The Catholic Church and Artificial Insemination

In between classes, I decided to grab a bite to eat and flip through one of my many textbooks. I decided to pick up a book called Twelve Tough Issues. It's by an Archbishop and discusses the Catholic policy on, you guessed it, 12 tough issues. Abortion, divorce, homosexuality, women, celibacy, all the things that you would expect to find in a book on religion and controversial issues are covered. But then I saw something interesting: a chapter on artificial conception. My first reasoning for this chapter being present before even reading it was that it was going to take about cloning. So I open to page 13 and read: "The insemination of a woman with the sperm of a man other than her husband is tantamount to adultery, even if both she and her husband consent to the procedure". He goes on to justify his moral objection: "To permit or procure anything else reduces the marriage partners to the status of consumers and the offspring to the level of a product". Even now I am trying to fight back the tears of anger. How Dare He!, my insides scream. With no Biblical backing he commits a hypocritical crime, reducing children of the world to commodities. I looked up the Catechism that backed this and found that reproducing via artificial insemination is found morally abject because it takes away the meaning of sex. Well I have a few things to say in my defense.

First of all, nothing in the Bible (to my knowledge) supports this outrageous statement. I know my Bible pretty well and unless there is some obscure reference to an Old Testament passage about artificial insemination then I don't believe there is anything. In fact, when I rack through my mind about relevant Bible passages, I can think only of ones that would support artificial insemination. I quote from the Message because it is in plain English but I have checked it against the NIV. Jesus says to his disciples: "Marriage isn't for everyone. Some from birth seemingly never give marriage a thought." (Matthew 19:11). As some of you may or may not know, I identify as asexual. I do not desire marriage; it's not in my life plans. Jesus seems to have hit the nail right on, some people want to marry, some people don't. Is it a coincidence that just 3 passages later Jesus says: "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these" (Matthew 19:14). Isn't considering artificial insemination hindering the children? People often cite this passage in the fight against abortion, so why can't the same beside in the fight to have children via artificial insemination?

Not only does this ideology of the church upset me religiously and personally but I can't believe they would reduce children to products. The feeling that I get from reading the chapter and the Catechism is that the church does not look favourably upon children born in this method, as if there was something wrong or inferior about these children. I don't see how any religion could shun the people that Jesus told us we must be like in order to enter the gates of heaven. The dignity of the human being and human life is shattered in artificial insemination according the church and Pope John Paul I's Donum Vitae. However, I believe the dignity of the human being is shattered, not by artificial insemination, but by such untutored, unfair, and unfounded statements. The article mentioned, Donum Vitae, was written only after the pope JPI met Louise Brown, the first baby born by in vitro. I see that as a personal attack not only on Louise, who was then just an infant, but on all subsequent children who were brought into this world, into the heart of Jesus, into the heaven of God through artificial insemination.

-C.S.