I'm thinking both methods. I'm not sure if they can freeze unfertilized eggs so those that bank their harvested eggs have to have some agreement with a sperm donor or facility that owns the sperm. I also think soon enough they will have invented/perfected artificial wombs. I don't think it's ridiculous how they are testing boundaries in women's sports, slowly draining title IX funds back to men. There are many moving parts to the big fertility picture. Devaluing a woman's superpower by making women own that 'right' to 'choose.' Wasting our fertility. I feel like we are just the Cassandras.
I think it must be forbidden on the grounds that it's not waving a magic wand as is suggested by the facile description, "freeze the eggs." The eggs are not readily harvested and the risk to the woman is significant. First do no harm.
Just going into the clinic to have that procedure, even if it's to return the eggs to her body and even if it were not risky, is to participate in (and give money to) an enterprise that engages in even more evil practices (one reason to be against embryo adoption).
I think it can be made to sound benign, but the reality is very messy -- like going to an abortion clinic for the innocent reason of getting a mammogram (of course, they don't offer mammograms). It's a no-go zone. Danger.
Those who accept the basics of the value of human beings as made in the image of God and redeemed by the Paschal Mystery of His Son invariably wind up at these same conclusions.
This from an interview with the founder, a 24 yo named Kian Sadeghi:
Yeah. At that point, I'd left Penn. I was not even a student. People looked at me like you were crazy. Like, you know, there's a line of going a little bit crazy at some point. Like seriously, the line is much closer than people think when you really give your entire being into something. I mean, I joke internally that, you know, Nucleus is the only company, only genetics company ever started in a bedroom. I mean, it's just like never happened. Like, what do you mean? Like, usually it spins out of like the Broad or you know, Stanford, you know, bunch of scientists get together or something.
So if you look at the Nucleus team, half of us have a PhD, and I'm not in that half, the other half are below 25, right? It's like, it's such an eclectic mix of people and that's why it can be so hard because there's no established networks either when you leave college and you're like, I'm gonna go build this genetics company. I mean, that's the beauty of naivete too. Naivete is definitely a strength, right? So it is extremely, extremely non-trivial.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but widespread public rejection of IVF will never happen in a culture that sees babies as fashion accessories and indicators of virtue.
The tricky part is that the Catholic Church has some hand in this. There’s little space for childless couples at most parishes. There is an unspoken sense that those with children are better people. I myself have heard even priests refer to children as “God’s reward” to purportedly good and holy couples.
So couples try to have children, and maybe they can’t, and maybe they lose a few babies, so they go for some checkups, get offered some medications, a small procedure to open up your fallopian tubes here, some birth control to “regulate your hormones” there, a trigger shot on day 20 of the cycle, and suddenly IUI doesn’t sound so bad, because conception still happens in the woman’s body, right?
All to achieve the glowing image of the nice Catholic family with all the accoutrements.
I understand and agree, but what I am saying is that the slippery slope is much wider and longer than we think. Not only abortion and IVF, but fertility drugs, progesterone creams, special acupuncturists, fertility detox diets, all amount to STRIVING for what is NOT REALITY at the moment, and therefore having no gratitude or appreciation for God’s will. We must eliminate all reproductive technologies AND the societal and religious pressure to have children that leads couples to dance with those particular devils.
Everyone wants a baby but no one will admit to what they did to get that baby.
Children are a blessing. The bible is full of passages about that. It’s not wrong of priests to point this out.
Societies need children. The pressure is not going to go away because it’s natural (and good!). Having children is GOOD, which is why it’s so tragic when people suffer from infertility.
The answer to infertility is not to say “having children doesn’t matter” - that’s false compassion. Infertility wouldn’t hurt so much if having children didn’t matter. That’s a huge part of the hurt.
Not all technology is bad. There are ethical, licit ways to help couples conceive. You do not have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. An anti-inflammatory diet to help fertility is in no way comparable ethically to IVF, and it’s mad to me that they would be conflated?! I don’t feel like any woman would need to “admit” to acupuncture for fertility reasons, because it’s an ethical non-issue.
