Rachel P. writes:

I have spent some time on your blog and find it interesting. I do, however, think there is little offered to the infertile woman in your piece “The Locked Door of Infertility.” Children and family life are in many ways the cornerstone of modern devout Christian identity. It’s really not enough to say, in essence, to the infertile woman: “That’s unfortunate. It would be so nice if infertility didn’t happen. Good luck with that; I’ll be praying for you to be able to resolve this problem. But, by the way, don’t even think of going in the directions of infertility treatments (beyond diagnosis and hormone stimulation), international adoption, or surrogacy because they are completely immoral/unethical.” The instinct to reproduce and/or raise children is very strong in women and infertility is emotionally ravaging. Given no practical moral solution or suggestion, many women will do what they think is necessary to solve their individual dilemmas.

Being infertile challenged my whole worldview, made me question the way I looked at many of my established beliefs. My process took years; I am only now, a decade later, standing on the other side, not entirely resigned yet to the outcome, but more or less accepting it. In that ten years I spent hours and hours pondering the nature of suffering, fairness in an unfair world, vocation, and what the concept of family means when children are not readily conceived. I will admit I spent my share of hours navel gazing, shaking my fist, and crying. I will also admit my fate is by far not the worst one. It has still been terribly, terribly painful. There has got to be something more of substance to say to people who are going through it, some further support to be given.

Laura writes:

My piece “The Locked Door of Infertility” was not a comprehensive look at the issue of infertility. It was about two things and two things only. One, infertility is the most unsettling spiritual experience, short of extreme illness, that a woman can face, the greatest of all challenges to her identity and fundamental beliefs. It is precisely as you say, emotionally ravaging, and can be similarly crushing for a man, reaching into a dark part of the soul many people have the great fortune never to encounter. Two, feminism is callous to the pain of infertility. 

That is all this very short piece was about. I don’t think my tone was one of, “Well, hey, good luck with that and goodbye.” It was an acknowledgement of how deep the pain runs, written from the perspective of a personal encounter with it. 

I have never written anywhere about the immorality of infertility treatments. It’s not something I have addressed. I have written about international adoption, but have never said it is categorically wrong. I have stated that this widespread practice is highly problematic, much more so than is generally acknowledged. It needs to be approached with far more caution, especially in the case of transracial adoption. 

I have described in other posts what I consider to be the best solution to the increasing problem of infertility in America: an end to legal abortion and a more accepting attitude of pregnancy and adoption for young, unmarried women. This would dramatically increase the numbers of available children to adopt. Also, traditional ethics reduce the rate of sexually transmitted diseases, one of the major causes of infertility today, and encourage early marriage, which also decreases infertility. 

As is plain as day, there are hardly any pregnant women walking around our college campuses despite an atmosphere of extreme sexual permissiveness. This shows just how shallow our notion of individual freedom is: free to have momentary pleasure but not free to truly live. What’s the big deal about being pregnant for nine months? I thought women could do anything. They are healthy and active. Why can’t they do this for the sake of others? Why is pregnancy, but not sex, still shameful? This near absence of pregnant women in places where there is constant procreative activity is a travesty, a form of heartless disregard for the dilemma of infertile couples. Pregnancies that could bring forth life and so much happiness are summarily ended. Feminism is complicit in this crime. Supposedly interested in women’s welfare, it is a great con game. It’s only interested in the welfare of a few and is contemptuous of children, of motherhood and of those who so long to be parents.

Finally, let me say to Rachel, I am truly moved by your story. Prayers may not seem much, but I still offer them with the most sincere of intentions.

 Laura adds:

Children and family do, as Rachel says, seem to be at the center of modern Christian identity. But family is not the point of Christianity. It is not a cult of children or of parenthood.

Christ was childless.

                                 — Comments —

The author of Generation5’s Blog writes:

A not-so-obvious alternative for many women is a new form of adoption called embryo adoption. This is a process where “leftover” embryos from other couples’ in-vitro procedures can be implanted into an adoptive mother. There are several advantages to this alternative:

1. Since you carry and give birth to the child, the child is your natural-born child under the law. The rights of the genetic parents to come and harass your claim to the child is limited. I know this is a major factor in many international / transracial adoptions, as it’s harder for a birth mother in a Third World country to change her mind and sue you.

2. The child is better prepared psychologically for the reality of [his] adoption. The birth mother is [his] mother in every way except genetics.

3. It is easy, almost trivial, to adopt Caucasian embryos, unlike live Caucasian babies. In fact, you can even select a donor family that resembles your own as much as possible. If this is done, the child may care little about their genetic origins given they were carried to term by their actual birth mother, since they look like their family. Most of the trauma of adoption is related to feelings of rejection from the birth mother, and this is totally avoided with embryo adoption.

He lists other advantages to embryo adoption here.

Ann H. writes:

Here I am again, agreeing with you mostly, but having to comment on what I consider error. This time considerable and devastating error. 

Your link to the blog on embryo adoption is a problem. I believe with my whole mind that the Church will condemn embryo adoption, although that has not happened yet. 

