By Christopher West
When Nadya Suleman gave birth to octuplets earlier this year, the Internet was abuzz with debates about the reproductive technology industry. But the debates focused primarily on how many embryos should be allowed to be transferred to a woman’s body. Very few seemed to be asking the more fundamental question: Should we be producing children in a laboratory at all?
The pain and even anguish of infertile couples mustn’t be undermined. However, as good as the desire for children is in itself, it doesn’t justify any and every means of “getting” a child. The church’s basic moral principle regarding reproductive technologies is this: if a given technology assists the marital embrace in achieving its natural end, it can be morally acceptable, even praiseworthy. However, if it replaces the marital embrace as the means by which the child is conceived, it’s not in keeping with God’s design.
Separating conception from the loving embrace of husband and wife not only provokes many further evils, but, even if these are avoided, it remains contrary to the dignity of the child, the dignity of the spouses and their relationship, and man’s status as a creature. Let’s look briefly at each (for further discussion, see my book “Good News About Sex and Marriage” (Servant, 2004)).
(1) Provokes further evils: Separating conception from the marital embrace doesn’t necessarily entail the following evils, but more often than not it leads to them in practice: masturbation as a means of obtaining sperm; production of “excess” human lives that are either destroyed through abortion, frozen for later “use,” or intentionally farmed for medical experimentation; a “eugenic mentality” that discriminates between human beings, not treating all with equal care and dignity; the trafficking of gametes (both sperm and ova) and frozen embryos for use by others.
(2) The dignity of the child: To seek a child as the end result of a technological procedure is to treat the child in some way as a product. For those involved, this creates – consciously or unconsciously, subtly or not so subtly – a depersonalized orientation towards the child. Products are subject to quality control. When you spend top dollar for a new computer, you want it in mint condition. You don’t care about the specific computer you pulled out of the box. You want one that works. If it’s defective, you’ll take it back for a refund or exchange it for another one.
Similarly, the temptation is all too real for a couple paying thousands (even tens of thousands) of dollars for these procedures to want a “refund” or an “exchange” if their “product” is defective. I don’t mean to imply that every couple who pays for these procedures stoops to this level. The temptation to apply “quality controls” can be resisted. But a depersonalizing mindset is built into the very nature of the procedure.
(3) The dignity of the spouses and their relationship: The technological generation of human life is simply not marital. In other words, the child is not the fruit of his parent’s marital union, but the product of a technological procedure performed by a third party apart from their union altogether. As a former professor of mine put it, “Spouses can no more delegate to others the privilege they have of begetting human life than they can delegate to others the right they have to engage in the marital act” (William May, “Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family Is Built,” Ignatius Press, 1995).
The marital embrace is not simply the biological transmission of gametes. It is a profoundly personal, sacramental, physical and spiritual reality. To divorce human conception from this sublime union shows a lack of understanding of the deepest essence of married love.
(4) Man’s status as a creature: God alone is the “Lord and Giver of Life.” Spouses have the distinct privilege of co-operating with God in pro-creating children, but, as creatures themselves, they aren’t the masters of life. They’re only the servants of God’s design. Through technological fertilization, we set ourselves up as operators instead of co-operators, creators instead of pro-creators. We deny our status as creatures and make ourselves “like God.”
None of this is said to condemn anyone. We simply “know not what we do.” The church, following Christ, proclaims mercy to all. But truth must be spoken. And as we come closer and closer to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” the church’s teaching on reproductive technologies appears more and more like true wisdom than mere fingerwagging.
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