bible, Sirach chapter 38, says that the
services of a doctor are provided by the Lord and that the Lord has made
remedies that no sensible person disparages. It praises God for having in these
ways spread health through the whole world. This says that God sends illness to
be fixed. It is no "let nature run its course" kind of attitude here. In fact,
God is far more charitable about the skills of those primitive quacks than he
should be. Medicine was rubbish in those days.
People use the slippery slope argument against IVF and abortion not realising we
are on the slope anyway.
The slippery slope argument is popular but is it really sensible? If abortion
should be allowed to save lives, then those who take advantage of this
permission to administer abortions for other reasons are abusing the law. It is
not the abortion law's fault if it is abused. You cannot condemn something for
it may be misused or even because it probably will be.
Some cultures are further down the slope than others. If a woman has an ectopic
pregnancy, the best way to deal with it is by aborting the embryo in the
fallopian tube instead of taking the tube away as some religions command. The
embryo is simply killed by a needle and the woman's reproductive organs are
intact as opposed to the tube being taken away making pregnancy harder in the
future.
When a woman is pregnant with say eight embryos after IVF or fertility treatment
that the Church still won't agree with her aborting some of them to save herself
and some of the babies is utterly vile.
The Church believes that sperm donation is bad because it involves masturbation
and because it means women will be fertilised by men other than their husbands.
Despite the fact that the records are kept to prevent a girl unknowingly
marrying the son of her natural father and that the sperm is screened for
diseases the Church still has a problem no matter how desperate a couple is to
have a child when the man is infertile.
The Church will not listen and will still give out the same futile arguments
against IVF. Its concern about sperm donation is that is against marriage for
the wife to have a baby by another man. But the fact is that marriage is wrong
and consists of empty vows.
The notion that a zygote is a human being as much as a grown man or woman is
does not ring true. No wonder abortion is so rife. It desensitises people.
BOOKS CONSULTED
Abortion The Great Injustice, HP Dunn, Irish Messenger Publications, Dublin,
1979
Abortion, John R Rice Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1971
Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, Uta Ranke Heinmann, Penguin, London, 1991
Human Life is Sacred, Irish Bishops Pastoral, Veritas Dublin 1975
Is Abortion Sinful? Mike Willis, Guardian of Truth Publications, KY
Moral Questions, A Statement by the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales,
Catholic Truth Society, London, 1971
Questions of Life and Death, Christian Faith and Medical Intervention, Richard
Harries, SPCK, London, 2010
Practical Ethics, Peter Singer, Cambridge University Press, England, 1994
Reason and Religion, Anthony Kenny, Basil Blackwell Ltd, Oxford, 1987
The Catholic Church and Abortion, Catholic Press and Information Office Dublin,
Irish Messenger Publications, Dublin, 1983
The Doctor's Dilemmas, Donal Murray, Veritas, Dublin, 1988
Vicars of Christ, Peter de Rosa, Corgi, London, 1993
BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible
