RTE No 20 Interior - Road to Emmaus Journal

Road to Emmaus Vol. XIII, No. 2 (#49)Natural Conception, Natural BirthIntrauterine Insemination (IUI) and In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)RtE: Before we explore the details of the Creighton Method, can we first talkabout the medical treatments and technology that are offered to women whowant to have a baby but haven’t been able to conceive naturally? Almost allof us have friends or relatives who have used these procedures.Melanie: The pill has been around for fifty years, so we have roughly fiftyyears of data. The first child born of in vitro fertilization (IVF), the first“test tube baby”, was in 1978, so our data here is more limited. The moderntendency is to use birth control to suppress an entire healthy system of ourbody, and then when we decide we want to have children and that systemno longer functions correctly, we put our cycles into overdrive by opting forintrauterine (“artificial”) insemination (IUI) or in vitro fertilization (IVF).This is not what nature intended, nor is it the restoration of the systemto a healthy functioning system; it is suppression or hyperdrive. By offeringthese technologies we are not being true physicians to these women andrestoring them to health; we are just trying to get their body to work longenough in the way we want it to, so that it gives the desired outcome for acertain number of years.One of the hardest things for us to realize is that we cannot replicate whatthe human body does. Conception is a very complicated process that wedon’t yet perfectly understand, and there are many mechanisms in the humanbody that allow or prevent conception. For conception to occur youhave to have good eggs, good sperm, and good cervical fluid for the sperm tolive in that will allow them to make it into the Fallopian tube. If any of theseprimary factors are off, there will be problems. Both intrauterine insemination(IUI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) were developed to bypass the body’snatural safeguards. IUI is where you take the semen, select the best sperm,wash them, and inject them directly into the woman’s uterus. Usually thewoman has already been given a number of fertility drugs that will make thewomb more hospitable to the implantation of the embryo.The other technology we often hear about is in vitro fertilization (IVF).IVF is used for unexplained infertility or subfertility issues, such as infrequentovulation or a low sperm count. Essentially, the ovaries are hyperstimulatedwith hormones into creating ten to twenty mature follicles. Theythen put the woman under light sedation and extract the eggs from the ovarywith a syringe-type instrument. The eggs are placed in a petri dish with somesperm from the donor father in a nutrient-rich fluid. This petri dish is thenput into an incubator, and they wait for the egg and sperm to meet. Once theeggs are fertilized, they remove the zygotes (the embryos) and implant theminto the woman’s uterine lining. IVF providers try to cover up the mechanismby pretending that it’s natural; they make it seem natural because theend is a child.Another ethical problem that many couples face with IVF is that if the husbandor wife is truly infertile, do they opt for donors (a third party supplyingthe egg or the sperm) to create the embryo? This isn’t a health risk, althoughit’s very much a moral and spiritual problem.It isn’t hard for men to donate their sperm, but for a woman it is very difficultto donate eggs and they are saying now that human eggs are the mostexpensive commodity on earth, because they are so incredibly small. Youpay an average of $10,000 to a woman donor who fits all of your desires andwishes in order to harvest her eggs. On all sides, it is the misuse of a humanperson—the couple, the donor, the child. You are injecting this woman full ofdrugs that are hyper-stimulating her ovaries to harvest her eggs, and in somecases these women are later unable to have their own children. You see thisall the time on Craig’s List or in the newspaper. “Are you a healthy femalewho is 21 to 29 years old? Do you have a college degree? Call this numberand you can make $7,000.” It’s a frightening prospect for the physical, psychologicaland spiritual health of the woman.On the other side you have couples who in some cases have to flip througha book and look at pictures and statistics of these women. In a certain senseit’s adulterous, but in another way it’s worse because they are choosing thethird party together. “I’d really like it if she was Polish because my grandmotherwas Polish.” Again, you realize how unnatural this is and how muchstress it places on the couple.RtE: Surely this has been ethically challenged.Melanie: Yes. Roman Catholics and many Orthodox have problems withthese technologies, even with intrauterine insemination, including whetherthere are morally licit ways to obtain sperm. The moral problems are muchmore serious with IVF.89