Medically Assisted Procreation and the “Fourth Technological Reich”
Image by ZEISS Microscopy.
by Vito Capeta
A previous version of this essay was published by the Creation Theology Fellowship.
In our days, the problem of infertility has become very significant. There is a great deal of suffering for those who cannot have children, and this should not be ignored. The deep desire to have children and to have human relationships within one’s family, understood as a communion between husband, wife, and children, is inscribed in our being. It seems that technology can offer us a solution to this problem, but beware! Pay attention to the postmodern mentality that is very present in regard to procreation. In some methods of medically assisted reproduction, the most common of which is in vitro fertilization (IVF), the human embryo goes from being recognized as a gift to being treated as a product.
Underlying these dehumanizing practices is what I call the “Fourth Technological Reich.” According to this ideology, if something is scientifically possible, then it is morally valid. If the technique allows it, then it becomes my right and my truth. You cannot tell me that it is not possible. This is a clear application of the will to power, which prioritizes ego and force (for good as well as evil) over moral considerations like virtue, solidarity, and the common good.
Now, what are the problems that stem from this ideology? The following list is not exhaustive, but it highlights some of the primary ways that techniques such as IVF dehumanize persons. Most significantly, they are an unnatural selection against natural law that involve the risk of eugenics: selecting healthy embryos for implantation and using those with genetic pathologies for experimentation with the aim of creating a healthier society. Also think about the issue of multiplication of parenthood. A child can have up to five parents if everything goes well: sperm donor, egg donor, uterus donor, and two parents who raise the child. Let’s think about the ways this would transform the concept of family, the rights of children, their family status, and their identity. There is also the problem of commercialization and exploitation. And what do we do with surplus embryos? Adopt them? Then would this justify medically assisted reproduction? This has many, many consequences.
Unfortunately, we live in a state of schizophrenia. On the one hand, those who can have children end up aborting them for economic reasons or because they do not want any more children. Even some couples who want children ultimately choose abortion after prenatal diagnosis, which in many cases is based on probabilistic results that are unverified by a second opinion from another doctor. On the other hand, those who cannot have children want to have them at all costs, as if having a child were a right and not a gift.
The logic behind techniques like IVF is the same as the logic behind abortion. In both cases, the value of a concrete human life is made dependent on the desires of others. In IVF, the child is valued because he is wanted, while in abortion, the child is not valued, because he is unwanted or at least not wanted as he is. Prenatal diagnosis to determine whether the fetus is healthy often has the same meaning: to determine whether the child corresponds to his parents’ desires. However, just as not wanting a child (or not wanting him as he is) does not justify his killing, wanting a child does not justify his production through IVF. Giving birth to a human being through production rather than personal donation in marital communion is unworthy of the person being brought into existence. These techniques should not actually be called “assisted reproduction,” but “reproduction replacement.”
Medically assisted procreation often adopts the logic of production: quality control, efficiency, cost control, and time management. Women and men provide the biological materials, but life production is carried out by technicians. The same logic applies if a man manufactures an object. What is his relationship to this work? It is something he created, he is the owner, and nothing happens if he wants to change, destroy, or improve it. This perspective blurs the differences between producing and procreating, and it cannot be applied to a child. Instead, there is the logic of procreation, in which, through the act of marital union, life is like a gift, even when ardently desired. It is something one cannot control. This is not a product; one cannot manipulate it. It is an action that the spouses act out and not something they create. That is, the child is generated not created. Children have the right to be born. They are a being, not a thing!
The ethical principle of responsible procreation as conceived in the Catholic vision of human love is the right approach for a man and a woman to respond to the procreative dimension inherent in human sexuality. Procreative responsibility is expressed at an ethical level as respect for the indissoluble unity of the two meanings inscribed in the conjugal act—the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning. To illuminate this fundamental principle, it is useful to grasp the meaning of the conjugal act in light of the Theology of the Body John Paul II presented in his catechesis on human love in God’s plan: “The human body with its sex and its masculinity and femininity, seen in the very mystery of creation, is not only a source of fertility and procreation, as in the whole natural order, but ‘from the beginning’ contains the spousal attribute, that is, the capacity to express love: that love in which the human person becomes a gift and—through that gift—realizes the sense of his or her being and existence.”
In fact, the spousal character of the human body can be understood only with reference to the person, because he is willed by God for himself. What, therefore, are the personalistic requirements of the conjugal act? First of all, it must be a meeting at the level of persons: the body is permeated by the person, and the encounter of the bodies is called to be a sacrament of the encounter of persons, an expressive and effective sign of giving and receiving another as an irrevocable gift of self. The genital expression cannot be limited to the body, separated from the meaning of the giving of persons. In this context, it finds its true meaning, neither despised as something merely physical and inferior nor idolized as if it were a value in itself. But the complete meaning of spousal love between a man and a woman goes beyond their physical union. The purpose that is intrinsically connected with the bodily expression of conjugal love indicates a new dimension of love. I refer here to fertility, through which love always goes beyond itself and is expressed in the generation of a new life.
A technique of medically assisted procreation is not inherently bad because it is artificial. Every marital act must have two meanings, as Donum vitae says: unitive and procreative. This implies love because it is a total donation and openness to life and the principle of freedom and responsibility. Within IVF there is no marital act. The egg and sperm are taken and placed in a petri dish in the laboratory, and new life is created. There is a separation of love and the marital and procreative act. With this in mind, consider these criteria for whether a technique is right. It must demonstrate respect for life by neither endangering the life of the embryo nor otherwise contradicting the dignity of life. The technique must also demonstrate respect for sexuality by enabling each person to come into existence as the result of the conjugal act between a man and a woman without the involvement of a third party, such as a technician or a sperm or egg donor. Techniques of medically assisted procreation that fulfill these criteria help the conjugal act and do not replace it.
It is critical that the starting point is the right of the child and not the right to have a child. Also, it is very important for us human beings to live procreation as imagined by God the Creator, who tells us in the book of Genesis, “Be fruitful and multiply!” This conception and multiplication should resemble God in the total and faithful donation of self in all dimensions as husband to his wife and as wife to her husband. Thus, new life and persons come from the total love and donation between husband and wife.
Vito Capeta is a licentiate student in bioethics at Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum in Rome.