I imagine you have learned that the Alabama Supreme Court recently ruled that embryos are to be recognized as human beings. As a result, several fertility clinics in the state have informed their clients that they will no longer be able to continue their in vitro treatments for fear of possible lawsuits. This has caused an uproar in the media. Allow me to offer you a summary of the Catholic Church’s very clear teaching in this regard; you will find it in our Catechism of the Catholic Church. It begins with: “The married couple forms ‘the intimate partnership of life and love established by the Creator and governed by his laws’” (§ 2364). It goes on to teach that:
2366 Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which “is on the side of life” teaches that “each and every marriage act must remain open ‘per se’ to the transmission of life.” “This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.”
2367 Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood of God. “Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters. They will fulfill this duty with a sense of human and Christian responsibility.”
2369 “By safeguarding both these essential aspects, the unitive and the procreative, the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the sense of true mutual love and its orientation toward man’s exalted vocation to parenthood.”
2373 Sacred Scripture and the Church’s traditional practice see in large families a sign of God’s blessing and the parents’ generosity.
2374 Couples who discover that they are sterile suffer greatly. “What will you give me,” asks Abraham of God, “for I continue childless?” and Rachel cries to her husband Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die!”
2375 Research aimed at reducing human sterility is to be encouraged, on condition that it is placed “at the service of the human person, of his inalienable rights, and his true and integral good according to the design and will of God.”
2376 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.”
2377 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.”
2378 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.”
This is an issue that is fraught with emotion since, as the Catechism acknowledges so well when it references the struggle that Abraham and Sarah had with their longstanding sterility. At the same time, we need to recognize that only God is the creator; we are called to cooperate with his creative plans and humbly submit to his will. And. once a child is conceived, whether it is inside or outside of the womb, it is a human being with, as we see so clearly stated above, “the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception.” So, the Catholic Church concurs wholeheartedly with Alabama’s recent Supreme Court ruling.
For many couples, infertility is a very heavy cross. Our Catechism recognizes this and ends its teaching in this regard with these consoling words:
Spouses who still suffer from infertility after exhausting legitimate medical procedures should unite themselves with the Lord’s Cross, the source of all spiritual fecundity. They can give expression to their generosity by adopting abandoned children. (§ 2379)
We have become so accustomed to taking charge of our lives and sometime forget that we are called to recognize that God is in charge. Throughout our lives and particularly during this Lenten Season, we are called to return to the Lord and his commands. Let us pray for the humility, wisdom and courage to do so.