Hermenuetics

Comments

I feel for families who have fertility issues but I don't think we can allow our emotions to mitigate the moral gravity of IVF and surrogacy. These procedures, while they do allow couples to have children, allow for the manufacturing of children, making them more of a commodity than a real human being. And I stand by the Catholic Church's teachings that IVF and surrogacy are wrong and shouldn't be used because children do not come as a result of sex, sex which is how God decided to make babies. And some may say that with advancing technology God might permit IVF use but would God really allow such control over our fertility? Would the use of IVF cut into the idea of handing our lives over to God or would it be us taking our lives into our hands?

Posted By: Jessica | August 18, 2011 1:01 PM

I disagree, Jessica. I understand and respect that this is the Catholic church's teaching. However, where do they draw the line? Why then would an organ transplant not constitute taking our lives into our hands?

My husband and I strongly considered IVF but had not yet moved forward with it when my hysterectomy and resulting paralysis occurred. Our biggest concern was multiples, knowing that we personally would not be able to discard or donate embryos, but also realizing that we weren't quite in a position for multiple children at that time. Of course, IVF is no longer an option for us now.

In the end, I believe that IVF is a very personal decision. Each couple must decide what is best for themselves.

Posted By: Shari@Rain into Rainbows | August 18, 2011 2:47 PM

I have to disagree with Jessica's comment. Although I see where she's coming from, it's definitely said by someone who hasn't experienced the pain of infertility, and therefore it's easy to say that IVF and surrogacy are wrong. Yes, I agree that God decided to make babies through sex. In a perfect world. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world, and so many people have to deal with sickness and disease. Infertility is a legitimate medical problem, and the Lord has given us intelligent doctors who have come up with ways to combat this problem. Does someone who believes IVF is wrong also believe it's wrong to take any medications or go through any treatments for any medical problem? I would think that if doing IVF is taking too much control over our fertility, participating in any treatment for other conditions (from a cold to cancer) would be taking too much control and we need to just do nothing. No! I believe God gave us medical advances to use. Yes, we live in a sinful world and there are ways it can be taken too far, but I firmly believe IVF and surrogacy are fine for Christians when used with certain guidelines and done responsibly.
Anyone who has gone through IVF knows full well that it is still completely up to God whether you get pregnant or not. IVF helps things along when there are conditions preventing pregnancy through sex, but it is not a guarantee! Many people go through the ordeal of IVF and never get pregnant, they certainly don't feel a sense of control over their fertility at that point. So, it is absolutely not manufacturing children or making them a commodity. My children are absolutely real human beings, and I thank the Lord every day that He allowed us to have them, even though it was through IVF (actually, I think I appreciate them more because we had to go through such an effort and it was totally worth it!).
Also, you cannot judge what is in someone's heart. My husband and I both believed strongly that the Lord wanted us to have biological children. We may consider adoption at some point, but the Lord has just not called us to that yet. When you haven't gone through this trial yourself, it's so easy to look at someone else's situation and say they shouldn't do IVF or they should adopt or whatever. But, you don't know what is in their heart and what the Lord has called them to.

Posted By: Elizabeth | August 18, 2011 2:49 PM

God also gave us brains. It seems that in this area, fertility, there are some who would propose that this one thing didn't come from God.

"would God really allow such control over our fertility?" It would seem that he has.

Posted By: TM | August 18, 2011 2:59 PM

I had a friend years ago whose husband wanted a child of his even though he had adopted her son. I can understand his feelings but then my friend went ahead and did all the fertility treatments and had several miscarriages because of her husband needing a child of his own. They finally conceived but there was such a cost physically to the wife.

I have three biological children and three adopted children. The only difference between them as where they are in my heart is how I got them.

Adoption is some ways is a whole lot harder than natural birth and takes lots of commitment and patience (which trying to conceive does too).

