ivf – Mama Needs Coffee

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Contraception, Culture of Death, IVF, Living Humanae Vitae, Marriage, NFP, Parenting, planned parenthood, politics, Pro Life, Sex, sin, Theology of the Body, vasectomies, Women's Health

Humanae Vitae at 50: how does a Catholic respond to sex in the modern world?

July 25, 2018

Today marks exactly half a century since the publication of Humanae vitae, Bl. Paul VI’s prescient missive to the Church in response to the modern world’s views on sexuality and the human person. Reading it now through the warped lens of the 21st century’s concept of sex, it seems extraordinary that there was once a time the world was not arguing over the existence of multiple choice genders and contraception as a fundamental human right.

Progress, eh?

I look around at our culture and I see a lot of suffering. Children unsure of their parents’ commitment to the family and uncertain of their own place in the world, women who feel compelled to compete with their bodies in the sexual marketplace, babies snuffed out of existence because they had the misfortune to be conceived as the result of a violent act or a contraceptive failure.

There are a lot of people in a lot of pain. But the situation is not without hope. I personally had to hit a sort of rock bottom in my own life before I was able to recognize my own misery and cry out for something more.

The Church was there, and she was able to offer me something better. Discovering Humanae vitae made a big impression on me when I was finding my way back to belief, and it has not ceased to fascinate me in all the years since. It is brief, concise, and only seems to become more applicable as time passes.

There are four predictions which Pope Paul makes in HV, things which perhaps seemed far fetched in 1968, but which have themselves wretchedly accurate in 2018.

First, he envisioned a rise in infidelity and a general moral decline. The Pope noted that the widespread use of contraception would “lead to conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality.” Everyone knows that the rate of divorce is up and the rate of marriage is down and we’re watching things on network television that would have been censored as pornographic only a generation ago. I’d like to take things a step further and propose some remedies to what ails us.

First and foremost, if you are married or are preparing for a vocation to marriage, be all in. A holy marriage is a beacon of light in a darkening cultural landscape, and a vital witness to your children, friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Commit yourself to chastity – both before and within marriage. That means setting clear boundaries while dating and knowing your own and your partner’s limits when it comes to sexual temptation.

Renew your marriage vows with a sense of reverence for the sacred nature of sex and a delight in the goodness and dignity of your spouse. Don’t buy in to the culture’s cheapening views on sex as primarily recreational or selfish. Commit to studying and growing in your practice of authentic Christian sexuality with your husband or wife. “50 Shades of Gray” has nothing on “Theology of the Body.”

Secondly, Pope Paul foresaw a devastating loss of respect for women. He argued that “the man” will lose respect for “the woman” and “no longer (care) for her physical and psychological equilibrium” and will come to “the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.”

Make a pledge to reject pornography in all its forms. Find a trusted spiritual director and/or mental health practitioner to help you navigate the road to freedom from addiction. Be honest and open about your struggles, and recognize your own limitations when it comes to the kind of media you can consume. Talk with your children, teens, and tweens about the dangers of sharing nudes and explicit content on the internet, SnapChat, and Instagram, helping them understand the far-reaching effects their youthful choices can have in adulthood and in eternity. Even better, keep smartphones out of the hands of your young people! Your kids will not die without an iPhone. Set an example of purity and transparency by keeping your computers and connected devices in open communal spaces and having a charging station where all devices are checked in at night.

Consider financially supporting an anti-trafficking campaign like the USCCB’s Coalition of Catholic Organizations Against Human Trafficking (CCOAHT), or by calling your congressperson to voice concerns about human trafficking in your state. There is a direct and demonstrable link between the pornography industry and human trafficking. Pornography is not an “innocent, private, personal choice.” There are real victims and there are real addictions which bleed over from the virtual world to the real world. Read Matt Fradd’s excellent book “The Porn Effect” with your men’s or women’s group or with your older kids. Sign up to become a fighter at the website Fight the New Drug.

Paul VI also voiced concern about the potential for the abuse of power, particularly at the hands of powerful governments and non government organizations who could wield “family planning” as weapon against poorer nations and oppressed populations. China’s infamous “One Child” policy is a sobering and extreme example of this, and there are stories of horrific forced abortions, state-mandated abductions, and government intervention in the lives of citizens who dared to flout the law. In the developing world today there are many instances of people undergoing involuntary or uninformed sterilizations at the hands of “compassionate” and eugenic non profit organizations whose understanding of humanitarian work seems limited to the reduction of undesirable populations.

Teach your children about the fundamental dignity of every human person, no matter their skin color or place of origin. Discuss the exploitation of poorer countries and populations by the wealthy and powerful, and explain the Church’s responsibility to defend the least of these. Raise money or awareness for an authentically Catholic charity doing work on the ground, like the Missionaries of Charity or International Missionary Foundation. Lobby your political representative for humane and responsible humanitarian aid that does not impose draconian population control measures on disaster-stricken or impoverished nations. Our “charity” is no charity at all when it comes with strangling strings attached.

