Last time, we discussed several moral issues that arise when man decides to “play God” in the area of human reproduction.

In vitro fertilization always takes innocent life. Embryonic genetic editing tends towards the sad assumption that the mother is the only patient involved, because the embryo is not considered a patient. And efforts to alter a baby’s genetics don’t have an easy line between “health-related concerns” and flat-out “child enhancement.”

But let’s dig deeper.

A few more troubling observations begin to surface as we dive further into the implications of man’s newly discovered ability to mess with reproduction.

 4) Surrogacy and some consequences of in vitro fertilization destroy the integrity of marriage.

This is a bold claim, but I believe I can support it, and we’ll take it step by step. (Notably, as the Catholic church has begun to address artificial reproduction in recent years, certain Catholic voices have spoken out on this topic. I am indebted to bioethicist Nicholas Tonti-Filippini and his thought-provoking article “The Embryo Rescue Debate” for many of my thoughts on this issue. See also this short video by Human Life International that explains the same point.)

Here is the basic premise that we must first understand. When a man and a woman make a marriage vow to each other, they are indeed committing that they will only engage in sexual activity with each other.

But the commitment actually goes deeper than that. They are also committing that they will only become parents through each other. Specifically, the woman commits that she will only become pregnant through her husband.

This may seem uncontroversial, but it can quickly become otherwise when applied to artificial reproductive technology. Let’s start with an obvious example, surrogacy, which has become an international industry by now.

If you want to have a child—perhaps you’re single, perhaps you’re infertile—you can pay to have your gametes shipped to some lab, paired with someone else’s, and then a woman (often in a third-world country) is hired to gestate your baby for you.

That woman, often pressed by financial circumstances into the industry, thus becomes pregnant through someone other than her husband.

Most of us would agree that this form of surrogacy is immoral. But let’s take the next step.

Consider the multitudes of frozen embryos—created through IVF, but not lucky enough to be selected—which are now being stored in freezers for years on end. Some advocates rightly see these embryos as real people who need to be rescued from this fate of perpetual suspended-animation, and some married couples might even volunteer to gestate an embryo so that he or she has a chance at the fullness of life.

But think about what it would mean for a couple to decide to rescue an anonymous embryo—the woman is becoming pregnant with a baby from outside her marriage.

Well, couples can adopt kids who aren’t their own, one might say. But that is not the same as causing a wife to become pregnant—which is a physical, and I even would say ontological change to her own person—with another man’s baby.

Now, if this all is true, it leaves us in a seemingly impossible situation. If it’s shameful to rescue embryos this way, it’s surely not any less shameful to leave all these little humans in suspended animation!

Thus, the policy implications at this point are extremely difficult to weigh against each other. Accordingly, I’m stopping short of attempting to solve this dilemma, and rather asking us to ponder why we even have this dilemma in the first place—and what we can do to avoid it.

I’m not making a claim about what to do with these embryos, but rather want to expose the impossible situation that this technology has placed society in.

We have chosen to get our scientific fingers all mixed in with God’s wonderful, miraculous, and quite frankly mysterious processes of bringing new life in the world.

And now we are left with a dilemma that requires us to either relegate a whole nation of His image-bearers to a perpetually frozen existence or bring them to fullness of life by sacrificing the integrity of the marriage commitment.

Neither is a good option.

Therefore, the in vitro fertilization industry’s practices are shameful any way you slice it.

We have a couple more troubling trends to dive into next time. Stay tuned for part 3.