God gave us the wisdom behind the fertility treatments but I would plead with Believers to consider adoption as much as fertility treatments. There are so many children around the world who need homes. It truly is a ministry. And if it comes to cost, God will provide for His work. I saw Him provide the funds we needed to adopt our three youngest children. I urge you to check out http://reecesrainbow.org and http://theblessingofverity.com.

Posted By: Jane Hinrichs | August 18, 2011 3:37 PM

Something I would like to see mentioned in these discussions is the issue of embryo adoption. Couples who go through IVF can put their embryos up for adoption. My husband is infertile, and so having our own genetic children is not possible, but I would like to be a part of as much of our child's life as possible, and so this is an option we are considering.

Posted By: Noel C | August 18, 2011 6:11 PM

Hi Ellen,

I am really excited to read the second half of your post too. As you pointed out, it's never quite so easy to figure out. There are a lot of gray areas...but yet there are some areas that we have to stand firm in. You know a whole lot more about this than I do. These type of fertility alternatives seem to be becoming more popular. Thank you for the well-thought out post!

Posted By: Marlena | August 18, 2011 8:31 PM

After reading about the woman who apparently thought God told her to do the IVF in a dream and reading the comments, it's apparent that there is a huge need for a Biblical view of IVF, and other reproductive technologies.

This issue isn't a personal decision. It's a moral decision; one that shouldn't be based on feelings or dreams.

God created families - starting with a husband and wife. They are the ones who create a child through the means that God gave us. Sometimes the death or divorce happens, step-parents come into the picture, rape, adoption...but the "ideal" is a married couple who procreate and have their own biological children and raise their biological children.

Is the use of a third party's gametes, or even a surrogate, really up for grabs? Does God condone this method of creating a family? If marriage is a picture of Christ and His bride, what's a Christian couple to do with their marriage?

Egg and sperm donors are not real donors. "Donor" is a euphemism for "father" or "mother" - a clinic term meant to draw attention away from who the "donor" actually is; a parent.

As a person who is a Christian who is also donor conceived, I can tell you that I mourn the father I may never know, who sold his sperm so that strangers could have his baby. Yes, I know my biological mother and all of her family, but I'm missing out on my father, half siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, Christmases, birthdays, Thanksgivings, summer vacations...the list is endless. And they are missing out on me and my children.

Do I love my Dad, the man who raised me? Yes, indeed. And yet I'm missing half of my family because of their "personal choice". They transferred their pain on to me.

Yes, it is *easy* for me to say that ART is wrong, because I don't struggle with infertility. Just because it's easy doesn't mean that it's wrong, and it doesn't mean that I can't be sympathetic to the infertile couple.

Posted By: Stephanie | August 18, 2011 8:44 PM

Catholic is not a convenience, it is a belief and a lifestyle. The Hance woman had her tubes tied, then invitro. Both go against Catholic beliefs. I doubt God came to her with any suggestions.The whole article sounded like a woman that needed pychiatric help,not a candidate for invitro. We have adopted, you love adopted children the same, and give them the family they need. Sounds like God's plan to me.

Posted By: vicky | August 18, 2011 11:39 PM

On the question whether technologies such as surrogacy and In-vitro fertilization (IVF) or laboratory fertilization are wrong, Christians should consider it MORALLY RIGHT.
Jesus Christ became flesh through this process, in a way.
Only it was not called IVF then but "CONCEIVE BY THE HOLY SPIRIT" that explains why Mary is the mother of the Man Jesus but never the mother of God. Besides, if Jesus has the blood of Mary then He would have had the sinful nature of man.
For further explanation about this, you can email me.
God bless! By the way, don't make it too hard with your verification.

Posted By: Ric V. Avelino | August 19, 2011 12:48 AM

"Stories matter. But stories are not all that matter."

I am so encouraged to hear someone say this! Our society has become so accustomed to basing our ethics on our "stories" - that is, on our experiences. Something may (or may not) be morally questionable, but far too often the "defense" for either side is simply, "But you don't understand...in MY case..."

