Artificial Insemination

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

I need a definitive essay on the evils of artificial insemination to present to somebody who doens't have much knowledge in the areas of theology or philosophy. This person already knows what the Catechism says but wants more proof (and this person is emotionally attached because her son is/maybe sterile). If you use the natural law, you will have to briefly introduce it to the person in the essay.

It's for my mom, so don't mess up!

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

BTW I would do this myself but sofar my efforts have been futile and I don't want her to get angry for telling her that my brother may not be able to have his own kids.

[MorphRC]

U mean IVF? Why is that evil??

[St. Catherine]

I think one reason is because the babies have a high probability of being involuntarily aborted. The procedure doesn't have a high success rate as far as I know.

[Fiat_Voluntas_Tua]

Very Long, but it explains it pretty well.

[b]Ethical Reasons Why Non-Marital Ways of Generating New Human Life Are Intrinsically Immoral[/b]

[quote]As we saw in Chapter One, the Vatican Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation (Donum vitae) briefly sets forth three lines of reasoning to support the conclusion that it is always immoral to generate human life outside the marital act. The first is based on the "inseparability principle," which claims that it is not lawful for man on his own initiative to separate the unitive and procreative meanings of the conjugal act. The second is rooted in the "language of the body," and the third is that non-marital ways of engendering human life change its generation from an act of procreation to one of reproduction, treating the child as if he or she were a product.

I believe that in the first part of this chapter, in reflecting on the meaning of marriage and the marital act, I provided evidence to show that the bond uniting marriage, the marital act, and the generating of new human life is intimate, that the marital act, precisely as marital, is inherently both unitive and procreative, and that it speaks the language of the body. Thus I think that in that part of the chapter I offered good reasons to support the first two lines of argument used by Donum vitae. There I also emphasized that when a child comes to be in and through the marital act, he or she is "begotten, not made," and that in engaging in the marital act husbands and wives are not "making" anything, either love or babies, but are rather "doing" something, i.e., giving themselves to one another in an act that actualizes their marital union and expresses their sexual complementarity, and opening themselves to the gift of human life. I thus touched on the third line of reasoning used by Donum vitae to show that it is wrong to generate human life outside the marital act, because doing so treats the child as if he or she were a product.

Here I wish to develop this third line of reasoning because I think that it is the one that more clearly shows how seriously wrong it is to generate human life outside the marital act.

In what follows I will focus attention on homologous artificial insemination and IVF-ET, i.e., ways of bringing new human life into existence by uniting the gametic cells of husband and wife outside the marital act. I do so because although some people in our society ? and perhaps their number is increasing ? find the Church?s teaching on heterologous fertilization too restrictive of human freedom, most people, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, can understand and appreciate this teaching even if, in some highly unique situations, they might justify heterologous insemination and fertilization. Nonetheless, most people recognize that when a man and a woman marry, they "give" themselves exclusively to each other and that the selves they give are sexual and procreative persons. Just as they violate their marital covenant after marriage by attempting to "give" themselves to another in sexual union, so too they dishonor their marital covenant and the uniqueness and exclusiveness of their love and marital union by choosing to exercise their procreative powers with someone other than their spouse, the one to whom they have given themselves, including their power to procreate, irrevocably, "forswearing all others."

But many of these people, including Catholics, find the Church?s judgment that homologous artificial insemination and IVF-ET are always wrong, intrinsically evil, difficult to understand and accept. This is a "hard" teaching, and strikes many as harsh, insensitive, and cruel. They ask, and not without reason, why must human life be given only in and through the marital act? What evil is being done by a married couple, unable to have children by engaging in the marital act, if they make use of the new reproductive technologies to overcome the obstacles preventing their marriage from being blessed with the gift of children?

It seems obvious that, if homologous artificial fertilization (whether artificial insemination or IVF-ET) is intrinsically immoral, it follows a fortiori that this is true of heterologous fertilization and cloning.

To show that even homologous artificial fertilization is intrinsically immoral, I will, as noted earlier, focus on the argument that generating children outside of the marital act, even by procedures making use of gametic cells of husband and wife, changes the generation of human life from an act of "procreation" to one of "reproduction," treating the child as if he or she is a product. I will argue that this is indeed the case and that it is always gravely immoral to treat a human being, even in his or her initial stages of existence, as a product and not as a person.