Finally, the Holy Father recognized that a widespread acceptance and use of contraception would lull men and women into a false sense of control over their own bodies and, ultimately, the bodies of their children. If you stand around a playground with a group of moms for long enough, eventually you will overhear or take part in the vasectomy conversation: “I scheduled Matt’s for next week – it’s his turn to suffer!” or “Jim got snipped last year, because we are d-o-n-e done.”

Sterilization, according to a 2012 study by the Guttmacher Institute, is now the leading form of contraception in the United States. The rates of IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies have also skyrocketed in recent decades. Couples are waiting longer to become parents and women are often spending decades ingesting hormonal contraceptives without a clear understanding of the risks to fertility and the decline of the reproductive system with age.

When it comes time to have a child, couples will often stop at nothing to achieve their dream of becoming parents. This has led to a glut of “unwanted” frozen embryos who linger indefinitely in cold storage in laboratories around the world and the troubling emergence of a thriving surrogacy industry where it is frequently the poorer minority women who are hired to carry a pregnancy for a wealthy heterosexual or homosexual couple. Little thought is given to the physical and emotional effects that surrogacy has on the surrogate or the resulting child who is necessarily reduced to a product available for purchase.

Teach your children about the grave respect due to every human person, no matter the circumstances of their conception or birth. But also teach them that a massive and corrupt industry has sprung up around the conceiving of children at any cost and by any means necessary. Take responsibility for the sexual education of your own children from a young age. Opt them out of any public school instruction in human sexuality – some of which is developed by Planned Parenthood and other corrupt for-profit corporations with a vested interest in your children becoming sexually active – and educate yourself in the biology and theology of the human body. Gone are the days of having “the talk” with a pubescent teenager and hoping to have any impact on your child’s formation. If you want to get to your child before the culture does, you must have many such talks throughout the years. Early, and often.

Finally, pray. Pray for the wisdom to navigate this toxic culture and for the courage to live as a sign of contradiction. Look around and observe the pain and the confusion caused by living in a manner contrary to the Church’s teachings – even to those within the Church itself – and be bold enough to choose something radical. As 1 Peter 3:15 states, “be prepared to give an account for the reason for the hope you have in you.”

And in the words of my favorite Saint echoing the words of my Lord and Savior, “be not afraid.”

Abortion, Bioethics, Catholics Do What?, Evangelization, guest post, infertility, IVF, pregnancy, Pro Life

IVF regrets: one mother’s story

March 27, 2017

Today I have the distinct privilege of bringing a unique voice to the discussion about in vitro fertilization (IVF). Katy* is a wife, mother, Catholic, and a regular blog reader who emailed me a few months ago with a story to share. As I read the email, I was humbled and rocked to the core that she would entrust me with a part of her story, and I knew immediately that it deserved a wider audience. She was gracious – and brave – enough to agree to share it with you here today.

I am requiring that all comments and discussion on this piece, both here in the combox and on social media, be of the highest caliber of respect and civility. This is an emotionally fraught topic, and this is a charged political and moral landscape we are navigating. And … this is a real family’s journey, and a real woman’s story. She deserves our attention and our respect. To that end, I will be moderating.

Now I’d like to invite Katy to tell you her story, in her own words:

“Hello, my name is guilty”

I truly wish I had read your posts about IVF four years ago.

For a few months now, I’ve been reading/following/loving your blog.

I feel compelled to share my story, because even though you don’t know me, I feel that certain kinship that can only come from reading someone else’s blog and becoming somewhat acquainted with their life. So here it goes.

I was raised Catholic and my family is devout, but not in a forceful way, so I never even got to go through the typical teenage rebellion. Religion was always just part of who we were, and I was glad to carry on the Catholic tradition in adulthood.

I had a boyfriend whose family was VERY religious to the point of homeschooling and rejecting the Novus Ordo mass entirely, nightly rosaries, etc. That time of my life helped my faith develop, but then after we broke up and I met my now-husband, a mostly disinterested Methodist, I drifted into a much less strict version of practicing Catholic. I still attended church, but I wasn’t involved.

Fast forward to finding out we were infertile. Of course, I knew the Church’s stance on IVF, but I chose to willfully ignore it.

A control freak at heart, I refused to believe that God had my best interest in mind.

I have felt called to motherhood since I was a little girl and I absolutely could not fathom a world in which I was not a mother.

I didn’t want to wait. I didn’t want to have faith. I wanted my way, and I wanted it then, because I was 27 years old and my biological clock was ticking so loudly it kept me up nights.

Only now do I see how ridiculous I was being.

Thanks to the severity of our infertility issues, we were giving a 1% chance of conceiving naturally (who comes up with those stats, anyway?) and were advised against wasting time and money on IUI. The doctor recommended that we immediately pursue IVF.

