U.S. Catholic Bishops issue public comment rejecting IVF expansion

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and other Catholic organizations submitted public comments last week urging the Labor Department to reject a proposal that would expand insurance coverage for in-vitro fertilization (IVF).

Key Takeaways:

• Last week, the USCCB and other Catholic groups submitted public comments opposing the Trump administration's proposal to expand IVF insurance coverage.

• In a 17-page letter, the bishops warned that IVF commodifies children and treats them like property.

• They encouraged coverage for Restorative Reproductive Medicine as an alternative to IVF.

• The Catholic Church opposes IVF in part because it results in the destruction of human life in its embryonic stage.

The Details:

In May, the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services under the Trump administration announced a proposal to expand insurance coverage for IVF treatments. The USCCB submitted its 17-page letter opposing that proposal on July 13, the final day of the public comment window for that proposal.

The letter affirmed the desire to welcome children and expressed support for expanding fertility-related coverage, provided that coverage respects preborn human life.

“The Church affirms the deep desire of spouses to welcome children and supports medical efforts to address infertility. At the same time, public policy should not promote practices that undermine the dignity of human life or sever the connection between procreation and the marital act,” the letter said. “The USCCB therefore evaluates the proposed rule both positively and critically.”

The bishops warned that IVF “commodifies our fellow human beings and treats them like products and property" and that “the exclusivity of the marriage bond in its most unique context and unnaturally [separates] the procreative aspect from the unitive aspect (that is, regarding the unity of the spouses) of the marital act.”

The USCCB was joined by the Catholic Medical Association (CMA), the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC), and the National Association of Catholic Nurses, USA (NACN-USA) in speaking out against the proposal.

Zoom In:

The USCCB suggested more focus be placed on Restorative Reproductive Medicine (RRM) as an alternative to IVF. RRM focuses on finding the underlying causes of infertility.

The group wrote:

“RRM approaches generally recognize that infertility is a symptom of an underlying condition, not a disease in and of itself; and they therefore seek to restore normal reproductive function by identifying and treating its root causes. In contrast to restorative reproductive medicine, in vitro fertilization does not aim to treat the underlying causes of infertility but seeks to bypass them — in a sense, overriding the symptom.”

The letter requested that RRM be included in insurance coverage so that couples “can make meaningful use of that flexibility by affording them the opportunity to know of the full range of possible fertility care that can identify and heal a patient’s underlying conditions while safeguarding human life and dignity.”

Why It Matters:

The Catholic Church opposes IVF in part because it results in the destruction of human life in its embryonic stage.

According to a study published in Fertility and Sterility, as many as 13 million children have been born through IVF around the world since 1978. Each IVF cycle typically creates multiple embryos which are then screened and graded, with only the most desirable embryos implanted. The rest are either frozen indefinitely, destroyed, or fail to implant in another IVF cycle.

According to research published in Reproductive Biomedicine Online, over 2.5 million IVF cycles are performed every year, with only 500,000 babies born annually.

The bishops' emphasized the widespread destruction of IVF in their letter, writing, “IVF, especially as practiced in the U.S., kills or freezes at least as many preborn children as abortion — at a magnitude of hundreds of thousands or perhaps over a million per year.”

The bishops also noted that the common practice of freezing embryos "is also a profound and terrible violation of their dignity and rights."

“Hundreds of thousands of our smallest brothers and sisters in the U.S. are experiencing this fate right now,” they added.

The Bottom Line:

The bishops urged the Trump administration to focus on infertility treatments that respect life at all stages.

“The proposed rule represents a valuable opportunity to advance real solutions to infertility that respect the God-given dignity of parents and of children, born and preborn,” they wrote. “We urge the Departments to refocus the rule on therapeutic, restorative treatments, and to abandon its inclusion of IVF, which is profoundly flawed both legally and morally.”