In this episode, Trent talks about the Church’s teaching on infertility and the right and wrong ways to confront it while sharing his and Laura’s own experiences with this issue.
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast. A production of Catholic Answers.
Once source of ideas for podcasts episodes are the community forums and the open posts at TrentHornPodcast.com. Our supporters at TrentHornPodcasts.com a few months ago, submitted ideas for future episodes. We got a lot of great episode ideas. I’ll probably go back to them here in the next few months and pick a few others, but this one was submitted by multiple people. And since Laura and I have a personal history with the topic, I thought it’d be interesting to really talk about.
So, welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we talk apologetics, theology, how to explain and defend our Catholic faith. On Fridays, we talk about whatever I find to be interesting. Those are free-for-all Fridays. And today, we have episodes from our patrons. So, if you want to submit ideas, by the way, for a future episode or comment on episodes, get a fancy mug, you want to get access to my catechism study series, a half-hour video lecture each week, all that and more at TrentHornPodcast.com. Consider signing up. If you become an annual subscriber, a onetime annual gift, you get a 15% discount on the membership fee. And as I said, you get access to all that great stuff. So, go check it out. TrentHornPodcast.com.
The topic of today’s episode is infertility. I got a lot of messages… well, more messages than the other topics, multiple people saying, “Can you talk about infertility? Can you talk about infertility?” And it’s interesting that in the Catholic sphere, I think this is a subject we don’t talk about very much, even though it affects many people. I mean, we talk about contraception. We talk about pro-life issues. We talk about LGBT, even when it affects Catholic families. But infertility, I mean, I don’t hear about it very often in homilies, we don’t hear about speakers talking about it or on Catholic media.
It’s something that isn’t spoken of a lot, even though I know there are many people out there who struggle with infertility in varying forms and degrees. And it’s an important subject to talk about, not just for a pastoral element. And by pastoral I mean helping people on their journey through spiritually, emotionally, and physically enduring the cross of infertility. So, that’s one element that we needed to talk about it for those who want resources to bear the weight of this cross, and understanding the kind of cross this is that people bear.
But also there is theology and apologetics involved in this issue because many people who are stricken with infertility are tempted to engage in illicit acts in order to conceive a child, namely things like in-vitro fertilization. And they think, “Well, what could be wrong with this? We’re bringing life into the world. It’s not like abortion. We’re not out trying to kill anyone. What could be wrong with IVF?” And I’ve met many Catholics are pro-life, who are completely pro-life, totally against abortion, but they see absolutely nothing wrong with IVF. Though I would say for the vast majority of those cases, the reason they don’t see anything wrong with IVF is that they have a heavy, emotional investment into IVF because it was the means through which they were able to conceive a child, and they desperately wanted a child.
So, how do we approach this issue? That’s what I want to talk about here in today’s podcast. As I said earlier, Laura and I have a personal relation to the issue. I remember that infertility is defined in different ways, but I think a broad, general definition would be the inability of a couple to conceive a child while not trying to inhibit it, while trying to conceive. If it’s taking you longer than a year, then you might have infertility issues. There’s some certain age groups and demographics, even six months, the inability to conceive could be a cause for concern.
But I think where a lot of doctors, if you’re trying and it’s been a year and you’ve been unable to conceive or unable to carry a pregnancy to term, then there might be issues there that need to be investigated. To put our cards on the table, we have had two miscarriages. Actually, Laura wrote a beautiful blog post a long time ago after we miscarried our very first child, the first baby that we conceived, ended up being miscarried and being lost. And then we had Matthew and then we had another miscarriage after that.
So, we’ve had two miscarriages, and we got our three little guys at home. But we actually really struggled to become pregnant during our marriage. Our first little guy, Matthew, was born about two years after we were married. That first year we were married, we didn’t get pregnant. We’re wondering, “What is going on here?” Because we always thought, “Hey, you’re Catholic, you get married, you have 12 kids.” When we say, “We’re Catholic, we’re not going to use contraceptives.” People reflexively say, “Oh, you’re ready to have 12 kids? You’re going to buy the Ford Transit? You’re going to start your own basketball team?”