In practical terms, embryo adoption makes of a woman an object of manipulation. She is not an object. She is a person, of worth in her own right regardless of her infertility. Some women demonstrate that by their very accepted and creative infertility. 

I could go on and on, but hope you will look into it a little more.

Laura writes:

I am not well-informed about the latest infertility treatments, including this one. I generally accept the Catholic position on infertility treatments, but this position is not something I feel qualified to discuss in detail.  This is why I have limited my own comments to the cultural changes that may make adoption within this country more common. I feel it is very important for infertile couples to become a vocal force for cultural change. 

Thanks for your thoughtful comment.

Rachel P. writes:

I’m sorry. I read your posts regarding international adoption, and they struck a chord. My son was adopted from Russia, and he was the answer to many, many years of prayer and action. His was not a transracial adoption, though (which I agree can have for some transracial adoptees significant identity challenges, especially in adulthood; I spent a lot of time reading blogs of transracial adoptees a few years ago when considering the options for giving Max a sibling).

I’m Catholic, and I subscribed for years to a publication called Family Foundations put out by the Couple to Couple League. There was an article in it awhile back on miscarriage and infertility that pretty much encapsulated the attitude I wrote about before. It so enraged me that I let my subscription lapse and never contributed to the organization again. It was from some smug fertile woman content in her large family, sure she had all the answers about what it means to be a woman and Catholic and functional in her society. That’s great, I thought angrily, but what about all the people out there who believe as you do and just can’t make their bodies do what is necessary to get there?

In the beginning of our fertility struggle I read up on our options according to our religious beliefs. They are not so many. Hormones, surgery. We did that, and it didn’t help. Domestic adoption, which we also attempted, is a sell-yourself-to-pregnant-women game with only a small percentage of babies competed for by a huge pool of infertile people. Most of the women who consider adoption (a tiny, tiny percentage of the women who get pregnant as single women) will not release their babies for adoption even if they think they will and commit to the idea (and a couple) at some point in the pregnancy. The emotional bond to a baby will prove too strong at a particularly emotional and stressful time and there is no disincentive – such as societal disapproval – to help sway their decision. Few of these woman think of practical considerations like money and time and exhaustion and the shrinking of their future marriage prospects if they have and keep this baby. I talked with my social worker repeatedly about this. Emotion decides. I think it’s considered courageous now to “go it on your own.”

I agree that without abortion and birth control society would be swallowed by a wave illegitimate children – there would be more than enough for all of the couples out there who want to be parents and can’t. I don’t know how I feel about that. I don’t think any woman owes to it me to produce a baby so I can have a family. I also feel that adoption is an unnatural process. It’s often the best option, a healing option, and in our case it was what made me able to be a mother. I am grateful, and there is nothing unnatural about my feelings for my son or his for me. But my son may one day have real questions about where he comes from and why his mother chose not to raise him and his intrinsic value as once discarded child. And out there is a woman who remembers she had a a child she chose to abandon. This is not the way families are supposed to be made, with a wrenching tear and broken bonds. Not ideally, at least. If I had to decide between making all of the infertile couples out there happy and smacking sense into all the women out there who are playing with their reproductivity and sexuality as if it is a toy, I’d smack the women. They are creating pain and chaos with their unthinking choices. Pain for themselves and pain for their children, born and never born.

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate your prayers, although I no longer await a miracle or even think in those terms. To my mind part of my body is broken, and that is the reality I have to live with.

Laura writes:

Thank you for your comments.

I think many young women are completely ignorant about the unmet needs of infertile couples. I know they are. Too much of the focus has been on science and international adoption rather than getting this important message across to young women. Consider the case of Emmie, the young woman featured in the New York Times recently. She seemed totally oblivious to the presence of thousands of couples eager for a baby like hers. It was a disgrace that the Times did not focus on them.

Single motherhood, with all its hellish problems for parent and child, is romanticized while adoption is barely discussed. I agree that no woman owes her unwanted child to an infertile couple, but there are many decent women who would like to do something important for others. They simply don’t understand what this gift means.

Rachel Coleman writes:

I’ve been reading your blog for the past several months and am glad to have found a forum on the Internet that does not accept the Internet’s (and modern technology’s) intrinsic logic of “faster and quicker is better.” It is easy to see that more thought goes into a small paragraph you have written than the content of most entire websites. Thank you.

It seems to me that you are influential, if only for a relatively small number of people and families, which is why I write today about “What to Say About Infertility.” I applaud your response to Rachel P., most especially your last word on the subject–that is, Christ was childless. Christians need to remember that fecundity is not simply a material reality–we are all called to be spiritually fecund by participating in Christ.

With that said, I would like to write something small about the author of Generation5 blog’s comments on embryo adoption: that is, embryo adoption has a diverse number of problems that may not be immediately recognized by the would-be parents; the first and most serious of these is that the adoptive parents in question, by taking on this embryo would be implicit in the act of the child’s “genetic parents.” Just as the conjugal act should not be separated from conception (which both contraception and IVF do), neither should these first two acts be separated from the nine-month gestational period and birth. It is by considering these three instances as separate realities that our culture can approve of such a contraceptive mentality, and parents hoping to adopt an embryo, whatever their intentions, participate in such a logic.

