What IVF Does Not Heal

December 14, 2010 by Tim Muldoon

Continued from Page 1

Because the desire to parent is such a powerful desire, the slow development of that desire can be difficult. Those who have undergone that development -- who, like my wife and me, have felt the movement from resistance to acceptance to enthusiastic embrace of adoption -- understand that from a macroscopic perspective society ought to encourage it. Few people would automatically choose to adopt special needs children, or children orphaned by AIDS, or older children in foster care. Yet paradoxically, those who feel the sting of infertility are the people who eventually become the tenaciously loving parents of those children who otherwise would languish in institutions.

IVF represents a false promise: it does not heal, nor does it serve the greater good of children and families around the world. It preys upon the fear that young couples experience in the early stages of infertility, and for many it simply delays the truth that they will never conceive. Far from being a therapy for a medical condition, it is a circumvention of a transformative process that societies ought to support.

For Elizabeth Scalia's response to this article, click here.

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12/14/2010 5:00:00 AM

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About Tim Muldoon

Tim Muldoon holds a Ph.D. in Catholic systematic theology and is an award-winning author and Catholic theologian of the new evangelization.

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