Treatments to help a woman’s (or man’s) reproductive and endocrine system work as they ought (including, yes, progesterone supplementation for women with low progesterone) is striving for health and the fullness of God’s design in the body. The result of that improved health may be a return to fertility- not always, but many times! Is that awful? I struggled with infertility, received help in a cooperative way in accord with God’s design for my body and my marriage, and now I am able to conceive children naturally. I could have avoided seeking (again- legitimate, cooperative) fertility support, and I may have never carried a child to term. There is a distinction here between processes and technologies that harm bodily integrity and design and those that honor it.
I’m sorry, I personally still think it is unconscionable to use any kind of aid, even if it is seen as “natural”, to conceive. It comes from a place of striving for something you want instead of accepting and giving thanks for what you do have. It is a consumerist, humanist view that does not respect the will of God.
Hmmm.... what if your digestion is off? Do you take something or try to change your diet? Or do you just accept it because striving to eat is consumerist?
The reproductive system can go awry just the way the digestive system can.
I think there is something off in your logic. You need to be able to make distinctions.
Anything can become an obsession, but there's a difference in kind between manipulating the process of reproduction, wrenching it out of its context, commodifying the baby -- and trying to correct defects in one's system in order to be successful in having a baby in the normal, God-given, marital way.
It's unfortunate for those who suffer from infertility that there is indeed a sort of penumbra of suspicion that falls on them, simply because the vast majority of people are trying not to have babies. It might help to realize that suspicion is misplaced but at least coming from a place of resisting that overwhelming fact.
It's also the case that when one suffers, one can fall into interpreting glances or words in the worst light. People may not mean to appear judgmental. They may be awkward or inept. The truth is, babies really are a blessing, the blessing of marriage -- its fruit, its natural outcome, its crown. So it's an extra sacrifice to realize that for the good of everyone, this sense of goodness has to be cultivated. So much today militates against it.
Those who are in such communities, though, need to be extra careful to refrain from judging and to be kind and assume the best. It's very hard to endure infertility -- a real cross, and one that is increasingly common. I often think it is easy to fall into a grievous error either way: if you ask, you are seen to be judgmental if the answer is "no children"; if you don't ask, you are seen to be cold.
I think everyone has to try harder and give more grace.
I think if you are determined to see the culture as anti-children, you will find all of the evidence to support your conclusion.
What are your thoughts on childless Catholic marriages? Those that, despite having normal relations, simply never conceive and have no interest in reproductive technologies of any kind? Should each party go their separate ways since “the fruit, natural outcome, the crown” of the marriage was never obtained?
I am not sure if you are Catholic nor where you are coming from here, but all of your questions have been answered. The married couple’s love is fruitful in many ways, biological children being the natural and preeminent one but by no means the only. I think that question of accepting the fruit God is giving is an important one for infertile couples to grapple with and discover!
Certainly no couple is obliged to do everything in their power to have biological children. Many would tell you that that frantic striving was detrimental and it was better to accept God’s plan, as you say.
Suggesting that a woman should simply live with hormonal dysfunction is an interesting conclusion but certainly she would be within her rights to do so…
Oh, no, I think you're mistaking priests encouraging couples to live in accordance with their nature with actually valuing those that can have children over those that can't. So many couples reject the gift of children, so the priests are just encouraging couples to accept them! That doesn't mean they think those with children are better people than those that are unable to conceive (or who can conceive but can't carry to term). It's only in our "baby resistant" culture that this even has to be said.
And it is these women who see the gift of the child who have the most compassion for those struggling with fertility.
It would be easy for me to think "there's no space for those just married" or "there's little space for those that homeschool at my parish, so much energy goes to the school" but neither of those are true at all. The devotional life of the parish is available to everyone. At my parish, most of the activities for adults are for ALL adults-- single, married, young, old etc. There are a few things just for the parents of the school kids and a few things just for the older adults (65+) but that's it.
There is no slippery slope between trying to improve your health in order to conceive a child and IUI, let alone IVF. They are categorically different. One helps the woman achieve optimal health (for optimal health includes fertility!) and allows the child to be conceived in the loving embrace of his parents; the other degrades the father and makes conception a medical procedure.
