Building the bionic baby. . .

Infertility is heart breaking.  I know.  There are people whom I love dearly whose hearts are daily laid low by the want of a child that will not be fulfilled.  Infertility plagues our society, with around 19 percent of couples struggling to conceive. I do not know why or what is causing the increase of this painful and hurtful reality.  I only know that it is there and increasing.

Politicians are jumping on the bandwagon for IVF as if they have the answer to these tears.  How sad it is to play with the emotions of people already so wounded!  How cruel!  With an overall live birth success rate of only 23 percent for couples, IVF is not the universal answer and it will still leave the vast majority with the devastating pain of loss and hopelessness no matter who is paying for the high cost of each treatment.  Furthermore, for each "successful" IVF birth, there are many deaths of those aborted in the womb to maintain the viability of one or left to languish in the freezer aisle of the IVF superstore.

It is cruel and unusual punishment to banter about the talk of rights to IVF and of the obligation of insurers or tax payers or both to sustain these rights when 76% of the time there is no baby as a result of our best IVF technology.  The old dark days of children in orphanages and homes for unwed mothers offered more real substantive hope to the infertile than IVF can offer today.  Of course, the reality of abortion has pretty much eliminated the need for such places today.  Unwanted or unplanned children are disposed of as yesterday's garbage.  Effective and inexpensive birth control options have reduced unwanted or unplanned pregnancies to a much smaller "problem" than in previous generations.  The second cruel and unusual punishment is the achievement of the ideal of sex without love, children, commitment, or responsibility.  IVF has become the backup plan for those for whom birth control has worked only too well and postponed the possibility of children until infertility is a much more common problem.  It is a vicious circle that our technology has offered us and one without much sympathy for the broken hearts and buckets of tears shed for those who want a child but are not able to conceive.

We think the promise of the future is that we have the technology and we can make it happen.  In reality the promise of the future may be more and greater disappointment as we discover that our manifold options are not always salutary or without consequence and a down side big enough to disappoint us all.  I do not understand why politicians promise the moon to people who have already lived through enough heartache but science is not the answer to the panacea of problems infertile couples suffer.  Playing God as a part may leave us feeling high and mighty but it will do little to offer real comfort and consolation to those for whom God is their only hope.  If you or someone you know is suffering from infertility, God bless you and keep you through the disappointment and tears.  God knows the rest of society has pretty much let you down.  It is for this reason as much as any that the Church needs to be the voice of reason and the conscience of an indulgent society so easy to write checks it cannot cash and to leave the infertile with sorrows and little peace.