A Second Reply to Dr. Elizabeth Rex: IVF and ET Are Still Immoral

(Bioethicist Dr. Elizabeth Rex has responded to my initial response, and the reader may find such on LifeSite. You can read the debate here. Alas, Dr. Rex’s arguments do not work, and here is my reply and clarification, which may be posted on LifeSite soon. This will likely close my contribution, for I’m not sure anything more said on this issue would be profitable). Editor

I would like to thank Dr. Rex for her detailed reply to my own concerns. I must confess that I did not realize that ‘embryo adoption’ had gone so mainstream in the Catholic world. But that still does not make it right.

Dr. Rex does not respond directly to the two key teachings which I quote from Donum Vitae (1987) and Dignitatis Personae (2008). She talks around them, but not to them.

Before offering some clarifications required in the claims made in her response, allow me to ask a simple question:

Both Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger were well aware of all the reasons and arguments that Dr. Rex offers, and could have made them at least as well as she does. Yet they still taught – quite clearly – that there are no licit means to bring these embryos to birth.

Why does Dr. Rex – and the others she quotes – get to say that there are now indeed licit means? What has changed since 1987 and 2008? Whence does she derive the authority to go contrary to the conclusions reached by the Magisterium? Keep in mind that Cardinal Ratzinger wrote Donum Vitae, and approved Dignitatis Humanae as Pope.

Readers should be aware that the Pontifical Academy for Life that Dr. Rex invokes for support is not a Magisterial office, but simply advisory, as is the Pontifical Academy for Sciences. You don’t even need to be a Catholic to be appointed, and there are some controversial appointees of late. Just a few years ago, they were embroiled in a scandal when a book they published approved contraception. And to seek moral guidance from the USCCB is a fraught endeavour.

It is a principle in theology that one always interprets the less authoritative in light of the more authoritative. Both Donum Vitae and Dignitatis Personae are Magisterial documents, promulgated by the highest level of authority in the Church. Nothing and no one that Dr. Rex invokes to support her position has such authority.

Theologians debate all sorts of things, from women’s ordination, to contraception, euthanasia and abortion. That does not make these issues debatable. For when things really matter, the Church (after much pondering) will simply speak the truth.

Read over the two key paragraphs quoted in my first reply. The Church frames her teaching in such simple and clear terms, so that all may understand, ‘with ease, firm certainty and no admixture of error’, without any need of advanced education, esoteric language or complex arguments.

We will now clarify our response to just a few of the claims Dr. Rex makes:

5. Yes, we have a duty to save and preserve life, but not at the expense of doing moral evil. That is the whole point of the two documents. Placing an embryo in a womb by technical means (embryo transfer, ET) replaces the conjugal act and is an intrinsic evil, as part of the broader evil of IVF. Even if many Catholics, even bishops, support the technology since it seems superficially ‘pro-life’. It’s not.
6. The arguments made by Dr. Rex supporting embryo transfer could just as well be used to support some aspects of IVF, if not all of it. After all, it’s producing life, is it not, and children who would otherwise not have existed can now exist, all the while giving (apparently) great hope and joy to infertile couples. In whatever way one defines surrogacy, implanting a genetically alien child in one’s womb fits the bill, regardless of intention. But Donum Vitae condemns even the theoretical ‘simple case’ of IVF and ET: An infertile, married couple, who have one ovum fertilized via IVF, by sperm taken without masturbation, and no abortion. Would Dr. Rex dissociate these two procedures, claiming that IVF is wrong, but ET – implanting the embryos – is not? Is this what she claims the documents are teaching? It seems clear that both procedures are condemned as immoral. The whole process dissociates the ‘nexus indissolubilis’ – the unbreakable bond – that exists, and must exist, between the unitive and the procreative.
7. The paragraph permitting therapeutic interventions on the unborn – a noble endeavor – refers to babies already in the womb, and cannot be construed to support implanting embryos. The document just spent the previous paragraphs condemning IVF and ET. What is more, if this were the point of that paragraph, why wouldn’t the authors of the document – who were well aware of embryo transfer – allude to such when referring later to embryo adoption? Instead, it says the exact opposite: There are no licit means to bring these embryos to term. Rex’s interpretation is specious.
8. As an ancillary point, how would such embryos be chosen? By arbitrary criteria, eugenic or otherwise, or by a quasi-random lottery?
9. To implant these embryos in the wombs of willing participants – for all of the good intentions – is formal cooperation in this macabre endeavor, usurping God’s prerogative, and would only create an even greater market and appetite for embryonic children to be produced. Moral evil always begets ever-greater evil, which is why the Church has indeed condemned IVF and ET, from beginning to end. We should take no part in it. These children, sadly, have no morally licit way to be brought to term. That is what the Church has taught, simply and clearly. If the Magisterium intervenes and clarifies this further, I am open. Until then, Roma locuta, causa finita.

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