Yes, some women cannot achieve optimal health and cannot get pregnant. It's heavy cross to bear, and at some point the couple has to recognize that the work toward health isn't working-- trying to make it work can certainly verge on not accepting God's will for you life. But it is still an entirely different thing from IUI or IVF.
I want to make bumper stickers that say, “Men and Women Are Different,” “Sex Makes Babies,” and “Children Need Their Parents.” However, I don’t want to have to explain the second one to my own children of tender years. The other two are stupid obvious even to them but here we are.
Yes I’ve had that exact conversation… someone admits to thinking ivf is ethically wrong but they say “I could never be seen as against it on social media because a friend did it and I want to be seen as supportive and sweet above all things”
I’ve heard this called toxic empathy. What do you think about that phrase? Do you think empathy can be used to twist the truth, or do you think empathy is always a good thing even when it’s displaying itself like this in society?
I would call it the sin of vanity, which is an inordinate concern for how one is perceived (I want to be SEEN AS; I want to be praised by the world, and I have never even met this Galilean and don't know who you are talking about.)
Calling it vanity has the merit of not having to tack on the word toxic since even the world dimly understands that it is undesirable to be called (seen as!) vain.
Everyone is not against eugenics. It is the natural extension of competitive parents over controlling their projects' (oops, I mean kids') lives in a moral relativism where winning against the Jones is the goal.
The Nucleus web site is couched in terms that are hard to oppose. Why wouldn't I want my child to be healthier, smarter, taller, more beautiful. I would be a bad parent if I didn't want them to be their best, right?
Winning is the moral absolute, not doing the right thing. To paraphrase Pilate "What is right?" Many, many no longer know and many do not wish to.
I agree. I thought it was interesting that all the comments were negative. I think everyone is against Nazis doing eugenics. But they don't think that what THEY are doing is evil. And of course, there is at some level a sort of natural eugenics, where we are attracted to a spouse in part because we think we will have awesome babies with that spouse.
Where I think most recoil is at the notion of killing off babies to get the "perfect" one. That said, abortion has long provided that "service."
If anyone hasn't seen GATTACA, I highly recommend it. It's almost prophetic in how the fertility business has evolved into what it is today. These are eerie days, Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the unborn, pray for us!
I tried to explain to Evangelical Protestant friends of mine why IVF was immoral. But they didn’t really want to •hear• the argument, since they •wanted• to be able to choose the children that they would have. It wasn’t a matter of rational discussion. “God has given us this great technology. Why shouldn’t we use it?” was their response. It took a very long time, and going through the details of how IVF actually works, in order for them to accept that IVF is murder. They emotionally resisted that conclusion.
If Evangelical Protestants have such difficulty with IVF’s immorality because of the alleged power and convenience of the technology, I think it is going to be incredibly difficult to convince enough Americans so that Congress will pass a law against it.
I understand. However, I think just saying it: “conception outside the mother’s womb is totally unacceptable” will have an effect, especially as a response to those who are deploring surrogacy, homosexuals buying babies, embryo research, etc.
Yes, it must be said and I did eventually make them see the truth about IVF. It did put a strain on our friendship, especially with his wife. She wouldn’t admit that destroying human embryos was murder, despite the fact that she was entirely against abortion, and held that life begins at conception. But because they were in a storage container and not in a womb, she didn’t want to admit their humanity. It was completely contradictory.
I was simply relating a discussion that I had in order to say that there are wide variety of people that don’t see IVF as wrong. Nothing I said implied that Catholics had some kind of special status with respect to that. And it IS some evangelicals (I know from my own experience) who have not done much thinking about IVF. Catholics who use IVF have no excuse since the Church has emphatically and explicitly condemned it.
There are many, many excellent arguments against IVF and many dire warnings about it. I just want all the people to say, THEREFORE IT MUST BE COMPLETELY FORBIDDEN!