And people always ask us, “How many children do you want?” Who would say, “Well, however many God wants to give us.” The culture tells you, “Hey, if you don’t use contraceptive, you better…” The culture tells you, “You better use contraceptive or you’re going to have 12 kids.” But we weren’t using contraceptives. We were trying, and we were really dismayed because we couldn’t get pregnant. And we were wondering, “Well, what is going on here?”
I mean, the way that I think about it. One reason that I saved sex for marriage, not just in order to be a chaste individual, but even before my conversion experience, I was absolutely terrified of having a child out of wedlock. I was absolutely terrified of that. I did not want to create a new… even before I was religious, even before I was Christian, I knew I did not want to create a human being who has a biological connection to me, who is my son or my daughter, that I’m not connected to in marriage. There’s a whole host of problems that come from that. So, I did not want to be in that situation.
You know me. I’m a prepper. I prepare for all kinds of things. Ice storms, grid down scenario, volcanoes, whatever it may be. I’ve done all kinds of prepping podcast. So I’m like, “Oh, I’m always obsessed with the worst thing that might happen.” And of course, conceiving a child is not a worst thing. A child is always good, though the circumstances may certainly be not ideal or they could be bad circumstances. A child is always good, but a child can be conceived in bad or evil circumstances. It is wrong to engage in the sexual act outside of marriage. It’s wrong, and it hurts children.
Now, the children who come into existence from these acts, they are good and they should be loved and cherished. So, I did not want to be involved in that in any way, shape or form. So, I was just absolutely terrified thinking that any single sexual act, bam, there’s going to be a baby. And I think that fear… not fear, but concern, followed me into marriage thinking, “All right, we’re going to get married because we are ready to have a baby.”
People will tell you, “Oh, are you going to practice NFP on your honeymoon?” That’s kind of a dilemma for Catholic couples because you are allowed to space your children, if you have a just reason for doing so. And one of those reasons might be, if you get married, you might still be trying to solidify your marriage, solidify your work experience, whatever it may be, you just might not feel prepared to have a child those first few months, but you obviously cannot use contraceptives. Those are evil.
So, some people discern they have a just reason for using NFP right after they are married. That can involve abstaining from sexual relations, even during your honeymoon. Some people choose to do that. And it’s something to discern, but other people come to the conclusion, “Well, no, we’re open to this, and it’s our honeymoon. We don’t want to do that.” And they make the opposite decision.
I thought that Catholic marriage equals babies galore, and it does for some people, but we had Matthew and then we had Thomas, but after our second child, once again, we went through another year long stretch of not being able to become pregnant, wondering, “Well, what is going on here?” And there is a term for this: secondary or tertiary infertility. There are some people… When we think about infertility, usually we think about couples that are childless, people that are unable to have children.
Though I think what gets lost in the shuffle is I think there are many Catholic couples out there who struggle with secondary and tertiary infertility, that they desperately want more children, and it’s cruel. And I’m going to talk here about attitudes we need to avoid, including well-meaning attitudes that can be very hurtful and insensitive. And I would say it’s insensitive to tell someone who is struggling with secondary or tertiary infertility, “Well, at least you have one baby. At least you have three babies. At least…” Yeah, you do. But that yearning a person has to bring a new life into the world, to hold a little baby guy, it’s very strong and powerful. Even if you have older children, having that desire and being frustrated about being unable to fulfill that desire, it’s still painful whether you have children or you do not have children.
Though I will say that the cross that couples with total infertility bear, the inability to have any children, that is going to be different, of course, from those who have secondary or tertiary infertility. It is one thing to have a desire to have more children be frustrated and another thing to have a desire for any children at all to be frustrated. And so it’s hard, and many of us do want to be well-meaning when we interact with people, especially those who have total infertility. And we try to help, but I would just offer this guidance and wisdom. Just listen, ask questions, be compassionate. Just say things like, “That must be really hard.” Or, “I bet that must be really trying or very sad for you, and I’ll be praying for you through everything that you’re going through.”