The argument to be advanced is intelligible in the light of the distinction, made previously, between "making" and "doing." We have seen already that in engaging in the marital act husbands and wives are not "making" anything, but are rather "doing" something, and that any human life brought into being in and through this act is begotten, not made.

In "making," as we have seen already, the action proceeds from an agent or agents to something in the external world, to a product. In making, interest centers on the product made, and ordinarily products that do not measure up to standards are discarded or, at any rate, are little appreciated and for this reason are frequently called "defective." In making, moreover, the logic of manufacturing is validly applied: one should use the most efficient procedures available, keeping costs as low as possible, etc.

When new human life comes to be as a result of homologous artificial insemination or homologous IVF-ET, it comes to be as the end product of a series of actions, transitive in nature, undertaken by different persons in order to make a particular product, a human baby. The spouses "produce" the gametic materials which others then manipulate and use in order to make the final product. When these new reproductive technologies are employed, one cannot deny that the child "comes into existence ? in the manner of a product of making (and, typically, as the end product of a process managed and carried out by persons other than his parents)."38 With use of these technologies, it is true to say that the child is "made," not "begotten."

Precisely because homologous artificial insemination/IVF-ET ? like heterologous artificial insemination/IVF-ET ? is an act of "making," it is standard procedure, as we have seen in surveying the literature describing the technologies, to overstimulate the woman?s ovaries so that she can produce several ova for fertilization by sperm, usually obtained most economically through masturbation and then washed and "capacitated" so that they can better do their job; of the resulting new human embryos, some are frozen and kept on reserve for use should initial efforts to achieve implantation and gestation to birth fail; it is also common to implant several embryos (two to four) in the womb to enhance likelihood that at least one will implant and, should too large a number of embryos successfully implant, to discard the "excess" number through a procedure some euphemistically call "pregnancy reduction." Finally, it is common practice to monitor development of the new human life both prior to being transferred to the womb and during gestation to determine whether it suffers from any defects, and, should serious defects be discovered or thought likely, to abort the product that does not measure up to standard. As a form of "making" or ?producing," artificial insemination/fertilization, homologous as well as heterologous, leads to the use of these methods, for they simply carry out the logic of manufacturing commodities: one should use the most efficient, time-saving, and cost-effective means available to deliver the desired product under good quality controls.

One readily sees how dehumanizing such "production" of human babies is. It obviously treats them as if they were products inferior to their producers and subject to quality controls, not persons equal in dignity to their parents.

But some people, including some Catholic theologians, note ? correctly ? that homologous insemination/fertilization does not require hyperovulating the woman, creating a number of new human beings in a petri dish, freezing some, implanting others, monitoring development with a view to abortion should "defects" be discovered, etc. They think that if these features commonly associated with homologous insemination/fertilization are rejected, then a limited resort by married couples to artificial insemination/IVF-ET does not really transform the generation of human life from an act of procreation to one of reproduction.

A leading representative of this school of thought, Richard A. McCormick, S.J., argues that spouses who resort to homologous in vitro fertilization do not perceive this as the " ?manufacture? of a ?product.? Fertilization happens when sperm and egg are brought together in a petri dish," but "the technician?s intervention is a condition for its happening, not a cause."39 Moreover, he continues, "the attitudes of the parents and the technicians can be every bit as reverential and respectful as they would be in the face of human life naturally conceived."40 In fact, in McCormick?s view and in that of some other writers as well, for instance, Thomas A. Shannon, Lisa Sowle Cahill, and Jean Porter,41 homologous in vitro fertilization can be considered an "extension" of marital intercourse, so that the child generated can still be regarded as the "fruit" of the spouses? love. While it is preferable, if possible, to generate the baby through the marital act, it is, in the cases of concern to us, impossible to do this, and hence their marital act ? so these writers claim ? can be, as it were, "extended" to embrace in vitro fertilization.

Given the concrete situation, any disadvantages inherent in the generation of human lives apart from the marital act, so these authors reason, are clearly counterbalanced by the great good of new human lives and the fulfillment of the desire for children of couples who otherwise would not be able to have them. In such conditions, they contend, it is not unrealistic to say that homologous IVF-ET is simply a way of "extending" the marital act.