Clearly, IVF brings us to a moral impasse. There is no salve for the weight that these frozen embryos should bear on our consciences. No matter the situation however, we cannot implicate ourselves in intrinsically evil acts.

[Rachel Coleman is studying for a masters in biotechnology and ethics at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on the Marriage and Family.]

Laura writes:

Thank you for writing and for your excellent brief remarks on the ethical implications of embryo adoption.

As I said in another comment, I accept the Catholic Church’s position on infertility treatments. At the same time, I have not analyzed these treatments or kept up with the latest developments. I have to admit to having a very intuitive approach. My reaction is instinctive and emotional. I cannot recommend them for this reason. Recognizing that I am not well versed in the technical and ethical complications, I prefer to focus on the cultural changes that might make adoption within this country more common, as well as end legal abortion and render infertility less likely in the first place. In these areas, I feel certain there is a great hope for the infertile.

We have a duty on a cultural and individual level to care about those who are involuntarily childless and to refrain from offering them false hopes and immoral solutions.

Sheila C. writes:

I found Rachel’s entry quite wrenching, particularly her conclusion that an important part of her body just doesn’t work, and that she just must come to terms with it. As I have been blessed with children I cannot truly empathize, but I hope I can at least sympathize. I think that somehow, in all this talk of nannies and adoption and various infertility options, something is missing. Parenting is more than mere biology, but it is also more than just love for a child. True parenthood entails a unique bond, both emotional and biological, which I would argue differs substantively from adoption (of either children or embryos). Please note I’m not saying adoption is not a valid or worthwhile option, or cannot entail true love for a child. It most definitely can. Neither am I asserting that to give birth is to be a parent – as the common saying goes, any cat can have a litter. I’m asserting , however, that there is still a significant difference between the purely adoptive or biological bond, and parenting which entails both.

I once helped a friend adopt an infant while we were all stationed overseas. She and her husband were of different races, as was the baby. I could just as easily have loved her daughter as my own, I thought, as I cuddled and cooed at that tiny abandoned infant. That child is now an American college student and she has defininte parents, who loved and raised her, but who did not give birth to her.

She may feel American (or she may keenly feel her mixed-race heritage; I truly don’t know), but she will never be able to look at pictures of ancestors and wonder what peoples and culture she is heir to. Her mother will never know her presence in her womb, where God knit her together wonderfully and mysteriously. I realize I’m presenting this complex and somehow intangible issue too simplistically, but all these things intertwine when one gives birth to a loved biological child with a beloved spouse. Down in my gut, I know my older son is mine even when his behavior most baffles and infuriates me. I cannot look at him and wonder where on earth he came from (or from whom); I remember his somersaults in my womb and his preternaturally aware gaze moments after his birth. I’m sure I’ll receive numerous brickbats from outraged adoptive parents, but I’m still going to staunchly assert that there is a difference – both to the parents and to the child. It was all those years of watching others’ children that made me so certain I would never entrust my children to daycare – an issue my future spouse agreed upon before we married. We have stuck to that principle – that it is our duty and responsibility and God-given right to raise those children we were blessed with – despite the ensuing economic hardships and cultural disdain it has entailed. I, too, have been told I wasted my Ivy League education, my intelligence and my experience. I have seen those same people ultimately have children as a lifestyle choice or the ultimate accoutrement, and either abandon them to a foreign nanny or horde them like precious gems, never even leaving them with a babysitter for an evening with their spouse. Both extremes nauseate me. But note, please, those motivations (lifestyle choice or ultimate accoutrement) . Even when becoming parents for the most twisted of reasons, people still prefer a child somehow like them. I came across the spectacle, the other day, of dwarf adoption on television. I recall reading of a deaf lesbian couple who went to extremes to find a sperm donor who was deaf, to ensure deaf children (differently abled, don’t you know). These all entail picking and choosing a child, much like today’s Asian, Indian, or Muslim parents will abort a healthy female child in their quest to have a son. I would have loved a daughter, but was not so blessed. I would have preferred a child easier to raise than my oldest, if offered that option. But God sent me my children, each utterly different yet somehow the same intangible mix of myself and my husband and all those who went before us. That biological bond is solid and real, reinforced over and over with love and experience, but it underlies everything else. One can be a parent without giving birth, one can lovingly care for others’ children, but that parental bond is still fundamentally different, and a certain element is missing. As Rachel noted, even with a single, teen mother, emotion takes over and biological birth forges a bond that is difficult to sever. I would argue that God intended it that way.

Laura writes:

Though adoptive parents do not have that biological bond, they obviously have a tie to their children that is extremely powerful and deepens with time. Young women who give up their children for adoption are likely to experience less trauma in the long run than those who have had abortions. They will also likely put their children in homes with fathers. So potential adoptive parents are doing these young women a service by reaching out to them and convincing them that this is the best alternative for their unexpected pregnancies. As mentioned in earlier posts, more women need to know about the prevalence of post-abortion guilt and depression, which put the idea of placing a baby up for adoption into perspective.

 We live in an imperfect world.

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