Offer these words of encouragement and try to stay away from words that you think are easy solutions because I think while they’re usually well-meaning, they can be taken to be insensitive. And if you, by the way, are listening and you may be struggling with infertility or you know someone who is, know I want this podcast to be just kind of an open environment for everyone. It’s always hard when you have people talk about something and there’s a particular group they’re not sensitive of when they’re discussing a particular issue. So, you hear some of these well-meaning attitudes that come off the wrong way.
When you tell people, “Well, we’re struggling with infertility, we’re not able to have kids. It’s been one year, it’s been two years. We don’t know what to do.” People say, “Oh, you just need to relax. You just need to relax. It’ll happen when you least expect it. Boy, I’ll tell you, for us…” And once again, I know they’re trying to come from a good place, but there are some people that the reason they’re infertile it’s because of a serious medical condition. It could be polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS, it could be endometriosis, the man might have a medical condition that causes him to have low or no sperm count, his body’s not producing sperm at all.
There are situations where it’s some kind of identifiable medical condition, but even if it wasn’t that, saying things like, “You just need to relax, it’ll happen when you least expect it.” It makes the person feel a sense of guilt. As if I am not able to have children because I’m stressing myself out. I’m doing all of these things. You don’t want to place an undue amount of guilt on the individual.
Now you can offer and say, “Hey, there’s a lot of different ways to look at treatment for infertility. Some of them involve drugs or surgery, but some of them can involve diet and lifestyle change. And so you might want to maybe look at some things.” It’s a fine line. You don’t want to tell people, “Hey, stress ball, just relax and you’ll get pregnant.” I would say that’s insensitive. But to let people know, “Hey, there’s different ways you can change diet, lifestyle. Even using family planning methods.”
There are different family planning methods that… a lot of people think that natural family planning is just a way to plan to not become pregnant, but that’s not the case. Whether it’s the Creighton method or the symptothermal method or whatever method you use, the natural family planning methods help someone determine when a woman is fertile and infertile, during your fertile times and infertile times. It’s not used solely just to determine the fertile times in order to avoid them.
If someone is struggling with becoming pregnant, they can use NFP to determine exactly when the fertile times are to be able to take advantage of that, because you don’t want to miss this opportunity in a woman’s cycle, that’s helpful in some cases. But in other cases, you should probably consult a good Catholic physician that can offer you healthy and holy treatments when it comes to fertility. And some of these are effective, but others aren’t, and some people attempt to treat their infertility and they are unable to treat it. And so this is something, a cross that they just have to bear.
Another well-meaning thing that people will say when they see someone who appears to have perpetual infertility is, “Well, have you thought about adoption?” I don’t like this response for several reasons. One, it assumes that adoption is almost like a duty for the infertile couple, or the very least it’s only fitting for infertile couples, and number… Well, actually, here’s the biggest problem I have with the thought, “Have you thought about adoption?”
The point of adoption is not to fulfill the needs of parents. It’s to fulfill the needs of a child. Adoption does not exist for infertile couples to feel whole, fulfilled and complete. It may certainly do that for infertile couples and give them a sense of fulfillment in raising a child, and that is a good thing, but adoption is not for making infertile couples feel better.
Adoption is for restoring to a child what has been taken away from him or her. If a child has lost his mother and father, we do our best to restore what has been lost. We can never duplicate it. We can never give someone their mother and father back, especially if their mother and father have died, but it could be the case their mother and father cannot be found or separated or have been deemed unfit parents. They’re not able to take care of the child.
So, the point of adoption is to provide that sacrificial love for a child to try to restore the family they once had, to give them that chance at having a loving family. Adoption is about the child. It’s not about the parents. But it does, of course, change the parents’ lives. And parents should discern if they are in a good position to adopt, and it’s something that requires a lot of discernment. It’s not something you have, “Oh, you’re infertile? Then you’re definitely called to adopt.”