I believe that it is evident that this justification of homologous insemination/IVF-ET is rooted in the proportionalistic method of making moral judgments. It claims that one can rightly intend so-called "pre-moral" or "nonmoral" or "ontic" evils (the "disadvantages" referred to above) in order to attain a proportionately greater good, in this case, helping a married couple otherwise childless to have a child of their own. But this method of making moral judgments is very flawed and was explicitly repudiated by Pope John Paul II in Veritatis splendor.42 It comes down to the claim that one can never judge an act to be morally bad only by taking into account the "object" freely chosen and that it is necessary, in order to render any moral judgment of an action, to consider it in its totality, taking into account not only its object but the end and circumstances as well. If the end for whose sake something is chosen and done is a "proportionately greater good" than the evil one does by choosing this object (e.g., making a baby in a petri dish), then the act as a whole can be morally good. In chapter two, above, this flawed method of making moral judgments was briefly criticized.43

Moreover, the reasoning advanced by McCormick and others is rhetorical in character and not based on a realistic understanding of what is involved. Obviously, those who choose to produce a baby make that choice as a means to an ulterior end. They may well "intend" ? in the sense of their further intention ? that the baby be received into an authentic child-parent relationship, in which he or she will live in a communion of persons which befits those who share personal dignity. If realized, this intended end for whose sake the choice is made to produce the baby will be good for the baby as well as for the parents. But, even so, and despite McCormick?s claim to the contrary, their "present intention," i.e., the choice they are making here and now, is precisely "to make a baby" ? this is the "object" specifying their freely chosen act. The baby?s initial status is the status of a product. In in vitro fertilization the technician does not simply assist the marital act (that would be licit) but, as Benedict Ashley, O.P., rightly says, he "substitutes for that act of personal relationship and communication one which is like a chemist making a compound or a gardener planting a seed. The technician has thus become the principal cause of generation, acting through the instrumental forms of sperm and ovum."44

Moreover, the claim that in vitro fertilization is an "extension" of the marital act and not a substitution for it is simply contrary to fact. "What is extended," as Ashley also notes, "is not the act of intercourse, but the intention: from an intention to beget a child naturally to getting it by IVF, by artificial insemination, or by help of a surrogate mother."45 Since the child?s initial status is thus, in these procedures, that of a product, its status is subpersonal. Thus, the choice to produce a baby is, inevitably, the choice to enter into a relationship with the baby, not as its equal, but as a product inferior to its producers. But this initial relationship of those who choose to produce babies with the babies they produce is inconsistent with and so impedes the communion of persons endowed with equal dignity that is appropriate for any interpersonal relationship. It is the choice of a bad means to a good end. Moreover, in producing babies, if the product is defective, a new person comes to be as unwanted. Thus, those who choose to produce babies not only choose life for some, but ? and can this be realistically doubted? ? at times quietly dispose of at least some of those who are not developing normally.46

I think that the reasons advanced here to show that it is not morally right to generate human life outside the marital act can be summarized in a syllogism, which I offer for consideration:

Major: Any act of generating human life that is non-marital is irresponsible and violates the respect due to human life in its generation.

Minor: But artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, whether homologous or heterologous, and other forms of generating human life outside the marital act, including cloning, are non-marital.

Conclusion: Therefore, these modes of generating human life are irresponsible and violate the respect due to human life in its generation.

I believe that the minor of this syllogism does not require extensive discussion. However, McCormick, commenting on an earlier essay of mine in which I advanced a syllogism of this kind, claims that my use of the term "non-marital" in the minor premise is "impenetrable," because the meaning of a "non-marital" action is not at all clear.47 This objection simply fails to take into account all that I had said in my previous essay and in the earlier part of this chapter about the marital act.48

