After Craig Turczynski finished his doctorate in reproductive physiology, he found a job at an in vitro fertilization laboratory. For years, he mixed the sperm and eggs and assisted physicians as embryos were inserted into women’s wombs.
As a cradle Catholic, he knew the church considers assisted reproductive technologies such as IVF morally unacceptable. “(But) I just felt at the time that the church couldn’t really understand the science the way I did,” said Turczynski. “Helping couples conceive didn’t sound like a bad thing to do.”
But over time, Turczynski started to feel what he was doing was wrong. The final straw came when he was told to destroy the embryos of a couple who no longer wanted them. “Everything that I had tried to do, all my efforts were trying to help this couple have a baby. I couldn’t reconcile (that with them) then deciding, ‘Nah, I don’t want the rest, go ahead and throw them away,’ ” he said. “After that, I realized I was going to have to be totally accepting (of) everything that the field wanted me to do or I would be in this same dilemma again.”
Assisted reproductive technology includes fertility treatments in which either eggs or embryos are handled outside of the body. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “ART procedures involve removing mature eggs from a woman’s ovaries using a needle, combining the eggs with sperm in the laboratory, and returning the embryos to the woman’s body or donating them to another woman.”
But the church teaches that God has a different vision for the creation of families. “(With ART), the act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents, and the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception.”
“In the life-giving and the love-giving purpose of the marital embrace (is) where we get to cooperate with God in the begetting of children,” said Turczynski. “That’s the ultimate design for how children should come about.”
Turczynski left his job directing the in vitro lab. He is now director of strategy and scientific affairs for the Billings Ovulation Method Association-USA, an organization promoting a type of natural family planning that can help couples conceive without the use of artificial reproductive technology. If couples do have problems conceiving, many Catholic doctors will work to solve the underlying conditions using medication or surgery. That usually didn’t happen with assisted reproductive technology doctors, he said. “They’ll do a minimal amount of work up, but when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” said Turczynski. “It was like all roads lead to IVF.”
The use of ART can lead to other gravely immoral practices, such as egg or sperm donation, which allows for the creation of a child intentionally deprived of a relationship with at least one biological parent. Surrogacy uses a woman’s body and deprives the infant of the care of the woman who nurtured him or her for nine months. IVF can allow doctors and couples to screen the embryos, leaving ones with genetic disorders to be indefinitely frozen or discarded.
Success isn’t guaranteed with IVF, especially for couples over 35, said Turczynski. “It’s more like one in three, one in four couples leave the program successfully with a baby,” he said. Oftentimes, the human embryos created during IVF stay frozen indefinitely. “I’ve done some calculations and I believe it’s about a million (embryos) we add (to cryopreservation tanks) every year,” he said. And there can be health complications for mother and child.
“Women are potentially exposed to a dangerous condition called hyperstimulation syndrome when they’re stimulated from IVF. It causes fluid buildup, causing severe pain, difficulties breathing and urinating, and if it’s not brought under control it can be fatal,” said Turczynski. “The effect of the procedure of IVF — the stimulation procedure, the embryo culture, the manipulation of the embryo — all have consequences to the health of that child later in life. The oldest children (conceived by IVF) are in their 30s and 40s now and they’re finding there’s an increased rate of cardiometabolic issues later in life — insulin resistance, obesity, high blood pressure, cardiac issues,” as found in studies such as “In Vitro Fertilization and Adverse Obstetric and Perinatal Outcomes.”
Though the prospect of not having biological children can be devastating for couples, many Catholics decide to forgo ART. Colleen and Aaron, one couple in the Arlington diocese who asked that their real names be withheld, married in their 40s but still hoped to have biological children. “One of the doctors recommended IVF,” said Aaron. “When the doctor mentioned it, we went and read about it and it confirmed there were a great number of moral problems with it.”
“We didn’t choose IVF because we know that each baby is a gift from God and IVF does not treat a baby as a gift from God,” said Colleen. “Creating a child in a fertility clinic treats the child as a product.”
Though they have no children, the couple stays involved in the lives of their nieces and nephews, and they volunteer as a couple teaching children at their parish. “It’s been a big cross not to have children but we really prayed that God would give us the grace to trust in him and that he would make our marriage fruitful in other ways,” said Colleen. “We would encourage (couples considering IVF) to really review the church’s teaching on it and take that to prayer and to trust that God will provide for them, that he has a wonderful plan for them.”