Not every infertile couple is called to adopt children. There are some infertile couples who probably wouldn’t make very good adoptive parents. There are families that already have five, six or seven children who might make great adoptive families. They might be a great family to adopt and they have discerned it. So, we should not use someone’s fertility status as a measure to see whether they should choose the path of adoption or not. That’s something for a couple to discern, to research, to enter into a spiritual direction about because it’s a big decision.
It’s not something we should casually throw out there as a way to help someone who’s coping with infertility because at the end of the day, adoption does not treat your infertility. You should only be in a place to adopt when you have come to terms of the cross of infertility that you bear, and not see a child you adopt as some kind of treatment for your infertility, because children are not treatments for our problems. We are treatments for their problems. That is why we are here as parents, whether it is parents through biology or parents through adoption.
Another one that comes up that’s not helpful is, “Oh, you only have two? Oh, you only have one?” Guys, we got to stop assuming that people are using contraceptives just because they have a certain family size. And that’s hard for us. We go out, and some Catholic couples… I mean, they don’t say it to us, but I’ve heard through the grapevine and other things like, “Oh, you only have three? You only have two?” Only? You think about the trials we went through just to be able to have these three little guys.
We got to stop making the assumptions. That’s a bad thing to do, whether it is a childless couple… And it’s hard. We see a childless couple and we just think, “Oh, they could have kids.” But infertility is more common than we think. Or even, “Oh, they had two children. They’re not going to have the big Catholic family.” Well, maybe they can’t. Maybe they have secondary infertility or tertiary infertility. Don’t make those assumptions. It’s going to come back to bite you.
It’s only really acceptable to talk about this if a person says to you, “I never want to have kids. They’re just a bunch of work.” If it’s a childless couple or a couple with two children and they confide in you that they are using contraceptives because they don’t want children, they see children as a burden or they feel like they have enough children, then, I think, then it’s appropriate and perhaps necessary to offer a response because this is our opportunity to evangelize that person.
My co-author, Layla Miller… it was a wonderful story we share in our book, Made This Way, and it has a great chapter on IVF, by the way, in my book Made This Way, that you should go and check out. I loved writing it with Layla. She has a whole brood of kids of her own. And the air conditioner technician came over to her house, saw how many kids she had, and he said, “Oh, I don’t want to have that many kids. I’m fixed.” To refer to the fact that he has a vasectomy. And Layla without skipping a beat said to him, “I don’t think you’re broken.” And that just completely… He had never thought of it before. The idea that a vasectomy we see, for men, or a tubal ligation for women, that’s treated as medicine to fix a problem. But fertility is not a problem. Infertility is a problem.
Another thing I think that happens, I think a lot of people who struggle with infertility… And this is something that we thought about when we dealt with secondary infertility. It’s one of those things that with God, Isaiah 55:8-9, “My ways are higher than your ways. As high as the heavens are above the earth, my ways are above your ways, my thoughts are above your thoughts.” It’s just hard for us to know God’s plan. We wonder, “Why would God…” Guilty pleasure. Sometimes we watch episodes of Teen Mom.
Hey, I’ve been thinking all day about quantum mechanics and Ancient Greek lexicons. Sometimes I want to just see what Hannah in West Virginia is doing with her little kids. We think like, “Why does God give children to children and to teenagers who engage in fornication, who aren’t ready to have babies, and then you have wonderful, loving holy couples who are unable to conceive a child?” We think of, “Why, God? It just seems so unfair.”
But it’s that old saying, right? “Life’s not fair, but God is good.” That’s what sin did to the world. Sin means life’s not fair, but God is good. And so God has a plan. In Romans 8:28, we know that God brings to good everything, brings everything to good for those who believe in Him. I think that’s important to think about and to not to dwell on that unnecessarily. Think, look, what has God given us? God has given all of us, anyone listening to this episode, God gave you blessings, and he gave you trials.