Amen. I do think, given the casual acceptance of all the culture of death (case in point: the jarringly high percentage of Catholics who use contraception), that it does help to flood the zone with those voices and arguments against all of it. Too much of the culture is just numb to it all. And, as Paul VI warned, one of the great roots of that numbness is contraception. So much of the evil of the culture or death flows from that subtle practice:
A coworker of mine ended up carrying a child, for her and her female partner, through IVF. Most people wildly celebrated it. The whole discussion preceding and surrounding it was sadly crass and, yes, eugenic. Due to the nature of the relationship and the workplace, I avoided the conversations and just tried to ask how she was feeling, if she needed more water, or a chance to put up her feet. I was pregnant at the same time, and felt conflicted about how to handle the whole thing. I wanted to show care for the pregnant woman in front of me, but not celebrate the sad situation. We had a few conversations about faith - my husband is a pastor - and I assume my growing family probably stood as its own confession. She never talked much with me about her personal life, but I prayed for her often.
Our broken culture creates supremely difficult situations that would have been unthinkable a century ago. I'm sure it was difficult to be alone in not "celebrating" that illicit couple, their unnatural conception, and their sanitized killing. Witness is sometimes quite difficult.
i'm with you on this. Would you include freezing one's eggs in the same category?
What are they for -- IVF, right? or is the idea they put them back in your body?
I'm thinking both methods. I'm not sure if they can freeze unfertilized eggs so those that bank their harvested eggs have to have some agreement with a sperm donor or facility that owns the sperm. I also think soon enough they will have invented/perfected artificial wombs. I don't think it's ridiculous how they are testing boundaries in women's sports, slowly draining title IX funds back to men. There are many moving parts to the big fertility picture. Devaluing a woman's superpower by making women own that 'right' to 'choose.' Wasting our fertility. I feel like we are just the Cassandras.
I think it must be forbidden on the grounds that it's not waving a magic wand as is suggested by the facile description, "freeze the eggs." The eggs are not readily harvested and the risk to the woman is significant. First do no harm.
Just going into the clinic to have that procedure, even if it's to return the eggs to her body and even if it were not risky, is to participate in (and give money to) an enterprise that engages in even more evil practices (one reason to be against embryo adoption).
I think it can be made to sound benign, but the reality is very messy -- like going to an abortion clinic for the innocent reason of getting a mammogram (of course, they don't offer mammograms). It's a no-go zone. Danger.
Those who accept the basics of the value of human beings as made in the image of God and redeemed by the Paschal Mystery of His Son invariably wind up at these same conclusions.
Excellent. As for the artificial wombs, Nicole Shanahan explains how those doing research for her wanted to go there:
"In Vitro Fertilization and Transhumanism as Illuminated by Nicole Shanahan and Mattias Desmet"
https://paritzer.substack.com/p/in-vitro-fertilization-and-transhumanism?r=yupor&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Natural selection seems to include giving one’s seed to Molech
This from an interview with the founder, a 24 yo named Kian Sadeghi:
Yeah. At that point, I'd left Penn. I was not even a student. People looked at me like you were crazy. Like, you know, there's a line of going a little bit crazy at some point. Like seriously, the line is much closer than people think when you really give your entire being into something. I mean, I joke internally that, you know, Nucleus is the only company, only genetics company ever started in a bedroom. I mean, it's just like never happened. Like, what do you mean? Like, usually it spins out of like the Broad or you know, Stanford, you know, bunch of scientists get together or something.
The young man is bonkers:
So if you look at the Nucleus team, half of us have a PhD, and I'm not in that half, the other half are below 25, right? It's like, it's such an eclectic mix of people and that's why it can be so hard because there's no established networks either when you leave college and you're like, I'm gonna go build this genetics company. I mean, that's the beauty of naivete too. Naivete is definitely a strength, right? So it is extremely, extremely non-trivial.
(https://foundersjournalpod.morningbrew.com/how-to-become-relentless-as-an-entrepreneur-kian-sadeghi-nucleus/)
Is that a quote from the podcast?
Leila it's from that link in bowlegs. It appears Peter Thiel the billionaire is a funding this. This AIN'T good.
I was able to copy and paste from the transcript of the podcast which I didn't watch.
Peter Thiel is Not Good. Worries me too.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but widespread public rejection of IVF will never happen in a culture that sees babies as fashion accessories and indicators of virtue.
