Catholic bishops in the United States have criticized the measures taken by the government of US President Donald Trump to expand access to fertilization in vitro (IVF), a fertility treatment contrary to Church teaching that routinely discards human embryos.
Trump announced on October 16 that the government reached an agreement with a pharmaceutical company to reduce the cost of some IVF drugs and that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is working to expedite the review of a new drug.
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IVF is a fertility treatment in which doctors fuse sperm and eggs in a laboratory to create human embryos that are implanted in the mother’s womb. Millions of leftover embryos that do not implant have been destroyed or used in scientific research. Some remain frozen indefinitely.
“We firmly reject the promotion of procedures such as IVF that…freeze or destroy precious human beings and treat them as property,” three bishops said in a joint statement released by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
“All human life, born and unborn, is sacred and loved by God,” they continued. “Without diminishing the dignity of people born through IVF, we must recognize that children have the right to be born from a natural and exclusive act of conjugal love, and not from the technological intervention of a company. And harmful government action to expand access to IVF should also not push people of faith to be complicit in its evils.”
The bishops added: “We will continue to review these new policies and look forward to engaging in broader dialogue with the administration and Congress, always proclaiming the sanctity of life and marriage.”
The statement was signed by Bishop Robert Barron, chair of the USCCB Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth; Bishop Kevin Rhoades, president of the Committee for Religious Freedom; and Bishop Daniel Thomas, chair of the Pro-Life Activities Committee.
The Bishop of Arlington, Virginia, Bishop Michael Burbidge, also released a statement criticizing the effort to expand IVF, calling such treatments “unethical and unjust.”
“God authorizes and blesses the life of every child born through IVF, even as He intends the true good and flourishing of all people,” said Burbidge, who previously chaired the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities.
“The stark reality, however, is that IVF subverts the dignity of parents as well as the lives of unborn children,” she said. “Every child born through IVF will one day know that he or she has many absent brothers and sisters, who, although equal in dignity and rights, were conceived but were deliberately denied their right to life. This is because many of the embryonic children produced by each IVF process will be discarded, having been deemed undesirable, or frozen, having been deemed unnecessary. By its nature, IVF creates and destroys human lives.”
Pro-life fertility treatments were also included
Regulators are also working to expand options for employers to offer fertility coverage for both IVF and treatments “that address the root causes of infertility.”
Although IVF is contrary to Church teaching, some of these latter treatments may include options compatible with Catholic teachinglike the natural procreation technology (NaProTechnology)y fertility education and medical management.
In the USCCB joint statement, the bishops wrote that they are “grateful” that the administration included non-IVF fertility treatments that provide “comprehensive and holistic restorative reproductive medicine, which can ethically help address infertility and its underlying causes.”
Similarly, Burbidge called the inclusion “a good opportunity for all employers, and especially for the Church and its apostolates, to improve their health care coverage by offering new or expanded coverage for ethical fertility care.”
“It is my hope that, by the grace of God and in time, all Christians and people of good will, especially including our civil authorities, will come to encourage and favor ethical and life-affirming fertility care that is conducive to the true health and flourishing of American families,” Burbidge wrote.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA.
Tyler Arnold
Tyler Arnold is a reporter for the National Catholic Register. He previously worked at The Center Square and has published in a variety of outlets, including The Associated Press, National Review, The American Conservative, and The Federalist.