As Catholics, like myself, celebrate Advent and re-tell the mystery of the Christmas story, it's fitting to reflect on reproductive technologies. On December 8, the Vatican released Dignitas Personae: On Certain Bioethical Questions, a statement of the Roman Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith addressing many questions reproductive technology poses. The Vatican internally dated the document September 8, which is the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. The Church has drawn our attention to two doctrines regarding extraordinary births - Mary (Jesus' mother), born free of original sin, and Jesus - well, let's just say he was a reproductive mystery. The miraculous biblical stories of birth fit more closely with our notions of reproductive technologies than with the Vatican's re-assertion that the only authentic context for human life is an act of reciprocal love between a man and woman in marriage.
An analogy of Jesus' birth and modern IVF is not a direct corollary. Yet, it does leave me puzzled every Christmas that a tradition that so staunchly advocates a strict pro-heterosexual marriage, anti-abortion/reproductive technology stance celebrates an unwed young woman becoming pregnant without engaging in sexual intercourse. The story lacks marriage and a male/female act of "reciprocal love" -- a.k.a. penile-vaginal sexual intercourse.
I don't raise this issue in support of open doors to all reproductive technology or that faith in God alone cures infertility. Rather, I suggest we reflect with greater care and more awareness on our stories of birth, infertility, and disease. The biblical tradition and our religious heritage are not neat and tidy. Infertility and disease affect communities. Births and how they come about affect communities.
"Dignitas Personae" means "the dignity of a person." What Dignitas Personae, and Donum vitae before it, have failed to articulate is how the dignity of all lives is to be affirmed from conception to death. The Church focuses on an embryo's dignity to the exclusion of women's lives, their families, and those who live with chronic diseases. Ethical positions on assisted reproductive technologies and embryonic research become more complex and richer when we ask about the dignity of all persons. The seamless ethic of life from conception to death is one we can affect positively or negatively with responsible scientific exploration and intentional ethical deliberation. To truly recognize the dignity of all lives - a couple struggling with infertility, a patient with Parkinson's disease and his family, or a community that suffers from genetic disorders - we need to look beyond heterosexual procreative rules to a communal understanding of reciprocal love and justice.
Those of us in faith communities and those of us in the sexual and reproductive health fields need each other as we wade through discussions of Assisted Reproductive Technologies. Unlike the Vatican, we can choose to start with a reproductive justice lens that focuses on communities and individuals in community. This means we need to ask:
- how ARTs affect reproductive choices and if they increase a woman's moral agency,
- what level of safety is needed and risk permissible in use ofARTs,
- whether choosing to have a child means a right to choose the child's characteristics,
- whether ARTs exacerbate economic, racial, and abilism divides in our communities,
- if a market economy serves as the best regulator for medical practices,
- and, most importantly from my perspective, how faith communities can become better informed, publicly participatory, and effective counselors on issues of ARTs?
If we don't seek answers to these questions, we fail women, children, and men who are seeking difficult moral answers to the use of ARTs. All lives have dignity; respect demands we take the entirety of the situation seriously.
The Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, funded by the Moriah Fund, has spent the last year working on an Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Assisted Reproductive Technologies, which will appear on the Religious Institute website in January. This Open Letter will be part of A Time to Be Born: A Guidebook for Clergy and Religious Professionals on Assisted Reproductive Technologies to be published in 2009.