At the very least, if you’re alive… At the very least, I know God gave you a blessing because if you’re listening to this podcast, if you’re listening to this, you are alive. And if you’re alive, that is a blessing because there are many potential people that do not exist. You do exist. You came into existence. You are a blessing to the world. You have blessings in your life and you have trials. And the question is, will we give God thanks for the blessings and for the trials?
All right. How do we understand or respond to infertility? Here’s what the catechism says. In paragraph 2375, it says, “Couples who discover that they are sterile suffer greatly. 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 unalienable rights and his true and integral good, according to the design and will of God.”
The Bible often speaks about infertility as suffering. I mean, the ancient Israelites considered children a blessing. The Psalm say, “Children are like arrows. Blessed it is the man who has a quiver full of them.” And in the Old Testament, actually, I think it has more woes related to infertility than it does to the death of a child. That to bring a child into the world, and especially for us as Christians, to bring a child into the world, even if you lose a child at an early age, whether it’s miscarriage or after that, I mean, it’s just absolutely heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking.
But the little glimmer of light in that darkness of losing a child, especially a very young child, the little glimmer of light is that they’re not gone forever. They’re in heaven. When we have kids, our job is to get them to heaven. Sometimes they get there way sooner than we would want them to, but that is our job. As I say, especially those who may have lost a child, whether it’s miscarriage or after that, I do not want to diminish or belittle the pain you have experienced. It’s like being in a cloud of darkness.
But I’m saying we need to focus on that glimmer of light, that little glimmer there that we grow up through the darkness to get to. That little glimmer is Christ. And part of that is understanding our children. They have immortal souls. There’ll be with God for… And I believe that, well, the church teaches, especially children who are baptized, definitely for young children who are baptized: infants, toddlers. But even children who have not been baptized, we can have hopeful confidence in a God who said, “Let the children come to me,” that these children can spend eternity with him. Not automatic assurance like with baptism, but a hopeful confidence.
As I said, in the Old Testament, the inability to have a child was considered even graver in some circumstances than losing a child. So, it’s a tremendous cross. One to answer, and that the church teaches that you can use medications to be able to do that. But we have to be careful. When we do this, we have to, as I said before, we have to keep the child in proper perspective. That’s why I love this paragraph in the Catechism. Paragraph 2378, “A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. 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.”
So, if you think about it, we have a right to marry. You have the right to try to have a child, but you don’t have the right to a child. Does that make sense? Think about it. If you are capable of marriage, you have the right to marry. Now, the Church can tell you, “You are not capable of marriage.” Sometimes, some people, if they’re on their third enrollment, the church may say, “You have a perpetual psychological defect that prevents you from giving valid consent for the sacrament of marriage.” And the church may issue a judgment saying you can not be admitted to the sacrament of marriage.
But in general, if you are capable of marriage, you have a right to marry. You have the right… Even in civil law. They used to try to pass laws in the past that prevented convicts or ex-cons or the mentally ill from getting married or having children. And the courts have said, “No, there is a right to marriage and a right to procreate.” The church would say, “You have the right to attempt to have a child. You have the right to engage in the marital act, but you don’t have the right to the child itself.”
The child is not something we have a right to. The child is a gift from God. Just as God is the one who decides when we live and when we die, he is the one who decides when we receive children and when we don’t. God is the author of life. We are not. So, that means that when we use infertility treatments, we have to follow a particular principle.
This is what the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a document called Dignitas Personae, in 2008, this is what it said about what principles. It said that, “Fertility treatments that substitute for the conjugal act are not permitted. But those that act as an aid to the conjugal act and its fertility, are permitted.” That’s section 12 of Dignitas Personae. In other words, ask this question: does the treatment help a husband and wife engage in the marital act and conceive a child from that union or does it replace the marital act with something else?
The question is basically this: does it assist the marital act or does it replace it? If a infertility treatment assists the marital act, then generally it is licit or it’s not sinful. But if it replaces the marital act with something else in order for a child to be conceived, then it’s illicit or it’s sinful.
