IVF - It’s a Sin!
Ronald Binge
Shipmate
in Epiphanies
Ireland’s secular revolution is still quite fragile when the Minister for Health has felt that he had to weigh in on a Christmas Facebook posting from Tullamore RC Parish outraged at IVF treatments...
Harris critical of anti-IVF comments by Catholic parish https://www.rte.ie/news/2019/1230/1103635-harris-critical-of-anti-ivf-comments-by-catholic-parish/
Comments
At any rate I'll believe the Catholic Church is serious about its objections to IVF when they bus in a load of nuns and Catholic school students to heckle people at IVF centers they way they do abortion clinics. For some reason harassing wealthy couples seems a lot less appealing to the Catholic Church than heckling scared teenagers and single mothers.
I thought about this because I know Islamic legal scholars (not sure if this applies to all schools of Islamic jurisprudence, but it is frequently cited as saying "Islam teaches that") have ruled that IVF is permissible as long as the eggs and sperm come from a married wife and husband at the time they are married and the wife carries all pregnancies in her own womb. So I was wondering what other adaptations have been made for other religious groups.
Similarly I have a bumper sticker that says "People hate fur more than leather because it's easier to harrass rich white ladies than motorcycle gangs."
Indeed. My g/f’s lovely niece was an IVF baby. There might as well be funerals for sanitary products If the logic of the hardline is followed through.
Indiana passed a law requiring any aborted or miscarried fœtus/embryo to be "interred or cremated by a facility having possession of the remains", no matter its stage of development. Since women can miscarry spontaneously without realizing they were pregnant this would indeed require funerals for sanitary products. Someone organized an effort where women would call the governor's office with questions about their periods and what they should do with their various sanitary products. I wonder whatever happened to that guy, Mike Pence?
If the RCC hierarchy doesn't allow it, it makes them look like hypocrites when they say embryos have the same rights as all other human persons. If they do allow it, it sets a precedent that might be of use to critics of the hierarchy's teachings on reproductive and sexual ethics and bioethics more broadly.
If any kind of artificial womb for humans (they're already being used in experiments for animals) is ever developed that can keep alive an embryo or fetus that is more developmentally advanced than what we currently make in IVF and freeze, these questions would become even more pressing.
The law, at least in England and Wales, does not precisely treat your own body as your property, so I don't see any reason why it would consider embryos as property, wherever they were.
I gather there's at least one divorce case in US law where frozen embryos were treated as property.
I do sometimes wonder about possible unintended side effects of freezing embryos (and sperm, and eggs). Our reproductive plumbing is the warmest part of our bodies, so I wonder if temperature might make a difference. Maybe a very subtle one, that won't be discovered for a very long time.
Not saying IVF is wrong, at all. Just that there might be minor, unintended consequences.
FWIW, YMMV, etc.
So. The Catholic church has always been against any sex that doesn't carry with it a good chance at procreation (merely expressing love is not enough reason to do the deed and us over fifty folk should probably cut it out) but now it seems merely hoping to procreate is not good enough, either. Actually I doubt that either partner would go through the indignities of IVF collection if not for love of each other, so it is an expression of love.
My only problem with IVF is that the clinics downplay the bad odds for the prospective parents and cost way too much money. I also wonder if they really should take customers who for religious reasons believe every embryo should be implanted. That can result in women carrying 5-8 babies at once, often resulting in lifelong health problems for the tiny preemies.
It is also strongly arguable that this is the position in the Bible. But just try telling that to a strident right-to-lifer and watch them froth at the mouth. They don't need to read the Bible, they know God treats life as sacred from the moment of conception. He just kind of forgot to mention this to the nation of Israel who treated an injury to a pregnant woman not at all like the death of a child.
Also it turns out God kills the great majority of people before they're ever born.
PS. I agree that is neither an original or a sensitive response to what is a morally troubling area for many, but the idea that people's (consensual) sex lives should be regulated or controlled is despicable to me.
Plus many of the worst offenders are not RC but married "quiverful" types from the con-evo end of things. It's not the rules that individuals choose to follow that are the problem, but the faulty theology that says they should use the secular law to impose them on others.
What verse or verses would you cite for that belief? The study I have done seems pretty unequivocal that life = breath.
*https://www.quotescosmos.com/bible/bible-verses/Quickening.html
I'm sorry Nicole I don't have a considered position. My feelings about it consist of a vague dread. My Catholicism probably sits at the back of that, but I've never joined the dots.
My wife and I are childless, and when we were thinking about these things we discounted IVF on the grounds of expense and preferred to consider fostering and adoption. In the end we didn't go ahead with either option.
There are two possibilities, discounting as I must any divine spark element:
1. When the brain of the foetus/new-born develops brainwave activity typical of humans.
2. When the infant begins to show behaviour we typically associate with humans, such as empathy, language, and so on.
Who did that? We were talking about, "When does the Bible say life begins," and noting the references to breath and quickening. That has nothing to do with IVF, with which I have no quarrel. It was just a tangent and I mentioned why my "feelings" leaned toward -- anything's okay until about four months.
I do wonder why any mention of Bible verses, even when asked for, gets so many backs up on this board. Christians should actually be allowed to read the Bible and come away with a general view or feeling without being attacked by those who have a knowledge of original Greek/Hebrew and so dispute every single word of it and generally would like to throw the Bible in the trash and make up their own version.
Err, where is anyone throwing the Bible away and making up their own version? Or even attacking people who don't know Greek or Hebrew?
I suspect so, but I can't see how anything you said merited such a response.