Now, I did sort of try to be sensible…you know, to “sin a little less.” I inquired about only fertilizing a small number of embryos so that there wouldn’t be “leftovers.” The doctor thought I was crazy, just another wacko religious person, but she agreed to work with me. Then the estimated cost made it so the whole thing had to be put on hold anyway.

A few years later I stumbled upon a clinical trial which provided IVF to participants for free. The big catch: you had to play by their rules, so no requesting a limited number of embryos be created. Blinded by my manic need to become a mother, I signed my name on the dotted line and entered the study.

I felt both elated and guilty.

It’s a guilt I’m still lugging around today.

As part of the study, we ended up with 8 embryos. I did one round of IVF and transferred two embryos. I was pregnant with twins for 8 amazing weeks before my first miscarriage. The second embryo transfer (2 embryos again) resulted in another pregnancy, but a single that time. I miscarried at 7 weeks. Of course I felt like I was being punished. I know it doesn’t work like that, but still, that’s how it felt.

I waited two months and then did a third embryo transfer with a single embryo. After the two miscarriages I was kicked out of the clinical trial and no longer forced to abide by the study protocol of transferring two at a time (a note for your article: most fertility doctors refuse to do more than two, and my current doctor along with many others strongly advises against more than one. The cases you hear like Octomom are thankfully not the norm. And those doctors usually have their medical licenses revoked. What they’re doing is still not OK… but it’s not like they’re all just throwing in ten embryos at once and then resorting to selective reduction, at least not usually).

I once again become pregnant. That one stuck. My beautiful daughter was born in June of 2014.

Motherhood has been everything I dreamed it would be. My daughter brought so much light, love, and happiness to this world that it’s impossible to put into words. Family members fight over who gets to babysit her. She is so smart, so kind, so good.

She is by far the best thing that ever happened to me, and it absolutely kills me that she was conceived in sin.

I struggle with this every day. The line I read equating the children of IVF to victims, like children of rape? Oh, that one stung, but it was so necessary. You’re right, of course, but the truth hurts. (She is referring to an older piece of mine where I was emphasizing that the dignity of the human person is immutable, that no matter the circumstances of one’s conception, the child is only and always the innocent victim.)

I’m sure you already know about God’s fantastic sense of humor, right? Right. So I had 3 embryos left after my daughter was born (3 miscarried, 1 never took, and she was the 5th one).

I knew I would need to have them all because despite my egregious disregard of Church law in doing IVF at all, I still fervently believe that life begins at conception and that those three little souls would absolutely not be destroyed or donated to science.

But then when my daughter was 8 months old, a surprise happened – a spontaneous unplanned pregnancy. That 1% chance of conceiving the doctors gave us? Yeah. About that…

My son joined our family 17 months after his sister. Sometimes the craziest things are true.

Now I am pregnant once again, but this time with the 6th embryo, while the other two wait in storage until we’re ready for another go-round.

No one will be left behind in the freezer, but I admit it’s so hard.

There are the storage fees, the constant worry… how will we be able to afford another round of IVF? (I had insurance coverage for a brief shining moment, which I used to get pregnant with this one, but now I’ve lost my job and that insurance lapses in February). How will we afford five kids? Am I getting too old? (I’m 32 now). Can I even have that many c-sections? (Both my kids were emergency c-sections, and this one will be scheduled).

I wish I had never done IVF.

I wish it so badly. When my faith was tested, I failed, and yet I was still given the most beautiful and miraculous gift that I surely don’t deserve.

I used to keep a diary but I don’t anymore, which is why I’m pouring this all out on you. I do have a blog, but since my readership is mostly fellow IVF veterans, they’re all left-leaning and would never understand my regret.

I’m terrified to write about any of this publically.

I don’t regret my daughter for a second, but I do regret the methods.

I wish I had known.

I wish I could rewind and redo all of this knowing what I know now.

I just hope that you’ll pray for me. It’s very early in this third pregnancy and I’m so nervous (especially with my history), plus I’m constantly worrying about how we will survive the future we’ve created for ourselves.

I am trying so hard to put my faith in God but like I said…I’m a control freak! It’s so hard to let go. I always feel like I’m the one who needs to keep this ship sailing.

Also, if you have any excellent reading or resources for “Woman who Regrets Doing IVF But is Also Joyous to Have Become a Mother”… please send it my way.

*(Katy, whose real name was changed for privacy purposes – is a brave and beautiful mother, and her courage in sharing this story is a testimony and a gift to us all. Please join me in accompanying her family and her current pregnancy with your prayers.)

(UPDATE 3/28/17: *update: FYI, our beautiful author Katy has been to Confession, thanks be to God. And y’all are wonderful missionaries of mercy to suggest it so enthusiastically. Pope Francis would be proud.)

Bioethics, Catholics Do What?, Contraception, infertility, IVF, Marriage, motherhood, NFP, pregnancy, Pro Life, Sex, sin, Women's Health

Why not just use birth control? {some possible “right” answers}

June 8, 2016

I field a good number of questions along the lines of “how do I explain to my boss/neighbor/mother-in-law/college bff why we don’t use contraception?”