Here’s some things that would be licit: ovulation enhancers, drugs that help a woman to ovulate. Does it replace the marital act? Not at all. Marital act continues as normal. Or drugs that help a man to produce sperm. Does it assist or replace? It assists. It doesn’t replace the act at all. Or surgery, such as surgery to repair scar tissue on the fallopian tube or something like that. Assists the act, doesn’t replace it.
But what about examples that replace the marital act? Well, there’s two primary examples. One would be artificial insemination. When you have, especially in the case of donor sperm and donor egg, you have the husband and wife, and then the wife becomes pregnant… or including, and this happens a lot though, even with unmarried women, if you are using sperm and egg that are not involved in the marital act.
Let’s say, especially the husband and wife, and they’re infertile, so they use donor sperm or donor eggs in order to become pregnant. This is something that is always wrong. The Catechism says in paragraph 2376, “Techniques that entail the disassociation of husband and wife by the intrusion of a person other than the couple, like donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus, are gravely immoral. These techniques, like heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization,” heterologous means you use sperm and egg that don’t belong to either the husband and wife. This is always wrong. “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 spouse’s right to become a father and a mother only through each other.”
The bottom line is this, should children be the fruit of marital love or are they a commodity created in a laboratory through a technician? The ultimate example of this would be in vitro fertilization. In vitro fertilization is when sperm and egg are removed from the man and woman’s body, from the man’s body, usually, through the sin of masturbation. They are put into a Petri dish, they’re fertilized, embryos are created. Sometimes they only create one embryo and it’s implanted. But we have an issue, that pro-life issue gets involved here… By pro-life, I mean opposition to killing innocent human beings, gets involved here when multiple embryos are created and only one is implanted.
Sometimes the other embryos are stored in cold storage, which still is unjust to them. They should be in the warm, loving body of their mother, not in a cold storage tank, but other times they are destroyed. And so these children are killed or multiple embryos are implanted, though I think that’s an older technique that isn’t done as much anymore. But it can happen where multiple embryos are implanted, and some are “selectively reduced,” which would be the act of abortion.
Dignitas Personae says, “Such fertilization entrust 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.”
Some people ask, “But what’s wrong with it? We got a happy baby. What does it matter? What if she uses IVF and it’s only one embryo and it’s a happy baby? What does it matter?” Well, it matters as you’ve got to take a step back away from the husband and wife with this child, and it’s hard because people will say, “From all appearances, I don’t see the harm that happened.” But the harm is that in doing this, you’ve commodified the child. You’ve turned the child into a product to be created in a lab.”
And when you do that, you have no rational stopping point to say that other people should not have access to this, “product.” So, you get situations where unmarried people… There’s a situation we talk about in our book, where this unmarried guy who lived in his mom’s basement, hired a surrogate to have triplets only for him, and the children end up being abused and neglected. And we’re going to say, “Oh, that’s awful.” But hey, that’s the logical stopping point. When children become a product that is created to satisfy the needs of people who want children, rather than treating them as the fruit of the marital act.
Now, it’s important, when IVF comes up, it’s often… We can fall into a minefield here. When it comes up, people say, “Well, I was conceived in IVF. Are you saying that I am a mistake? That I’m a problem?” Absolutely not. Children are always good. The child is always good, but just because the child is always good, it doesn’t follow that the way the child was conceived was always good. A child conceived in adultery is always a good being, a good person. That child is good. A child has the same intrinsic dignity and is made in the image and likeness of God, and so it is good that that child exists.
That child is good, even if they were conceived in adultery, fornication, prostitution, or if they were conceived in IVF. But just because the child is good, we can say without contradiction, the child is good, but adultery, prostitution, fornication, and in vitro fertilization are all wrong. Even if they do result in the conception of something good like a child.
We have clear cases of fertility treatments that are good, they assist the marital act: ovulation enhancers, corrective surgeries. And we have clear cases that are bad because they replaced the marital act. With IVF, you don’t have the marital act. You just have masturbation and fertilization in a Petri dish. With artificial insemination, you’re using sperm and egg, especially heterologous, you’re using it from other people. So, you’ve replaced the marital act.
