Although President Donald Trump’s executive order (EO) on “Expanding Access to In Vitro Fertilization” (IVF) is undoubtedly well-intentioned, it opens the door to numerous ethical and practical problems.
Technological Fertility Fix
Policymakers should note that IVF is not the only way to address declining fertility. The evident approach to solving a problem is to identify the causes and deal with them directly.
There is a fertility technology that does just that: NaProTechnology.
“The NaPro infertility approach is disease-based,” Sister Renee Mirkes, director of the Center for NaProEthics, told Catholic Vote in March. “It views infertility or subfertility as a symptom of underlying organic hormonal, or ovulatory dysfunctions. And because NaPro treats these underlying diseases/conditions by comprehensively evaluating, diagnosing, and effectively treating them, NaProTechnology, both nationally and internationally, has been extremely successful in helping infertile couples to conceive, gestate, and give birth to a healthy newborn.”
Mirkes told the publication the success rate of NaProTechnology is 50 to 90 percent, depending on the cause.
Ethics Charges
After Trump issued his executive order, Mirkes wrote an open letter to Vice President J. D. Vance urging the administration to promote effective fertility technology that avoids the ethical and governance pitfalls of IVF.
Mirkes outlined IVF ethical problems in her Catholic Vote interview: “any reproductive technology—like IVF—that replaces the act of intercourse with a laboratory technique that simulates the mere procreative structure of the marital act is immoral; it is a grave injustice or a tyranny that fails to lead the couple to greater happiness, greater fulfillment.
“Additionally, any reproductive technology, such as IVF, that fails to respect the dignity of the baby being conceived—by threatening the child’s right to life, cryopreserving the child, or exposing the embryonic human being to further objectification via research—tyrannically deprives the newly conceived human being of his or her just right to be conceived, gestated, born into, and raised within the marital love of his or her parents.”
Family Problems
Policymakers should consider how significantly an IVF explosion could redefine the family, says Mark Blocher, a medical ethicist and author of Missional Medicine—Restoring the Soul of Medicine. The technology could open a floodgate of individuals wanting to raise children outside traditional marriage, eroding “the morally special nature of human procreation as a feature of an intact nuclear family with both a mother and father to nurture their children,” said Blocher.
Raising children without marriage causes numerous problems, says Blocher.
“The cultural breakdown of heterosexual marriage has brought about significant social pathologies that affect mental and physical health, so why should taxpayers fund via tax credits a further erosion of cohesiveness and belonging in American families?” said Blocher.
Sympathy for childless couples does not mean every possible response is ethical, says Blocher.
“IVF is not a morally neutral technology,” said Blocher. “Expressing concern over the moral hazards IVF entails does not indicate a lack of empathy for infertile couples. The EO misconstrues compassion for infertile couples as a justification for encouraging unethical solutions. Just because IVF works doesn’t make it ethical.”
AnneMarie Schieber ([email protected]) is the managing editor of Health Care News.
AnneMarie Schieber is a research fellow at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Health Care News, Heartland’s monthly newspaper for health care reform.