The tricky part is that the Catholic Church has some hand in this. There’s little space for childless couples at most parishes. There is an unspoken sense that those with children are better people. I myself have heard even priests refer to children as “God’s reward” to purportedly good and holy couples.
So couples try to have children, and maybe they can’t, and maybe they lose a few babies, so they go for some checkups, get offered some medications, a small procedure to open up your fallopian tubes here, some birth control to “regulate your hormones” there, a trigger shot on day 20 of the cycle, and suddenly IUI doesn’t sound so bad, because conception still happens in the woman’s body, right?
All to achieve the glowing image of the nice Catholic family with all the accoutrements.
If enough people SAY what they KNOW -- that it is not good and should not be allowed, IVF can be banned.
The problem is we are in a mindset where we just let the crazed possessed people do awful things and then sit around trying to dial it back.
But people were sure that the kids would all be transed, but then they woke up.
We learned from lockdown that 3% of the people influence the rest. We have to be willing to SAY it's WRONG and cannot stand.
I understand and agree, but what I am saying is that the slippery slope is much wider and longer than we think. Not only abortion and IVF, but fertility drugs, progesterone creams, special acupuncturists, fertility detox diets, all amount to STRIVING for what is NOT REALITY at the moment, and therefore having no gratitude or appreciation for God’s will. We must eliminate all reproductive technologies AND the societal and religious pressure to have children that leads couples to dance with those particular devils.
Everyone wants a baby but no one will admit to what they did to get that baby.
Children are a blessing. The bible is full of passages about that. It’s not wrong of priests to point this out.
Societies need children. The pressure is not going to go away because it’s natural (and good!). Having children is GOOD, which is why it’s so tragic when people suffer from infertility.
The answer to infertility is not to say “having children doesn’t matter” - that’s false compassion. Infertility wouldn’t hurt so much if having children didn’t matter. That’s a huge part of the hurt.
Not all technology is bad. There are ethical, licit ways to help couples conceive. You do not have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. An anti-inflammatory diet to help fertility is in no way comparable ethically to IVF, and it’s mad to me that they would be conflated?! I don’t feel like any woman would need to “admit” to acupuncture for fertility reasons, because it’s an ethical non-issue.
Treatments to help a woman’s (or man’s) reproductive and endocrine system work as they ought (including, yes, progesterone supplementation for women with low progesterone) is striving for health and the fullness of God’s design in the body. The result of that improved health may be a return to fertility- not always, but many times! Is that awful? I struggled with infertility, received help in a cooperative way in accord with God’s design for my body and my marriage, and now I am able to conceive children naturally. I could have avoided seeking (again- legitimate, cooperative) fertility support, and I may have never carried a child to term. There is a distinction here between processes and technologies that harm bodily integrity and design and those that honor it.
I’m sorry, I personally still think it is unconscionable to use any kind of aid, even if it is seen as “natural”, to conceive. It comes from a place of striving for something you want instead of accepting and giving thanks for what you do have. It is a consumerist, humanist view that does not respect the will of God.
Hmmm.... what if your digestion is off? Do you take something or try to change your diet? Or do you just accept it because striving to eat is consumerist?
The reproductive system can go awry just the way the digestive system can.
I think there is something off in your logic. You need to be able to make distinctions.
Anything can become an obsession, but there's a difference in kind between manipulating the process of reproduction, wrenching it out of its context, commodifying the baby -- and trying to correct defects in one's system in order to be successful in having a baby in the normal, God-given, marital way.
It's unfortunate for those who suffer from infertility that there is indeed a sort of penumbra of suspicion that falls on them, simply because the vast majority of people are trying not to have babies. It might help to realize that suspicion is misplaced but at least coming from a place of resisting that overwhelming fact.
It's also the case that when one suffers, one can fall into interpreting glances or words in the worst light. People may not mean to appear judgmental. They may be awkward or inept. The truth is, babies really are a blessing, the blessing of marriage -- its fruit, its natural outcome, its crown. So it's an extra sacrifice to realize that for the good of everyone, this sense of goodness has to be cultivated. So much today militates against it.