It's difficult to disentangle our own experiences and feelings from what is right, and it seems few people even try these days. Looking forward to reading more on this! Thanks!

Posted By: stacie | August 19, 2011 8:50 AM

Ric, yes, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but we mere humans are not.

Is it morally right to create people with the purpose of cutting out half of their biological family?

Is it morally right to reduce people to commodities to be bought and sold?

Is it morally right to sell your sperm or eggs, knowing that you are not going to take responsiblity for the child who is created with your gametes? That's similar to having a one night stand and then telling the mother that she's on her own, because you aren't going to take care of the child.

Is it morally right to create embryos - human life - in the hopes that one of them "takes" thereby saying that it's ok to create life knowing good and well that most are going to die?

Is it morally right to entice young women to sell their eggs because they need/want the money?

Is it morally right to sign away all rights and responsibilities you have toward your child? Can you even do that?

Are you going to plead "moral right-ness" to people who have abandonment issues and identity issues because their biological parent was just a number on a file and because they were created in a lab instead of from a relationship between their parents?

Is it morally right that the fertility industry makes billions of dollars every year ignoring everyone who disagrees with what they are doing?

Is it morally right to have NO regulations? - hundreds of children can be born of a single donor.

Is it morally right to take outsource pregnancy?

Is it morally right for a child to have 5 parents? The egg donor, the sperm donor, the surrogate, the adoptive mother, and adoptive father? What happens when those adoptive parents divorce and NO ONE wants the child? Think I'm exagerating? It's happened.

Is it morally right for a woman to carry a child, bond with that child, give birth to the child, then rip the child away from the only mother it's ever known?

Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but everyone else not conceived the normal way was conceived by a doctor.

Posted By: Stephanie | August 19, 2011 10:20 AM

Stephanie,

Thank you for asking the right questions and leading the discuss back to a biblical understanding of our reproductive bodies.

Posted By: Jennifer Lahl | August 19, 2011 10:36 AM

Stephanie,
You have quite a bit of wisdom to share. I am not religious, and I do not think one needs to have a religious belief to agree that the answer to all your questions is "no" but as a "donor" conceived person myself, your perspective and opinion resonates quite intimately with mine.
This discussion should not be about conflicts of loss but about morals and ethics
-Karen

Posted By: Karen Clark | August 19, 2011 7:21 PM

After many years working in and writing on abstinence/sex education, I came to see the vast interrelationship of all matters related to God's wisdom on family and children. In addition to issues discussed above, our personal beliefs on how best to "create a baby" mold the personal and social nature of love, dating (versus courtship), marriage, adoption and more.

Contraception has led to an entitlement view about children...we are entitled to reject fertility. Overnight, when contraception was introduced "for the benefit of married couples," a sex-for-sex sake culture erupted, producing tremendous negative emotional and physical results. Of the many, I mention only three.

Firstly, while liberal feminists tout the maternal ideals of womanhood, they have helped build a society that exploits women as "tools" to provide "free" sexual pleasure without the complications of children...until we are ready for children...at which time it promotes technological solutions...which again exploit the very maternal nature God created and that we previously rejected.

Secondly, STDs. which are epidemic, along with abortions, divorce and delayed marriage, account for the tremendous rise in the fertility industry. We pay a price for sexual freedom by rejecting and destroying our fertility. Precious little truth about these important issues is ever permitted to reach the public in the media, tightly controlled to support the technologies that are the foundation for "free" sex.

Thirdly, mentioned several times here, adoption has always been God's gift to all involved: the child, the parents, and the extended family. Because we have done so much to control fertilization, many now elevate the "biological child" as superior to parenting the child in need. We live in a society that is proving just as willing to dispose of actual children through abandonment or neglect as we are willing to dispose of the embryo. This was not what we were promised by the "every child, a wanted child" sloganeers.

