A time for change

Dr. John Haas says in vitro fertilization is beneath the dignity of human beings . . .

Dr. John Haas

It became apparent the student was becoming impatient with my lecture in a course on Catholic social doctrine. He finally put up his hand and blurted out, “What kind of society do you want, anyway?”

“Well,” I said, “just for starters, a society in which pornography is illegal, abortion is outlawed, the sale and distribution of contraceptives is prohibited, and divorce is very difficult to obtain.” The student literally leapt out of his chair and declared, “You’re crazy! How could you ever hope to have a society like that?”

“You know,” I replied, “that is precisely the kind of society in which I grew up.”

There have been such radical cultural shifts since the ’60s that it’s difficult to believe that the world could ever be any other way. However, when I was a teenager in Pennsylvania, contraceptives were illegal. Pornography was not to be found. Playboy came along and offered free subscriptions to any minister, priest or rabbi who requested it on church or synagogue stationery! They targeted society’s moral guardians with the express purpose of breaking down resistance to sexual immorality.

The “old” morality, however, did not simply disappear. Some worked diligently, indeed relentlessly, to undermine and overthrow it. You would think that they would now be satisfied that they had achieved their goals. However, they still don’t rest. Now they want to force Catholic employers to provide contraception in their employee health plans. They want to deprive physicians and hospitals of conscience protections if they’re opposed to performing abortions. They want to gain state recognition of same-sex “marriage.” They want to lower the age of sexual consent.

A number of years ago there was a front page story in the New York Times: “The Job at Fertility Clinics No One Wants.” That job was to dispose of the excess embryos remaining from infertility treatments. Why would fertility clinic lab technicians who had engendered microscopic human embryos have any qualms about disposing of them? Because deep in their hearts they knew that they’re not dealing merely with microscopic undifferentiated biological material, but with human beings of great worth and value.

Deep in their hearts, abortion advocates also know it’s wrong. That’s why they speak of “choice” without ever mentioning what is being chosen. They’ll speak of the “termination of a pregnancy” without saying what in fact is being done: the murder of a child. When a mother delivers her child, that also “terminates a pregnancy,” but the end result is very different from that of an abortion.

Pope John Paul II was actually somewhat encouraged that individuals tried to hide what they were doing by the language they used because it showed they knew it was wrong. “Especially in the case of abortion there is widespread use of ambiguous terminology, such as ‘interruption of pregnancy,’ which tends to hide abortion’s true nature and to attenuate its seriousness in public opinion. Perhaps this linguistic phenomenon is itself a symptom of an uneasiness of conscience” (Evangelium Vitae, #58. 1995).

There are many in our society who want to hide the reality of things — or who simply cannot face reality. A presidential candidate claims that determining when life begins is beyond his pay grade. U.S. Supreme Court justices claim we cannot know when life begins. Other societies, however, seem a bit more capable of facing reality. The secular country of Germany, for example, has an Embryo Protection Law which forbids experimentation on human embryos. Abortion is admittedly legal in Germany, but it’s much more restricted than in the U.S.

Catholics and other pro-lifers are often asked how they can oppose embryo freezing and destructive experimentation on embryos since in vitro fertilization (IVF) is legal and widely practiced in the U.S. After all, if something useful isn’t done with them, they’ll simply go to waste. However, the Church would welcome the legal prohibition of IVF since it’s beneath the dignity of human beings to be engendered in Petri dishes by lab techs rather than by the loving embrace of parents. The Church would also welcome the prohibition of IVF since many embryonic lives are lost in the attempt to bring a new life to term.

But our society does not have to be as it is. In Costa Rica, IVF has been unconstitutional since 2000 because it violates human life. If human life is so protected in Costa Rica, it ought to be conceivable that the same protections of human life could be put in place in the U.S. The social disorder in which we live today can be corrected. That’s why we work so hard to bring about social change. We have to be as persistent and relentless as those who, for whatever misguided reasons, work against the good of human life.

Virgil once declared, “What a toil it was to found the Roman Empire!” We Catholics can expect no less toil and struggle in building up a culture of life. And as we work doggedly and tirelessly, we need to remind ourselves that society does not need to be as it is! It can be better.

John M. Haas, Ph.D., is president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center and founding president of the International Institute for Culture. He is a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.