I have seen the pain that couples endure when having difficulty conceiving a child. My parents experienced it, and several friends and family members also experienced it. Infertility can be an almost unbearable cross to carry; the heartbreak grows with each passing day, and couples continually feel the void left by the child who could not be.
Sometimes the weight feels crushing. Couples spend months and even years praying for a child and trying to conceive. To repeatedly hear no or not yet causes a lasting ache within. This is often when desperation sets in, and with today’s advances in technology, many couples feel that their only recourse is to seek the assistance of in vitro fertilization procedures—the creation of a child by fertilizing the woman’s egg in a petri dish with (usually) her husband’s sperm—or surrogacy, which also usually involves IVF. These couples have come to believe that just because they can create a baby artificially, they should. But the end rarely justifies the means, and in this case, it certainly does not.
As much as a couple longs for a child, they must understand that a child is not a right; a child is a gift. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The “supreme gift of marriage” is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged “right to a child” would lead. 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.”
The Catholic Church teaches that creating a child via IVF or carrying that child via surrogacy is “gravely immoral.” According to the Catechism, “These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses’ ‘right to become a father and a mother only through each other.’”
Methods to artificially create a child through IVF or to create a child and have somebody other than his mother carry him are not only unethical and immoral, but they treat the child like a commodity.
A document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explains that “surrogate motherhood represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal fidelity and of responsible motherhood; it offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents; it sets up, to the detriment of families, a division between the physical, psychological and moral elements which constitute those families.”
We recently saw an example of this in a story about McKenna West, who was carrying a baby boy for another couple. Named Gabriel by the surrogate, the baby was found to have a heart condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. According to the contract that West signed, should there be an “anomaly” with the baby’s development, she would abort him. And while West originally believed this scenario would be unlikely, she found herself facing it. The parents wanted her to abort, but she refused. When the parents realized that she would not consent to an abortion, they demanded their money back. West sought protection for the baby in Texas, which is more of a pro-life state than her native Alaska and the parents’ home state of California, and she gave birth to the baby, who is now in his parents’ custody and receiving medical treatment.
Contracts. Payments. A return of money. It sounds like we’re talking about a defective piece of electronic equipment rather than a human being. But this is the reality of surrogacy. It turns a child into a commodity that can be bought and sold. Indeed, American Surrogacy boasts that a surrogate can make anywhere from $50,000 to more than $110,000. And ACRC Surrogacy & Egg Donation states that “the surrogacy industry hit $28.91 billion globally in 2026.” West herself said she became a surrogate to make money: “I thought [being a surrogate] would be a really awesome way to make extra income for my family.”
While it’s laudable that West protected the baby and did not consent to an abortion, she shouldn’t be held up as a pro-life hero. She agreed to the surrogacy; she carried someone else’s child because she thought it would be a good way to make money and stay home with her own children. This was a business transaction.
Children are not commodities, and we must shift from a culture that claims that everyone has a right to a baby to one that respects and cherishes all babies, never seeking them harm, never manufacturing them in laboratories, and certainly not creating them to give to people who are neither their biological mother nor father. This is child abuse with far-reaching consequences.
But there is hope for couples struggling with infertility. Often, their medical problems can be overcome when a doctor identifies the underlying health issues. This is something that Thomas Hilgers, founder of the Saint Paul VI Institute, has spent decades studying. He understands the heartbreak of infertility, and he founded the institute—“the only medical institute of its kind that specializes in research, diagnosis, and treatment of procreative and women’s healthcare within a pro-life ethic”—with a goal of helping couples use ethical means to conceive a child. His methods have helped thousands of couples conceive a child, as their success rate ranges from 60-80%, depending on the health problem. This is a much higher success rate than IVF, and it respects the dignity of the child and of the parents.
The Church understands the immense cross that those suffering from infertility carry, and its teachings are not meant to be cold or unfeeling. They were instituted out of a self-giving love that upholds the dignity of children while protecting both them and their parents from an ideology that seeks to exploit the couple’s pain. This kind of love—the love Christ has for His children—is the love we are meant to show for our fellow human beings, and it includes those not yet born. Only through this love will children be seen as the immense gifts that they truly are.
This article first appeared in LifeSiteNews at lifesitenews.com/opinion/infertility-is-heartbreaking-but-it-doesnt-make-ivf-or-surrogacy-acceptable/?utm_source=most_recent.
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