God has provided amply for humans in his wisdom. By rejecting one element in his plan, we have disrupted to entire plan. By demanding that God's plan provide for what we want, we have replaced His wisdom with our egos and pride.

Catholics have served all of us in persevering in Truth and working to explain it in ways we can grasp. I am not Catholic, but if I could return to my child-bearing years, I would use natural family planning (NFP) to "control" our family and receive gladly God's will in either having or not having children. If we put as much energy into promoting, teaching and funding NFP, people would learn much about human relationships along with the planning of their families.

Thank you, Ellen, and to all who give serious thought to her article and to respectful debate in their comments.

Posted By: Jane | August 20, 2011 9:30 AM

As far as the Hance woman, let us not forget she was not unable to conceive, she elected to "tie her tubes"as a form of birth control. After reading that story, I think it is safe to say religion nor God played any role in her life and that is why she blamed God. The story had a bizzare touch, it was everyone's idea but her's to have a baby? She doesn't take responsibility for anything.God Bless her children.

Posted By: vicky | August 20, 2011 10:39 PM

@Stephanie -- You appear to believe the only Christian answer to your "is it morally right" questions is "NO!" I have to disagree.

"Is it morally right to create people with the purpose of cutting out half of their biological family?"

-- Doesn't traditional adoption also remove the biological family?

"Is it morally right to reduce people to commodities to be bought and sold?"

-- Eggs and sperm are not people. Don't traditional adoptive parents often enter into agreements to pay the living expenses of the biological mother? How is that morally different from paying egg or sperm donors a fee?

"Is it morally right to sell your sperm or eggs, knowing that you are not going to take responsiblity for the child who is created with your gametes? That's similar to having a one night stand ..."

-- How is providing sperm or an egg to a parent or parents who WANT(S) to raise a child without the donor's help in any way like a one night stand who abandons the woman he impregnates who may or may not want to raise a child on her own. Plus, the one night stand can be legally required to provide for the child until the child is an adult. The parents of child born of donated sperm or egg agree to take on that responsibility on their own.

"Is it morally right to create embryos - human life - in the hopes that one of them "takes" thereby saying that it's ok to create life knowing good and well that most are going to die?"

-- While embryos in a petri dish have moral worth, they are not human beings.

"Is it morally right to entice young women to sell their eggs because they need/want the money?"

-- Every medical procedure that can be done for good can also be done for bad motives. Outlawing it in all circumstances is not the answer.

"Is it morally right to sign away all rights and responsibilities you have toward your child? Can you even do that?"

-- Yes and yes. Don't you realize that in order for the adoptive family to adopt a child put up for adoption, the biological parents must legally relinquish all of their rights and responsibilities? I thought the pro-life movement thought this was a GOOD idea if the biological parents cannot care for the child?

"Are you going to plead "moral right-ness" to people who have abandonment issues and identity issues because their biological parent was just a number on a file and because they were created in a lab instead of from a relationship between their parents?"

-- Many, many adoptive children are the result of a pregnancy in which there was no "relationship" between their biological parents. What makes your situation any different? You are made in the image of God, however you got your biological start. You are not some lesser species.

"Is it morally right that the fertility industry makes billions of dollars every year ignoring everyone who disagrees with what they are doing?"

-- But the fertility industry also helps millions of people who are helped by the advances in technology that God gifted to the doctors who developed them. Any technology can be used for good or for evil. Should an industry that helps millions of people be shut down because some people disagree with what they are doing?

"Is it morally right to have NO regulations? - hundreds of children can be born of a single donor."

-- This is just a patently false premise. Of course there are regulations.

"Is it morally right to take outsource pregnancy?"

-- Under certain circumstances, YES.

"Is it morally right for a child to have 5 parents? ... What happens when those adoptive parents divorce and NO ONE wants the child? Think I'm exagerating? It's happened.