Those who are in such communities, though, need to be extra careful to refrain from judging and to be kind and assume the best. It's very hard to endure infertility -- a real cross, and one that is increasingly common. I often think it is easy to fall into a grievous error either way: if you ask, you are seen to be judgmental if the answer is "no children"; if you don't ask, you are seen to be cold.
I think everyone has to try harder and give more grace.
I think if you are determined to see the culture as anti-children, you will find all of the evidence to support your conclusion.
What are your thoughts on childless Catholic marriages? Those that, despite having normal relations, simply never conceive and have no interest in reproductive technologies of any kind? Should each party go their separate ways since “the fruit, natural outcome, the crown” of the marriage was never obtained?
I am not sure if you are Catholic nor where you are coming from here, but all of your questions have been answered. The married couple’s love is fruitful in many ways, biological children being the natural and preeminent one but by no means the only. I think that question of accepting the fruit God is giving is an important one for infertile couples to grapple with and discover!
Certainly no couple is obliged to do everything in their power to have biological children. Many would tell you that that frantic striving was detrimental and it was better to accept God’s plan, as you say.
Suggesting that a woman should simply live with hormonal dysfunction is an interesting conclusion but certainly she would be within her rights to do so…
Oh, no, I think you're mistaking priests encouraging couples to live in accordance with their nature with actually valuing those that can have children over those that can't. So many couples reject the gift of children, so the priests are just encouraging couples to accept them! That doesn't mean they think those with children are better people than those that are unable to conceive (or who can conceive but can't carry to term). It's only in our "baby resistant" culture that this even has to be said.
And it is these women who see the gift of the child who have the most compassion for those struggling with fertility.
It would be easy for me to think "there's no space for those just married" or "there's little space for those that homeschool at my parish, so much energy goes to the school" but neither of those are true at all. The devotional life of the parish is available to everyone. At my parish, most of the activities for adults are for ALL adults-- single, married, young, old etc. There are a few things just for the parents of the school kids and a few things just for the older adults (65+) but that's it.
There is no slippery slope between trying to improve your health in order to conceive a child and IUI, let alone IVF. They are categorically different. One helps the woman achieve optimal health (for optimal health includes fertility!) and allows the child to be conceived in the loving embrace of his parents; the other degrades the father and makes conception a medical procedure.
Yes, some women cannot achieve optimal health and cannot get pregnant. It's heavy cross to bear, and at some point the couple has to recognize that the work toward health isn't working-- trying to make it work can certainly verge on not accepting God's will for you life. But it is still an entirely different thing from IUI or IVF.
I want to make bumper stickers that say, “Men and Women Are Different,” “Sex Makes Babies,” and “Children Need Their Parents.” However, I don’t want to have to explain the second one to my own children of tender years. The other two are stupid obvious even to them but here we are.
Yes I’ve had that exact conversation… someone admits to thinking ivf is ethically wrong but they say “I could never be seen as against it on social media because a friend did it and I want to be seen as supportive and sweet above all things”
I’ve heard this called toxic empathy. What do you think about that phrase? Do you think empathy can be used to twist the truth, or do you think empathy is always a good thing even when it’s displaying itself like this in society?
Empathy is extremely dangerous. "Tenderness leads to the gas chamber" Flannery O'Connor said, so memorably.
Compassion is when you are willing to suffer with. Empathy easily becomes abandoning the good of the person.
I’m glad to have your take on it! Thanks!
I would call it the sin of vanity, which is an inordinate concern for how one is perceived (I want to be SEEN AS; I want to be praised by the world, and I have never even met this Galilean and don't know who you are talking about.)
Calling it vanity has the merit of not having to tack on the word toxic since even the world dimly understands that it is undesirable to be called (seen as!) vain.
Everyone is not against eugenics. It is the natural extension of competitive parents over controlling their projects' (oops, I mean kids') lives in a moral relativism where winning against the Jones is the goal.
The Nucleus web site is couched in terms that are hard to oppose. Why wouldn't I want my child to be healthier, smarter, taller, more beautiful. I would be a bad parent if I didn't want them to be their best, right?
Winning is the moral absolute, not doing the right thing. To paraphrase Pilate "What is right?" Many, many no longer know and many do not wish to.
