Judy Peres’ well-written “Giving Birth to Controversy” (Page 1, July 21) noted one Catholic woman’s unwillingness to use pregnancy “reduction” in connection with in-vitro fertilization.
Although teaching the permissibility of many reproductive therapies, the church officially withholds approval of the IVF remedy for childlessness. Based on points in the article, I would ask interested parties to consider some things. Imagine the church approving a process whereby a woman would engage in expensive, unregulated treatment that, by design, statistically multiplies a pregnancy’s health risks while being successful maybe 25 percent of the time; where her hoping heart must consider terminations (“reduction”) to optimize survival of womb mates; and where having a deep bench in this lucrative game means freezing-solid tiny human individuals. Imagine church leadership putting off the legal and social questions raised by couples and clinicians adding to more than 100,000 frozen human embryos.
The church would be callous to ignore the human issues at stake.
Your coverage assures me that mine are not merely sectarian reservations. Certainly there are lovely children and generous parents who are grateful for remarkable technological industry. But we are not serving well the children whose very existence we engineer by laying them in cribs of unexamined political, moral and industrial philosophies.