But there are some techniques that are right in the middle, that moral theologians have left as an open question. The church has not declared these to be acceptable, but the church has not prohibited these techniques as well. They’re right in the middle between assist and replace, and moral theologians disagree about them. One would be gamete intrafallopian transfer.
Gamete intrafallopian transfer occurs when sperm is acquired, through the marital act. And so when it is acquired in this way, it is then inserted into the wife’s fallopian tubes. We talked about artificial insemination, right? Heterologous, hetero means other, heterologous means artificial insemination, means you use sperm and egg that don’t belong to the husband and wife. This is always wrong.
Homologous insemination is when you use sperm and egg that belong just to the husband and wife. Could this be right or wrong? Well, it is always wrong if it replaces the marital act. So, if the husband masturbates to produce sperm, and then that sperm is then placed in the wife’s body for insemination, that would be wrong. There is no marital act. Do you see a marital act in this scenario where the husband masturbates and then the sperm is placed in his wife’s body? No marital act. It’s replaced it. It would be wrong.
But as I said, there’s some techniques that theologians are divided on because it’s hard to say if it assists or replaces. Gamete intrafallopian transfer would be one of these, or GIFT. Here, the husband and wife engage in the marital act, but use a perforated condom. And so sperm passes through the holes in the condom, but some sperm is left behind in the condom. A doctor would then take the sperm from the condom and then inject it into the wife’s fallopian tube.
Theologians are divided on this question. Some would say that it assists the marital act because they still engage in the act, and some sperm passes through. That sperm probably will not impregnate the wife, but it happens. And it merely takes some of the sperm produced in the marital act, and then moves it up into the wife’s body. That’s one argument. The other argument is that no, it really replaces the act. It changes what the act is with the perforated condom being added. And the sperm that is taken away from the act is washed or treated. It’s really not sperm that comes to the marital act.
As I said, moral theologians are divided. The church leaves it as an open question. The church has not said GIFT, gametes intrafallopian transfer, is a good thing, but it is not also said it’s a bad thing. It has left that as an open question. Whereas other techniques are definitely good, like corrective surgeries. Other techniques are definitely bad, like IVF or heterologous artificial insemination.
Homologous artificial insemination would be wrong if there’s no marital act at all, but GIFT can be seen as a kind of homologous artificial insemination. You’re taking the husband’s sperm, placing it in the wife’s body in an artificial way, but the sperm is obtained through the marital act. Once again, I’m not making a judgment on this. I’m still sifting through my position on this, but I’m just saying what the church’s position is. And that would be it’s an open question. It’s not condemned, but it’s not affirmed. It’s something that you would discern with your conscience.
If you want more help in discerning the issue of infertility, I would recommend, when it comes to a bioethical perspective, William May’s book, Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Life is really great. We have a chapter on IVF in our book, Made This Way. There’s also a lot of great resources at the National Catholic Bioethics Center. Their website is NCBCenter.org.
Well, I hope that was helpful for you. And please, pray for those who are suffering from the cross of infertility. Pray that God will offer them consolation and compassion, and to help them to discern within this trial, whatever blessings God may have given them. Because whether it’s someone who is infertile or someone who is unmarried, sometimes when we are not blessed with children, God has opened up our life to be able to do something else to serve the body of Christ, including serving people who might feel pretty overwhelmed with their kiddos.
We are a part of the Body of Christ. As the Body of Christ, we serve one another. Not every part can be a hand, not every part can be an eye. All of the parts are different to be able to serve the entire body. Not all of us are priests. Not all of us are married. Not all of us have children. And where we end up in the body many times is not our choice. We don’t choose who were born to, and we don’t choose where we grow up. But God is the one who providentially orders that for his good. And it’s up to us to say yes to God’s will, even when it could be challenging and difficult. So, thank you guys very much. And I hope you have a very blessed day.
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