It is obvious that heterologous insemination/fertilization and cloning are "non-marital." But "non-marital" too are homologous artificial insemination and IVF. Even though married persons have collaborated in these procedures and even though these procedures make use of gametic cells supplied by husband and wife, the procedures are "non-marital" because the marital status of the man and the woman participating in them is accidental and not essential, whereas, as we saw in the first part of this chapter, the marital status of man and woman is essential for a marital act. Indeed, the marital status of the parties involved in homologous artificial insemination/IVF is utterly irrelevant to the procedures as such. What makes husband and wife capable of participating in these procedures is definitely not their marital union, whereas the marital act is possible only by reason of their marital union. Their marital status is irrelevant to artificial insemination/IVF because they are able to take part in these procedures simply because, like unmarried men and women, they are producers of gametic cells that other individuals can then use to fabricate human life. Just as spouses do not generate human life maritally when this life (which is always good and precious, no matter how engendered) is initiated as a result of an act of spousal abuse, so they do not generate new human life maritally when what they do is simply provide the materials to be used in making a baby.

The foregoing reflections should suffice to clarify the meaning of the minor premise of the syllogism and to show its truth.

The truth of the major premise is supported by everything said about the intimate bonds uniting marriage, the marital act, and the generation of human life. Those bonds are the indispensable and necessary means for properly respecting human life in its origin. To sunder them is to break the inseparable bond between the unitive and procreative meanings of the conjugal act, to refuse to speak the "language of the body," and above all to treat a child in its initial stage of existence as a product, as something "made," not "begotten." We have seen already that non-marital modes of generating human life change the act generating such life from one of "procreation" or "begetting" to one of "reproducing." Such reproductive modes of generating human life are indeed instances of "making." [/quote]

[Fiat_Voluntas_Tua]

This shows why Human life should be created only through the Marital Act.

[b]The Basic Theological Reason Why Human Life Ought To Be Generated Only in and Through the Marital Act[/b]

[quote]There is a very profound theological reason that offers ultimate support for the truth that new human life ought to be given only in and through the marital act ? the act proper and unique to spouses, the act made possible only by marriage itself ? and not through acts of fornication, adultery, spousal abuse, or new "reproductive" technologies.

The reason is this: human life ought to be "begotten, not made." Human life is the life of a human person, a being inescapably male or female, made in the image and likeness of the all-holy God. A human person, who comes to be when new human life comes into existence, is, as it were, an icon or "created word" of God. Human beings are, as it were, the "created words" that the Father?s Uncreated Word became and is,49 precisely to show us how deeply God loves us and to enable us to be, like him, children of the Father and members of the divine family.

But the Uncreated Word, whose brothers and sisters human persons are called to be, was "begotten, not made." These words were chosen by the Fathers of the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 to express unambiguously their belief that the eternal and uncreated Word of God is indeed, like the Father, true God. This Word, who personally became true man in Jesus Christ while remaining true God, is not inferior to his Father; he is not a product of his Father?s will, a being made by the Father and subordinate in dignity to him. Rather, the Word is one in being with the Father, equally a divine person. The Word, the Father?s Son, was begotten by an immanent act of personal love.

Similarly, human persons, the "created words" of God, ought, like the Uncreated Word, to be "begotten, not made." Like the Uncreated Word, they are one in nature with their parents, persons like their mothers and fathers; they are not products inferior to their producers. Their personal dignity is equal to that of their mothers and fathers, just as the Uncreated Word?s personal dignity is equal to the personal dignity of the Father. That dignity is respected when their life is "begotten" in an act of self-giving spousal union, in an act of conjugal love. It is not respected when that life is "made" as the end product of a series of transitive acts of making. Nor is it respected when generated by acts of fornication, adultery, or spousal abuse.[/quote]

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

It is against the natural law. I just can't explain it well. I'm also pretty suire that there are left-over embryos that all get killed in the lab.

[p0lar_bear]

[quote name='thedude' date='Aug 13 2004, 02:51 PM'] It is against the natural law. I just can't explain it well. I'm also pretty suire that there are left-over embryos that all get killed in the lab. [/quote]
Sometimes the remaining embryos are "disposed of" (i.e. killed). Sometimes, they are frozen, which leaves the question of what to do with all these frozen lives....there are debates on whether a woman can morally adopt an embryo...

[St. Catherine]

[quote]It is against the natural law. I just can't explain it well. [/quote]

Cure has been doing a lot of debating about natural law lately. Maybe when he gets home he can come up with something for you.