This tends to be an especially sticky conversation when the questioner in the scenario happens to also be Catholic. That being said, with fewer and fewer Catholics (and Christians of most denominational stripes) actively practicing their faith, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to toss out the simple “Because we’re Catholic” line out there, period, no matter who’s doing the asking.

You’re Catholic? So what? So’s my brother/hairdresser/uncle/pastor, and they all have no problem with the Pill.

And then there’s that persistently-pesky misappropriation of Pope Francis’ own take on the matter. (And no amount of pointing people to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or even Francis’ own latest encyclical, will do the trick. Because they read something on CNN he reportedly said on an airplane, so boom, 2,000+ years of Magisterial teaching, torched.)

In my own experience, my best conversations about how and why we have so many kids have been more personal than “because we’re Catholic.” But of course, that is one reason: We have more than a couple kids because we believe, with the Church, that marriage and babies are tied together in a sanctifying, delightful, and often overwhelming way. And for our marriage, that belief and the resultant openness to life has yielded a larger than average family size in a modest amount of time.

Remember though, this openness to life and docility to God’s will can look vastly different for different marriages. I have friends whose heroism far exceeds what I can hope to offer with my life, even if afforded several more decades of time on earth. Their “yeses” have yielded tiny caskets, months of painful longing, and years of frustrated hopes and dreams. We should never assume that a family with fewer than 5 children “must be using contraception,” or isn’t “open” to what God has for them. He gives and takes away.

We don’t actually get to call those shots, which is utterly confounding to the modern concept of omnipotence-by-science, where fertility is concerned.

Another possible good answer for inquiring minds can be a quick crash course in Theology of the Body, no advanced degree required: God’s plan for sex is better than ours.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about what we hope for in our marriage, and about what marriage is. We want to be consistent with our actions and our words, and for our love to be holistic. It seems unhealthy to separate the potential for creating new life from the potential for deep communion through sex. So we don’t try to. And enough conversations with friends and acquaintances who do have convinced us that using contraception isn’t going to bring more pleasure or more unity into our marriage.

If anything, the anecdotal accounts we hear from couples who are using birth control seem to point to more strain, more sexual frustration, and more opportunities for miscommunication and conflict.

Another big reason for us, personally, is simply the casual observation that our culture sucks at sex.

Divorce, estrangement, frigidity, sexual assault, disease, abortion, adultery…all this stuff was supposed to be solvable via contraception. Or at least tamped way down. It’s gone the opposite direction, though. And what’s toxic for the culture at large isn’t something we want in our master bedroom.

Finally, there’s something to be said about wanting what you can’t have. Abstinence is not, it turns out, the end of the world.

And I will admit, after almost 7 years of practicing NFP, there is an inherent element of healthy self denial (not to be confused with the mind numbing insanity of the postpartum period) that I’m throwing in the “W” column. It can be good to have to wait. It’s good to sometimes want what you can’t have, or at least, what you can’t have without rolling the dice on another butt in diapers 10 months down the road. It’s good for our marriage, and for our development as adult Christians who are capable of suffering out of love for God and for one another.

So, in summary, there are reasons beyond “the Church told me no,” “I don’t know where babies come from,” or “I don’t want to put more hormones/chemicals in my body.”

(Though those are all perfectly sufficient answers, too. Particularly in line at the grocery store.)

Catholics Do What?, Contraception, guest post, infertility, IVF, NFP, Sex

Can we all just agree that fertility is not small talk?

April 22, 2015

Today I’m grateful to invite Mandi Richards into this space to share a little about her personal experience with infertility. Mandi and her husband have one sweet daughter on earth, 4 babies in heaven, and are currently pregnant with number 6. Her new site, A Blog About Miscarriage, is full of beauty, wisdom, and yes, hard stuff. She has some advice for us all today, so pull up a chair

I’m sure you’re all with me on this one if you think I’m talking about menstrual cycles or the nitty gritty of Natural Family planning or sex. No one wants cervical mucus to be the topic of a casual conversation with acquaintances or any conversation that’s public. It’s just not appropriate.

But what about some of these common questions that seem to often come up in public, caual conversations and often between complete strangers?

“When are you going to start trying to have a baby?”

“Was this pregnancy planned?”

“When are you going to give (your child) a sibling?”

“Are you done (having children) yet?”

Are these questions appropriate? Unless they’re part of a (private) conversation with close friends or family, I would say these (and related questions) aren’t appropriate. Because these questions are about fertility. They are about sex. They are about cervical mucus and life and death.

And they aren’t small talk.

I totally get it. You’re curious. I’m curious too. When I see a young couple who has been married a few years and there aren’t any babies, I also wonder when they are going to have children. I used to also think some kind of judgy thoughts, like the couple must be too selfish to welcome children. Not any more folks.