No we didn't. I never promised any such thing, you just wanted to see Bible references to quickening. I think of quickening (even without Biblical references) as when the baby first moves. I think of Elizabeth's baby leaping in the womb as quickening. That is all.
I've said repeatedly that this just feels right to me and that there is no legal proof to it.
Why not beat Simon against the wall and ask for citations justifying his "vague dread."
I think Simon and I are both allowed to go with what feels right in our own lives. As far as I'm concerned that's part of what is meant by pro-choice.
That is why I recommend a more holistic approach, focused on Jesus' teachings.
Well, no, you said that was the Bible's position. Turns out it's not. Bluster about beating people against the wall is unbecoming.
So outcome is pretty neutral. All IVF does is give us more people that we do not need. But only by a small percentage, and the same can be said for natural childbirth, so that is fairly neutral as well.
But none of this is about logic or reason, it is about want.
I do not want children. However, after my friends started having them and especially after my nephew was born, I began to more personally understand the desire to have them.
I get that it is a biological drive. And I am not against IVF. But it is still an unnecessary and selfish thing, especially with the need for decent foster parents and adoptive parents. Though that is a more difficult process, with every challenge of breeding your own with many more added. So that is not an even evaluation.
To reiterate, it is a choice that should be available, but I do not think it is the best choice to be made.
Unbecoming? What ever next, unladylike?
I find it interesting that while you're always demanding proof notes from everyone else you never produce any for your positions. Where are all the verses stating that life begins after the baby takes it's first breath? I happen to think John the Baptist recognizing Christ while still in the womb indicates life. To me that's the Bible's position.
2. We're told Elizabeth was 6 months along, not at quickening, when Mary visited. I mean, believe whatever you want. But it's not in the Bible.
3. I didn't post verses because nobody asked for them. No need to snit.
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Gen 2:7
Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army... Ezekiel 37 9-10
If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust. Job 34: 14-15
Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it. Isaiah 42:5
For as long as life is in me, And the breath of God is in my nostrils.... Job 27:3
The Spirit of God has made me, And the breath of the Almighty gives me life. Job 33:4
But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God came into them, and they stood on their feet; and great fear fell upon those who were watching them. Rev 11:11
I did that, based on the OP. Seemed to me that the question was more about the morality of what to do with the 'excess' fertilized eggs than the process itself. I really do question trying to tease out the morality of a pretty specific situation using a text that cannot have imagined such a situation.
MT: I wasn't calling you sexist, I was calling you my mother. She used "unbecoming" and "unladylike" as reprimands quite often and I haven't heard it much since.
This is a popular urban legend among evangelical types. One evangelical writes about being disabused of this notion while touring Jerusalem.
Your pastor seems to have made the further adaptation of not needing to unburden the camel or have it stoop much to pass through the 'Eye of the Needle'. Like most urban legends this one can't be traced back to its origins, but Clark goes on to speculate about why this particular tale persists.
All italics from the original. Bolding added by me.
This may seem like a tangent from a discussion of IVF, but I suspect similar motivated reasoning goes in to discussions of when the Bible says human life begins. If you distrust women and are uncomfortable with them making decisions for themselves you'll pick something early in embryonic development to justify curtailing women's freedom. Someone more comfortable with women's freedom will be inclined to pick a later time. Both will insist that these are "Biblical" based on some vaguely relevant passages.
Posters don't get to call other other posters anything unless it's unambiguously complimentary and cannot be construed as getting personal/insulting. Longtime posters also know not to get personal with each other outside of Hell - Mousethief and Twilight.
Would all posters embroiled in this kindly knock it off or start a Hell thread if you want to take personal offence with other posters.
Many thanks,
Louise
Epiphanies Host
hosting off
I was going to post here that I don't think the RCC hierarchy currently bans opposite-sex couples who for reasons of age or infertility know they cannot bear children from marrying or from having sex once they are married, but I wanted to do some research to see what their policy really is.
And what I found was interesting, to say the least! Infertile couples can marry, but couples where one or other party is permanently incapable of having the kind of sex that the church considers to be "the marriage act" (and the only moral kind of sex) cannot. This condition, which they call impotence but it doesn't mean exactly the same thing as the more common use of the term, doesn't invalidate an already existing marriage if it comes about after the couple marries, but if it existed before the couple married, whether they knew about it or not, then the marriage never really happened.
Oh, and if a couple intends to have a sexless marriage like Mary and Joseph, that's ok (and they can even get a church divorce - a real divorce, not an annulment, I think - as long as they never consummate the marriage), but I think they still need to be capable of having "the marriage act" when they get married. I'm not entirely sure why.
Source and source. If someone finds better sources, please let me know!
That's no doubt true in many cases, but quickening can mean "an earlier time" when compared to "at the first breath," or quickening might mean "a later time" when compared to "when the sperm meets the egg." Which later is how I'm used to using it.
I first heard of quickening as a desirable definition of when life begins by a group of Catholic women who wanted abortion to be legal in the first trimester. Since the first trimester, (which is usually before quickening) seems to be the time when most abortions are performed it seemed like it might be a good compromise time for those of us (like me) who are pro-choice and hoping to get more pro-life people on our side.
Bolded mine. Thank you for your research Stonespring. I was just given a short answer from a priest once that didn't give much specifics. This effects someone I know who is quite capable of falling in love and wanting to marry someone of the opposite sex, but would never be physically capable of having ordinary, baby-making sex.
There are so many men and women like this, who may have physical injuries, men with hypogonadism, women with androgen sensitivity, low-testosterone levels, Kallman's syndrome, birth irregularities, injuries or tumors to the pituitary or hypothalamus, and I'm sure many problems I've never heard of. It just seems so cruel to tell these people they can never marry.