Bishop Burbidge: IVF presents an 'obvious' and 'subtle' threat to human dignity

(OSV News) -- In vitro fertilization, which is contrary to Catholic teaching, poses threats "to human dignity and human rights" in ways both "very obvious" and "at other times quite subtle," said Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia.

On Jan. 22, Bishop Burbidge released "The Christian Family, In Vitro Fertilization and Heroic Witness to True Love," a pastoral letter on what he described as the "incredibly sensitive topics" of IVF and fertility.

The letter, available in both English and Spanish on the Diocese of Arlington's website, cites the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council, papal writings, Catholic bioethicists and journalistic coverage of the IVF industry, while also providing an array of pastoral resources for couples struggling with infertility.

Bishop Burbidge -- who in November completed his three-year term as chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Pro-Life Activities -- wrote that the pastoral letter was prompted by both compassion and consternation.

"As priest and bishop, I have heard consistently of the heartache experienced by so many relating to the desire for family," he wrote. "In our time, I have observed with pastoral concern the growing acceptance of IVF as an apparent solution to the heartache of infertility."

But, he warned, that acceptance comes at a tremendous cost -- one that includes the eugenic destruction of millions of embryonic children, the unraveling of the integral bond between childbearing and marital love, the erosion of a child's right to natural parents, and threats to health, safety and religious liberty.

Developed from mammalian experiments in the 1930s, IVF -- by which a woman's eggs and a man's sperm are united outside of their respective bodies in a clinical setting, with one or more embryonic children selected for implantation in the woman's uterus -- became widespread after the 1978 birth of Louise Brown, who was conceived through the method by researchers in the United Kingdom.

Since then, more than 12 million children have been born following conception through IVF -- although "for every one" of them, "there are many tens of millions more missing brothers and sisters who have been either deliberately destroyed, experimented upon, or frozen in liquid nitrogen and denied their natural right to the fullness of their development," wrote Bishop Burbidge.

"Every successful IVF procedure results in a living child with many missing siblings," he said.

Bishop Burbidge pointed to "Donum Vitae," the 1987 instruction on respect for human life issued by the Vatican's Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith, which first articulated the church's stance on IVF. The instruction stressed that "human embryos obtained in vitro are human beings and subjects with rights: their dignity and right to life must be respected from the first moment of their existence."

"The Church affirms the truth that every child is a gift from God, regardless of the circumstances of their conception, even while the Church's teachings against IVF have remained constant and have been confirmed by the experience of the intervening years," wrote Bishop Burbidge.

He stressed that "all children conceived and born through IVF possess inalienable human dignity." He noted that "their innate dignity is the reason for the Church's opposition to their being instrumentalized and made into objects by means of IVF, which eugenically selects some to live and others to die."

Yet even if it did not result in the rejection or destruction of embryonic children, "IVF would remain unjust and morally wrong," wrote Bishop Burbidge.

IVF and other procedures, commonly labeled as "assisted reproductive technologies," work to undermine rather than undergird "the loving self-gift of spouses manifest in procreative and unitive marital love," he wrote. "In this way, the natural and loving embrace of man and woman expressed in marital love is effectively replaced by a laboratory procedure made possible by the subjugation of man and woman to a technological process."

He pointed to Pope Francis' repeated emphasis on the risks of what the pope has called a "technocratic paradigm" that results in dehumanization and tyranny.

"IVF subverts human dignity by reducing human persons -- man, woman, and child alike -- into objects of a technical process that threatens what the Holy Father has described as 'the human being in his or her irreducible specificity,'" wrote Bishop Burbidge.

Religious conviction and liberty are also at risk in the face of IVF, he said, particularly with regard to any efforts to federally mandate entitlement to IVF, either through "direct funding or by compelling health insurance companies to do so" -- a prospect Bishop Burbidge, citing Mk 12:17, called "an illegitimate handing over to Caesar the things of God."

"The Church stands in solidarity with all those experiencing infertility and proclaims the dignity of all who come into existence as a result of IVF," wrote Bishop Burbidge. "However, she stands absolutely opposed to any federal or state governmental action that would involve every citizen with a grave moral injustice."

As a candidate, President Donald Trump said he has been "a leader on IVF" and would be "supporting the availability of fertility treatments like IVF in every state in America." Trump pledged his administration would mandate the government or insurance companies pay for IVF treatments after a controversial ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court found that frozen embryos qualified as children under the state law's wrongful death law.

Like the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act, government mandates for IVF "would inevitably result in the widespread coercion of healthcare workers and the evisceration of their professional right of conscience," wrote Bishop Burbidge.

Instead, he said, the state should look to "support the growth and health of American families" through "concrete ways to encourage earlier marriage and family formation, establish programs to address direct pregnancy and childbirth-related expenses that may act as a barrier to the growth of families, and expand coverage for life-affirming and restorative fertility care."

At the very least, and "assuming the unfortunate persistence of IVF as an industry" -- one known for its "wild west" lack of regulation -- Bishop Burbidge said that "elected officials should ensure that IVF facilities adopt basic health and safety regulations that would minimize the harms" associated with their practice.

In his letter, Bishop Burbidge, citing Jn 6:60, wrote that he recognized "what the Church teaches about IVF represents a 'hard saying' ... that is convenient for many to ignore, and that many Catholics and others of goodwill may have never encountered the Church's teaching on this issue."

Recent national polls by Gallup and Pew, cited by Bishop Burbidge, indicate that a significant majority of Americans -- 82%, according to Gallup -- view IVF as morally acceptable, with just under half (49%) also viewing as acceptable the destruction of embryonic children conceived through IVF. Pew found that 65% of American Catholics regarded access to IVF as favorable.

In a May 2024 interview with Pope Francis, CBS journalist Norah O'Donnell asked about the Catholic Church's rejection of surrogacy -- which is often part of the IVF process. O'Donnell said she knew women cancer survivors for whom the practice has become "the only hope" for having a child. Pope Francis reaffirmed church teaching on the point, while commending O'Donnell for her sensitivity toward those suffering from infertility.

Above all, Bishop Burbidge said, "the Christian family is called to a heroic witness to true love in every generation, and in a particular way in our time.

"The human person bears within himself or herself the very image and likeness of God who is love (cf. 1 Jn. 4:8), and by looking to and relying upon the God who offers true hope and the possibility of everlasting happiness, all persons may enjoy the fulfillment of their good and natural desires in the fullness of time," he wrote. "The Christian family has a powerful spiritual ally in the Church, whose members are called to walk with those couples experiencing infertility, offering them life-giving and restorative options, while also addressing those moral injustices that would make impossible our experience of true happiness."