Now I wonder if they are having fertility problems. Perhaps they have gotten pregnant and lost the baby. Maybe that’s happened many times. Maybe they are actively postponing pregnancy for valid reasons that I know nothing about. Employment or financial issues. Health problems. Or a million other things. And the truth is, as much as I want to know, I know it’s none of my business.

There might be a lot of hidden pain behind that couple and that question might be publicly opening a wound.

And also think about what you are conveying about fertility: That you think it’s easy. That it’s a commodity. That people can control it.

When a baby is desired, all they have to do is “try.” That, for some reason, it’s significant whether a baby was “tried for” or an “accident”. That the intention somehow makes a difference in the baby’s inherent goodness. But what’s the difference? Is a “planned” baby is more loved, more wanted, more important?

Even if you think your words are innocent, they have a deeper meaning. And even if you greatly value life, you might not realize that your “small talk” is not just a harmless repetition of the questions that you’ve heard others ask a million times, but a reflection of some deep societal ills.

So before you ask something about fertility, think not about your intention, but about the message you are actually conveying with your words.

And if it’s not consistent with your beliefs, take that out of your “small talk” repertoire.

You know what is terrible? That I had to experience these questions with my own hidden pain in order for me to understand what they can do. I couldn’t get outside of my own little box and into the lives of other people on my own, I couldn’t imagine their pain. I had to experience it.

So I’m saying this on the behalf of the ignorant, like I once was: I know you don’t want to hurt the people you encounter, but if you ask these questions, you just might.

I was especially blissfully unaware of secondary (in)fertility issues. I naively assumed that once a couple has a healthy pregnancy and baby, that’s it. They’re always going to have healthy pregnancies. But sometimes they can’t get pregnant again. Ever. Sometimes it’s a struggle or they have miscarriages. Or serious economic or health or other reasons crop up that put off another child, perhaps forever.

Unless you’re comfortable hearing the answers, don’t ask the questions.

“Actually, we’ve been trying to get pregnant for years, but can’t.”

“We did give our child a sibling, but then miscarried.”

“We are done because of a serious health issue (that’s none of your business).”

I know that anytime I’ve been asked an insensitive questions about giving Lucia a sibling and have responded about our miscarriage, it’s made the conversation mighty uncomfortable. Because the question was asked as small talk, a cute little question where the questioner doesn’t even care about the answer either way. It’s just what you ask when there is a lull in conversation, right?

but I’m asking, can we all just agree that issues of fertility are never small talk?

Bioethics, Catholics Do What?, Contraception, infertility, IVF, NFP

It’s Infertility Awareness Week: Did you know the Catholic Church Cares Deeply?

April 20, 2015

In honor of this year’s National Infertility Awareness week (April 19-25), I wanted to spend a few days recognizing the struggle and the heartache and the sometimes silent suffering of couples who are bearing the cross of infertility in their marriages.

And I wanted to highlight some of the hopeful, heartfelt efforts to help and to heal which the Catholic Church is making (yep, you read that right) and, in fact, has been making, for quite some time now.

I also wanted to bring a few new voices into the mix, stories that you won’t hear from my perspective, because so far I have nothing but empathy and a view from the sidelines on this issue, for which I’m incredibly grateful (yes, grateful, in spite of the craziness of raising tiny humans and the difficulties of pregnancy). So for the next couple days I’m delighted to have some women coming into this space to share their stories of infertility, and their journeys toward building the family God has called them to, in cooperation with His will, not in spite of it.

So much of what we hear about infertility has to do with economics and technological “advancements” and is far, far too often dismissive of the pain and the frustration couples who find themselves in this place are facing.

Just save up and get the materials collected to have some embryos created.

Have you thought about surrogacy?

Well at least you can adopt.

Relax, you’re not getting pregnant because you’re trying too hard!

Hey, you’ve already got your (one, two, insert number) perfect kid, be happy with what you have!

And other illuminating nuggets of cultural wisdom along those lines.

Rarely, if ever, are the underlying medical condition(s) of either spouse considered until well into the process. Most (not all, but most) fertility MDs are eager to proscribe pills and procedures with an eye towards conception, not stopping first to consider the related systems and potential deficiencies of a body – or bodies – that isn’t working properly to begin with.

That’s where the Catholic Church blows the rest of the reproductive medicine and technology field out of the water. Because not only does she champion NaPro technology and other reproductive medicines that respect the dignity of the lives (and potential lives) of all parties involved, but these methods are actually the most effective of all other Assisted Reproductive Technologies out there.

Yep, NaPro is more successful than IVF. And it has the primary benefit of being completely moral and completely in line with the profound dignity of sex and the human person. No disposable embryos, no illicit sperm collection, no chance at forgetting – or simply denying – the human dignity of the persons involved. Just good science and ongoing research that asks the why of a couple’s struggles with infertility instead of jumping right to the how can we fix this, at any cost?