I agree. I thought it was interesting that all the comments were negative. I think everyone is against Nazis doing eugenics. But they don't think that what THEY are doing is evil. And of course, there is at some level a sort of natural eugenics, where we are attracted to a spouse in part because we think we will have awesome babies with that spouse.
Where I think most recoil is at the notion of killing off babies to get the "perfect" one. That said, abortion has long provided that "service."
So yes, I was being rhetorical.
If anyone hasn't seen GATTACA, I highly recommend it. It's almost prophetic in how the fertility business has evolved into what it is today. These are eerie days, Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the unborn, pray for us!
We need the help of Our Lady and all the saints at this dark hour! Pray for us, all holy men and women!
Yes. I second that recommendation: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
I tried to explain to Evangelical Protestant friends of mine why IVF was immoral. But they didn’t really want to •hear• the argument, since they •wanted• to be able to choose the children that they would have. It wasn’t a matter of rational discussion. “God has given us this great technology. Why shouldn’t we use it?” was their response. It took a very long time, and going through the details of how IVF actually works, in order for them to accept that IVF is murder. They emotionally resisted that conclusion.
If Evangelical Protestants have such difficulty with IVF’s immorality because of the alleged power and convenience of the technology, I think it is going to be incredibly difficult to convince enough Americans so that Congress will pass a law against it.
I understand. However, I think just saying it: “conception outside the mother’s womb is totally unacceptable” will have an effect, especially as a response to those who are deploring surrogacy, homosexuals buying babies, embryo research, etc.
Yes, it must be said and I did eventually make them see the truth about IVF. It did put a strain on our friendship, especially with his wife. She wouldn’t admit that destroying human embryos was murder, despite the fact that she was entirely against abortion, and held that life begins at conception. But because they were in a storage container and not in a womb, she didn’t want to admit their humanity. It was completely contradictory.
It’s not the Evangelicals. So many Catholics use IVF and hide it.
Yes, that is true. Sadly.
I was simply relating a discussion that I had in order to say that there are wide variety of people that don’t see IVF as wrong. Nothing I said implied that Catholics had some kind of special status with respect to that. And it IS some evangelicals (I know from my own experience) who have not done much thinking about IVF. Catholics who use IVF have no excuse since the Church has emphatically and explicitly condemned it.
Excellent. Getting down to brass tacks! I concur and add:
"In Vitro Fertilization and Transhumanism as Illuminated by Nicole Shanahan and Mattias Desmet"
https://paritzer.substack.com/p/in-vitro-fertilization-and-transhumanism?r=yupor&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
There are many, many excellent arguments against IVF and many dire warnings about it. I just want all the people to say, THEREFORE IT MUST BE COMPLETELY FORBIDDEN!
Amen. I do think, given the casual acceptance of all the culture of death (case in point: the jarringly high percentage of Catholics who use contraception), that it does help to flood the zone with those voices and arguments against all of it. Too much of the culture is just numb to it all. And, as Paul VI warned, one of the great roots of that numbness is contraception. So much of the evil of the culture or death flows from that subtle practice:
"The Deep, Broad Root of the Culture of Death"
https://paritzer.substack.com/p/the-deep-thick-root-of-the-culture?r=yupor&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Thank you for writing this.
A coworker of mine ended up carrying a child, for her and her female partner, through IVF. Most people wildly celebrated it. The whole discussion preceding and surrounding it was sadly crass and, yes, eugenic. Due to the nature of the relationship and the workplace, I avoided the conversations and just tried to ask how she was feeling, if she needed more water, or a chance to put up her feet. I was pregnant at the same time, and felt conflicted about how to handle the whole thing. I wanted to show care for the pregnant woman in front of me, but not celebrate the sad situation. We had a few conversations about faith - my husband is a pastor - and I assume my growing family probably stood as its own confession. She never talked much with me about her personal life, but I prayed for her often.
Good work, Leah.
Our broken culture creates supremely difficult situations that would have been unthinkable a century ago. I'm sure it was difficult to be alone in not "celebrating" that illicit couple, their unnatural conception, and their sanitized killing. Witness is sometimes quite difficult.