The past two years, including discussion during the recent election, have brought the topic of IVF to the forefront of our country’s public debate. With this renewed focus, Catholic employers may face the delicate challenge of explaining the Church’s teaching on IVF to employees, especially when personal struggles with infertility intersect with workplace benefits.
Rather than viewing these these moments as conflicts, a better approach is to see them as opportunities to provide pastoral support and practical resources that align with the dignity of the person. Now is the time for Catholic organizations to develop thoughtful responses and to review their health care offerings, aligning them with our faith.
On January 16, 2025, the Religious Liberty Committee of the USCCB released its annual report. This report outlines domestic and international religious liberty issues, as well as highlighting five areas of critical concern facing Catholics this year.
Specifically, the report called out:
“IVF mandates, which represent a significant threat to religious freedom, while the national discussion of IVF represents an opportunity for Catholics to share Church teaching and advocate for human dignity.”
Bishop Michael Burbidge takes this approach in his recently released pastoral letter on the call for families to be “heroic witnesses of love “ in addressing the issue of in-vitro fertilization. His words highlight the challenges of infertility, as well as the beauty of the Church’s teachings in this area.
When faced with the heartbreak of a couple struggling with questions about infertility, it can be difficult to present the teachings of the Catholic with compassion. Now that potential legislation brings attention to IVF, you may find yourself explaining these teachings to employees who are surprised to learn that the Church teaches against IVF.
Now is the time to develop a pastoral response for concerned employees and their families.
Catholic Health Care vs. Secular Medical Approaches
A Catholic approach to infertility begins with preserving the dignity of married love and the sacredness of each life. Medical approaches that address underlying health issues and allow the couples to achieve pregnancy within marital intimacy are moral and should be encouraged. These approaches include access to natural family planning (NFP) methods and medical professionals that provide NaProTechnology, or other restorative reproductive medicine.
Secular medical approaches to infertility circumvent the marital act in order to create life. This approach can result in the creation of many embryonic children along the way, who can be disposed of or frozen indefinitely, in an effort to bring one child to birth. The steps of the artificial reproduction process, while promising to fulfill the desire to build a family, violate the dignity of marriage and human life.
Do you know what benefits are available in your health plan to help these couples? Are you familiar with resources in your area that you could refer an employee to? With IVF back in the spotlight, now is a great time to develop resources for employees.
The Guiding Moral Principles
The Church teaching in this area is guided by these basic moral principles:
1. The Church supports a couple’s desire to grow their family.
“Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth” (Psalm 127:4).
The Bible is full of references to the great gift children are for married couples. It is right and proper that married love results in the gift of a child. Married couples must remain open to this gift throughout their marriage.
2. The Church supports life-affirming health care.
The medical scientific advances that respect the dignity of the human person and marriage are praised by the Church. Human suffering can be lessened by the medical arts, and infertility is an area of great human suffering. Many women of faith carried the cross of infertility including Sarah, Rebekah, St. Elizabeth and St. Ann. The Church recognizes this suffering and calls on the sciences to address these challenges in ways that support human dignity.
NaProTechnology and other moral medical applications assist couples as they discover their underlying diagnosis and develop a treatment plan that respects the dignity of their marriage and their future children.
3. The Church teaches that life is a gift.
“You knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13).
As Catholics, we recognized that each conceived life is a unique person, created in the image and likeness of God. All methods of procreation must respect the dignity of each child from the moment of conception. It must also be pointed out that each child is a gift from God, regardless of the circumstances of his or her conception.
Catholic employers cannot pay for immoral health care
While the desire for children is proper to married couples, not all methods that fulfill this desire are moral. Any method of procreation that replaces the marital act with a medical intervention violates the exclusivity of married love. Any medical procedure that creates life outside of the loving embrace of the married couple violates the dignity of the child, who has a right to be conceived in the loving embrace of his parents.
Artificial Reproductive Technologies seek to produce conception outside of the marital act. Whether it is through artificial insemination or methods of in-vitro fertilization, these procedures replace the marital act with laboratory technicians and equipment to create life. While these techniques promise to fulfill the desire to have a child, they undermine the sanctity of married love, which is the proper place for procreation.
IVF also violates the pro-life principles of our faith, despite bringing new children into the world. Most people have not fully contemplated or realized the steps involved in the IVF process. Each cycle that a couple attempts IVF results in the conception of multiple embryonic children. The success rates of IVF resulting in the birth of even one child remain below 33%. This reveals the reality that many lives are lost in an effort to produce one living child. This process results in the loss of a great number of lives.
The IVF process is further anti-life in the common practice of “selective reduction,” which involves a doctor killing those embryos deemed to have less of a chance of survival or, in some cases, being genetically inferior. This common practice destroys the lives of so-called “excess” embryos, if multiple children are successfully implanted in the mother’s uterus.
A New Service for CBA Members
As a leader at a Catholic organization, you may find yourself explaining these teachings to an employee. You may have leaders at your affiliate organizations that may have employees asking questions about these teachings, including parish business administrators, school principals, or leaders at charity organizations.
In an effort to support CBA member organizations, we will be rolling out Catholic Professional Development materials this year. This Professional Development platform will support leaders by providing essential elements of Church teaching on difficult topics, along with practical guidance on navigating employee conversations and crafting health benefits.