Now, NaPro isn’t perfect, and it’s not a guaranteed catch all for couples who are struggling to get – or to stay – pregnant. But it still stands apart as the best option for infertility treatment in a sea of murky and immoral avenues and an immense amount of money.

(Important disclaimer: many people – even Christians – are woefully uneducated about the nature and the methods of traditional infertility treatments and ARTs. For them, the culpability of cooperating in evil is greatly reduced. And always, always, the dignity of the human person stands, no matter if they were conceived in rape, incest, or a million dollar laboratory.

All persons are created equal, but not all methods of creation are permissible – because they do not honor or recognize that innate human dignity, first, and second because they circumvent or bypass entirely the marital act, which is sacred in and of itself. End disclaimer.)

So I hope you’ll stick around this week because I have some wonderful stories to share with you. Not my own, but dear to me because they are my sisters’ stories, and because we are all members of the suffering body of Christ.

And if you know someone who is struggling with infertility right now? I’ll have some great advice from another mama in the trenches about how you can love them best. Even if it’s only (only!) through prayer and unwavering emotional support.

We’re all in this together, after all. And we’ll each of us be asked at some point to carry crosses whose weight would crush us, should we attempt to go it alone.

That’s what this week is hopefully about: dispelling the myth that any of us, no matter what we’re facing, is going it alone.

31 Days of Writing with the Nester, Abortion, Bioethics, Catholics Do What?, Contraception, Culture of Death, IVF, NFP

What does the Catholic Church say about IVF?

October 30, 2014

Mouthful of a title, right? Let’s just say I’m doing it for Google’s sake.

So, painfully obvious disclaimer: I am neither a bioethicist nor a theologian. Well, not officially, anyway. I’ve got 2 semesters of grad theology under my belt, but the only letters associated with my name are Mrs. So read on, knowing that I’m just a girl with an internet connection and a voracious appetite for moral theology and science. (In other words, these here are layman’s – or laywoman’s, as it were – words.)

I have been blessed with 3 beautiful, exasperating children in just under 5 years of marriage. In other words, I am in no position to talk to anyone about the heartache of infertility, or about the devastating sorrow of losing a baby to miscarriage. But here’s the thing: I have friends. And I’ve watched their pain and I’ve seen the ache of longing in their eyes. And I see the messages the culture is sending out to women (and men) who suffer from the desolating poverty of infertility, and they are being fed a steady diet of bullshit that only adds to their suffering.

I want to offer the truth. Anything less than the truth is an affront to their dignity, and to the dignity of the children who they long to conceive.

The Catholic Church has that truth. She holds it in sacred trust, the inalienable belief that every human life is sacred, from conception until natural death, and that the creation of human life itself is holy. Hallowed ground.

So that’s where I’m speaking from.

There’s one more thing I want to say before we dive in. And it’s about authentic reproductive technology: NAPRO.

I have a dear friend who was pregnant when we first met, back when I was a full time office gal. I was only months away from my wedding and couldn’t get enough of her pregnancy stories and baby kicks. As our friendship grew and her belly expanded, she shared more details. This was actually her fourth pregnancy, she explained, and she’d had three previous miscarriages. But she couldn’t get a referral to a high risk OB until after that third loss.

And then, do you know what the solution was for her body to carry that fourth precious baby safely to term? Progesterone. One pill by mouth daily, for the first trimester. Cheap, simple, readily available… and an option she didn’t even realize she had, because she wasn’t yet “high risk” enough to be referred to a doctor who knew what the hell he was doing.

That kind of dismissive, laissez faire medicine, practiced all too often in ob/gyn groups around the country, is the worst kind of insult to women.

So do yourself a favor and google around for a NAPRO doc near you.

Because you deserve to be served by a doctor who understands how your body works, and why, and who isn’t content to write you an annual scrip for birth control to try to shut your reproductive system down.

(And then happily write you another scrip for fertility drugs when you change your mind 3 years down the road but it turns out, your body didn’t like being messed with. So now rather than worrying about getting pregnant, you’re having to worry about getting pregnant. Because it seems like now you can’t.)

But what if it’s more serious than that? What about couples who have no other means of recourse than IVF or even surrogacy? How can the Church tell them no, when all she speaks of is the goodness of children and the sanctity of life?

For those very same reasons. Because children are good, and because life is sacred.

Children are good. And they are gifts. We vow to accept them lovingly from God, but the converse does not hold. We cannot demand them angrily, desperately, when they do not come. No matter how great the longing. His ways are not our ways, and oh how easy it is for me to write this while my 3 little gifts lie snug in their beds down the hall.

I haven’t felt the pain of infertility. It is a pain I will never know, intimately. But I do that the Church, as our mother, never asks of us that which would harm another person, and certainly not that which takes another person’s life.

Many of our current reproductive technologies are harmful, and some – IVF in particular – depend specifically on creating a number – sometimes a large number – of “backup” embryos, both to ensure the success of the couple’s efforts to conceive initially and for future use, should they desire more children.