-- Don't traditionally adopted children have 4 parents? Why is 4 OK and 5 is wrong? When adoptive parents divorce, those parents have EXACTLY the same legal rights and obligations to their adoptive child as they would had the child been their biological child. That's the legal result of adoption.

"Is it morally right for a woman to carry a child, bond with that child, give birth to the child, then rip the child away from the only mother it's ever known?"

-- How is that different from a woman who gives up her child for adoption at birth, which is sometimes the very best thing she can do for her child? In fact, a surrogate mother arguably has less bond to the child she is carrying than a biological mom who gives her child up for adoption.

I'm sorry you feel abandoned, but the reality is, without the reproductive technology you're so enraged about, you wouldn't exist at all.

Posted By: Christian Lawyer | August 21, 2011 1:25 PM

To me the following question posed by Stephanie trumps all the others - "Is it morally right to create embryos - human life - in the hopes that one of them "takes" thereby saying that it's ok to create life knowing good and well that most are going to die?"

Not only are they going to die but many (most?) will be selectively terminated. And those that are never implanted have a good chance of being used in medical research.

Posted By: Christine | August 23, 2011 12:59 PM

@Christian Lawyer
I can see that you want to feel compassion for Stephanie but you are having trouble reconciling her frustration with the fact that she appears to you to be angry about the very technology that caused her to exist.

I think it might help if you understood that she is not enraged artificial reproductive technology she is outraged at the shortsightedness of her mother, her father and her step father when they cooked up their vision of her life 30 some odd years ago. She's upset at the laws that allow people to privately contract away their parental obligations to their own offspring, because how is that fair? Other children get to have fathers and step fathers, why not them? Why does half their family have to be sold right out from under them when the law could simply make their fathers responsible as they make other other unmarried fathers resposible for their children. People in Stephanie's position don't wish they were never born they just wish they were not cut off from their biological families, they wish their fathers had done all the things that other children's father's have to do for them when they are not married to their mothers, like acknowledging their existence for starters. Its wonderful to have a great social father but that does not have to come at the expense of having a great biological father as well. If they were going to be abandoned by their biological fathers, at least give the kids the same level of legal protection that other children have under the same circumstances, don't let them off the hook because their Mother's said it was ok and their husband's agreed to it. These kids end up with less than they deserve, they should have deserved their biological mother and father's protection and support but instead they got their mother and step father's support. Something is missing. They had to loose half their family in order to gain a step family. How is that fair?
There is nothing technological about the contractual arrangements these adults are making buying and selling parental rights to their biological children and there is nothing technological about the laws that are letting them escape detection and documentation. If these practices are going to exist the least a biological father can do is be recorded as the father and allow the child to be adopted by the mother's wife in a standard step parent adoption. At least there is nothing being concealed that way and the child's birth record would accurately count them as a member of their own paternal family.
So I don't know if its any clearer to you now that its not their conceptions that make them different from others its the way they are being raised and not raised respectively by their genetic parents that makes them different. Its the lack of record and legal oversight that makes them different from those of us raised by either or our biological or adoptive parents. Stephanie deserves the same treatment under the law as an adopted child for instance. Don't you think?

Your perception that she feels abandoned may or may not be accurate. Closer to the truth she may just be super curious at this point and steadfastly determined to help stop other people from making the same mistake in judgement that her parents did. They probably did not think of her as loosing half her family when they decided to supplant her biological father with her step father but that is what happened. So maybe now you see that children should not have to loose their biological relatives in order to be part of their mother's family or her husbands family. Its possible for the child to loose none of that and still exist if the parents and step parent are willing to put the child's interests before their own desire to appear like a biological family.

I really am assuming that you wrote your questions out of a desire to wrap your head around why children in these arrangements can feel like such tools. They are not bratty or ungrateful, they are happy to exist and they are using their life experience to hopefully make it easier on the next kid. I hope that makes some sense.

Posted By: Anonymous | August 26, 2011 4:46 PM