The Vatican’s IVF stance

Re “Free-market baby making,” Opinion, July 24

Gregory Pence claims that the Vatican is “perverse” in condemning in-vitro fertilization (IVF).

The Vatican -- and anyone with a heart -- knows a married couple that wishes to conceive a child and cannot suffers intensely. Nevertheless, no one has an absolute right to a child. The conceived child is the one who possesses rights, which IVF gravely tramples upon. IVF kills the innocent. It requires the creation up to a few dozen fertilized eggs. The most promising are placed in a uterus in the hope that one will go full term. The rest are either killed or frozen for possible later use. Every “successful” IVF baby has many siblings who never made it.

IVF is an injustice even to the “successful” child. He or she, in his or her conception and gestation, is just a piece of property who is created and then either nurtured or disposed of at will. The child’s mother or father or both may or may not be his or her actual mother or father. The womb in which he or she grows may or may not be his or her mother’s.

The Vatican claims that a child is not something owed to one but is a gift. Pence obviously disagrees, but I don’t think it is just to call this reasoning perverse.

Kevin Aldrich

Woodland Hills