From the get go, IVF is problematic because it violates the dignity of those children created in a laboratory setting. A child has the fundamental right to be conceived in the dignity and privacy of her mother’s womb, the fruit of the love between two parents who are committed to each other and to her.

Anything less is poverty for that child, no matter how well reasoned or rationalized the motives of the adults involved. Does that sound crazy? If it does, it’s only because our technology has so rapidly outpaced our morality that we accept just about anything at face value, simply because it is possible.

In most cases of IVF, multiple embryos are created and introduced into the mother’s uterus, with the hopes that a few good ones will implant. The remainder who survive remain in limbo, kept frozen in a lab until their parents decide whether to implant, destroy, or donate.

Once inside mom, if too many “successful” embryos implant, the joyous event of a longed-for pregnancy is now marred by the dark shadow of “selective reduction,” aka abortion. The parents and doctors must now choose which of the baby(s) have the best chance at making it to term, and abort the remainders.

Do you see a common thread running through it all? It’s all about the adults. None of this is done for the sake of the children, or with consideration for the dignity – or the suffering – of the children.

Conceived in a petri dish, selected from an unlucky crop of frozen siblings, perhaps the survivor of an early abortion on other siblings…and finally, against all odds and many thousands of dollars and hours of pain later, brought into this world, on demand.

Loved, yes. But demanded, first.

Openness to life, we talked about earlier in this series, means openness to loss. But it can never mean intentionally causing the loss. It doesn’t mean going to any extremes to obtain life, to demand it and wrench it from God’s hands and fit it into our own script.

Is it fair?

Hell no it’s not fair. It’s not fair that I have children while some couples who don’t, can’t.

But life isn’t fair. And there are all kinds of sufferings and different-shaped crosses we’re asked to bear. It sounds so crazy but it really boils down to this: just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.

Just because we can harvest sperm and egg from willing and desperate would-be parents, willing to shell out thousands for a baby of their own, doesn’t mean we should.

Just because we can create new human life in a petri dish, coaxing the requisite genetic material together and then discarding the chromosomal losers, doesn’t mean we should.

Just because we can implant a half dozen viable embryos into a woman’s uterus with the selective reduction of as many of 5 of them as the failsafe backup plan, does’t mean we should.

There are all kinds of things human beings are capable of. But not all of them are good. And in this case, as in so many others, the ends do not justify the means.

For couples who are suffering this incredible pain, the Church has a message of love and of mercy, and more than anything, of being a safe harbor where you can rest and not be further harmed, or cause harm yourselves.

IVF is a terrible poverty to the children involved, first and foremost. But it exacts a terrible price from their parents, too. No parent wants to willingly participate in the harm, destruction, or death of their child. It’s unfathomable. And yet we have this billion dollar industry, rushing grieving couples through their office doors and helping them to do exactly that.

There’s so much more that could be said, and much more eloquently, but this is long enough.

There is no judgement here. Only truth, and sorrow, and a genuine desire to bring clarity to a deeply problematic and painful suffering that is rampant in our culture.

The world promises relief from suffering through denial, manipulation, and force. But Christ says something different.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Easier said than done, right?

Click here for the rest of the series.

31 Days of Writing with the Nester, Abortion, Contraception, IVF, NFP, Sex

What does the Catholic Church teach about IVF?

October 5, 2014

What we have today is a bit of a departure from my normal style, more of a “teaching” post, if you will. Maybe because it’s Sunday? Or maybe because I slept for 9.5 hours last night and my brain is functioning at 130%. Probably that. But rest assured, I’m not planning to talk at you for the entire month. This one just came out kinda … professorial. So proceed with caution. Or don’t. It won’t hurt my feelings.
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Catholics seem to be, how can I put this … a tad obsessed with life.

Life from the moment of conception until the moment of natural death. Life-long commitment within the marriage relationship. Openness to life within marriage. Support for life in all its ages and stages, especially among the poor and marginalized. Building a culture of life to combat the influence of the culture of death. Eternal life.

Yeah, we’re totally enamored with life. And there’s a reason or two.

It’s worth noting that faithful Catholics take God literally (and seriously) when it comes to marriage being a life-long commitment. And hand-in-hand with the understanding that marriage is for life comes the concept of openness to life.

Here’s what openness to life does not mean. Having as many kids as is physically possible. Only having sex when the woman is fertile. Pumping out baby after baby to the detriment of the mother’s health, the father’s health, the overall wellbeing of the family, etc.

It also doesn’t mean going to extraordinary lengths or using illicit means to achieve the heartbreakingly beautiful end result of a child.

So we don’t pop ’em out till we drop, we don’t dial up Rome to find out if we’re expected to produce 11 or 14 kids to fill those empty seminaries, and we also don’t turn to IVF or surrogacy or sperm donation or any other illicit means in the pursuit of a biological child.

And it all comes down to respect for human life and for the autonomy of the human person.

Those might not seem like related topics (perpetual pregnancy vs. IVF, etc.) but there is a common thread that runs through them both, and it’s the idea of the person as commodity.

In the first example, both the mother and the child (but primarily the mother) are being used, are being viewed primarily for what they can do and whether they can produce and not for who they are.

We must never reduce the human person to the sum of her parts … or productivity.

In the second case, the matter of IVF and other illicit means of fertility assistance, the person being reduced to the level of commodity is the child.

The parents are too, to a certain extent, with the collection of the proper parts and pieces (usually done via means which violate their dignity and the integrity of their sexual relationship) and in the use of their bodies (or the bodies of donors) as little more than incubators or parts-suppliers. But primarily it is the child(ren) who suffers the evil of being reduced to a thing, a commodity, a very intensely desired and sought after prize … but a prize nonetheless. In other words, a possession.

A lot of people have a really hard time seeing any connection between contraception and reproductive technologies because we have such a mental block in place. Sex and babies have been so effectively severed from one another that there’s almost no capacity to dialogue with somebody of the prevailing cultural mindset about the personhood of the parties involved, or the dignity of human sexuality.

Since sex has been reduced to a recreational activity at best and a financial transaction or a laboratory procedure at worst, it’s a tough sell to the modern mind to reveal the mystery and the dignity inherent in sex and it’s procreative power.

It’s also a really tough sell to tell someone who wants a baby that there’s no guarantee, and that they don’t actually have the “right” to possess a child of their own genetic makeup.

Because children are only and always a gift.

It is this sacred and inviolable belief that informs both our rejection of contraception and our inability to participate in illicit or immoral means of fertility assistance.

So to the couple seeking to avoid a pregnancy at this time in their marriage, the answer is: wait. Do not do the thing that could bring a child into your lives right now. You might not be prepared to care for or to fully welcome a child right now, and that is fine, but a child is only and always a gift.

And to the couple desperate for a child of their own, a child to carry their genes and their hopes and dreams into the future…wait.

However, your heart is breaking (and this is so hard to write, and this is so hard to understand) manipulating and creating human life in a petri dish denies your child/children their basic human rights and dignity. Even if only one embryo is created (thereby avoiding the moral conundrum of frozen embryos (and the even greater sorrow of little teeny persons filling dumpsters with other medical waste) your child deserves to be conceived in the safety and privacy of his or her mother’s body. It is his fundament right.

This is such a hard concept. In only a few decades we’ve gone from “could we possibly?” to “why the hell not?” in so many areas of science, and reproductive science is at the forefront of innovation. But just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.

Just because we can harvest eggs and sperm and spin them and clean them and genetically select the most promising embryos from a batch created in a lab…doesn’t mean we should.

Just because we can keep the “extra” embryos frozen on ice, suspended indefinitely until the parents either save up for another attempt or decide to dispose of them or “donate” their children to science (or to another family)…doesn’t mean we should.

Just because we can take a donor egg from one woman and fill it with the genetic material from another woman and combine it with the sperm from a man…doesn’t mean we should.

Just because we can extract the raw material from an older woman and her husband and implant the created embryo into the uterus of a younger, healthier surrogate to carry their pregnancy to term and surrender the child who grew inside of her body back to them…doesn’t mean we should.

In each of these examples the dignity of the human person is being trampled upon. But, you may protest, what about the dignity of the parents and their right to have a child?

I would gently remind you that no such right exists, that we are not guaranteed genetic offspring of our own making, and that the rights of the individual are always superior to the desires of another person.

Our children do have the right to exist, but we do not have the right to summon them into existence by whatever means necessary. And we certainly don’t have the right to dispose of other lives in order to arrive at the successful delivery of another.

This includes the mother’s life. So by the same line of reasoning, to ask a woman to carry as many pregnancies as is physically possible, to expect her to go beyond openness to life and to demand total surrender of her will and her intellect in the realm of family planning and mothering…this also is unethical.

But so is contraception. So is forcing a woman to alter her body, either chemically or surgically or by means of a barrier, so that she is conveniently available for use without fear of repercussion. Even if she is a willing participant, an enthusiastic participant, even, in her own sterilization…it is still a grave violation of her human dignity.

Okay, this went way longer than I was expecting and I have to get dressed for the day, but I promise we’ll talk more about IVF and contraception and being chained, barefoot and pregnant, to the cookstove.

Until then, keep the Synod (which started today!) in your prayers, and ask the Lord for wisdom and understanding as you ponder these teachings for yourself. They’re not easy. But they are life-giving (ha.)

31 Days of Writing with the Nester, Abortion, Contraception, IVF, Moral Relativism, NFP, Sex

Vatican roulette and IVF

October 5, 2014

(I promise I’m going to post other stuff this month aside from all the heavy heavy…in fact, tune in Tuesday for pictures of pumpkins and half dressed children destroying beautiful fall tablescapes.)