The Church and IVF

Since it's the anniversary of the first successful in vitro fertilization procedure, a lot of stories are in the news about its use. A story by Arthur Caplan this morning on MSNBC caught my eye. Apparently, a 70-year-old Indian woman just had a baby conceived via IVF. The story goes on to dismiss all those silly fears people had about IVF when it was first introduced, and states,

Even the Catholic Church, which has never approved the break between sex and procreation, has taken a relatively benign view of the use of IVF by married couples.

I'm not sure why Caplan says that. It isn't true:

In summary, the Catholic Church condemns as gravely evil acts, both IVF in and of itself, and stem cell research performed on IVF embryos.

And it's not hard to see why:

Because of the availability of new culture media, it has recently become possible to let the embryos grow for up to seven days, by which time, only the most vigorous survive. This reduces the number of embryos implanted and increases the number of successful implantations, while also reducing the number of multiple pregnancies. Note that most embryos (up to 19 out of 20), conceived in IVF clinics eventually die. If they are not implanted, they are either "donated" for research, in which case they are killed, or they are kept in cold storage in very low temperatures after which most are disposed of, or eventually die. Since frequently several embryos are implanted at one time, multiple pregnancies occur. Not infrequently, early in pregnancy, some of these embryos are killed by injection of potassium chloride into the embryo's heart. This procedure is euphemistically called "fetal reduction."

I realize that infertility is a heartbreaking condition, but it amounts to selfishness and a lack of love to insist that any child you parent must be born of one's own body. Further, how much did you really want children, if you are willing to allow "the extras" to be killed, or used for medical research? Not to mention the procedure of egg donation, which is a misogynist's dream--the mechanization of the female body.

Labels: ivf

♠ ~ 9:36 AM ~ 0 ♥ ~

Finally got this page done, at least

I redesigned using the CSS I've learned. I'm not sure about the color scheme, but I can worry about that later.

Did anybody hear about P.Z. Myers? I didn't catch the first release, so I don't know what he's aiming to do, but according to this report, he

pierced it [the Host] with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash.

That's not so much hatred of the Faith as some kind of vengeance. I don't know what he's been through, but it must have been something terrible to make him so vicious.

♠ ~ 11:28 PM ~ 0 ♥ ~

Unrelated to the avowed purpose of this blog . . .

THE X-FILES COMES OUT TOMORROW!!!!

Batman, schmatman. I want to see Mulder and Scully!!

Labels: x-files

♠ ~ 7:52 PM ~ 0 ♥ ~

The update begins . . .

It took me forever, but I finally have a CSS-based design worked out for at least part of the site--the book part. I'll be uploading the pages throughout the day. I'd wanted to make a stylesheet for printing (that was why the old design was plain-jane, so it could be easily printed), with a format like the old design, but I have not as of yet figured out how to do that. I also seem unable to properly implement external style sheets--when I tried it out, only half of the rules imported. Not sure why. Finally, I'm adding a handy comments form on each page of the section, but I'm not ~entirely~ sure it will function. It relies on having an email program installed on the user's computer, and I don't have one, so I can't test it to see--maybe someone could try it out and see?

♠ ~ 12:02 PM ~ 0 ♥ ~

New and scary. . . .

. . . . this growing up and taking action with my life stuff. I sent my book off to a publisher yesterday, which isn't the first time I've done it, but this is when I get serious about it. I finished an article on the theological basis for veganism as well, sent that off to a magazine for a tryout. (Two more ideas for articles are percolating.) Oh, and I sent a story to Glimmertrain. Then, wow, got my GED, and my bachelor's is within sight. I'm already thinking about grad school--I want to get a masters in anthropology. (Ok, I'll even divulge that I want to get a doctorate in theology, and I already know what my thesis will be.) Then there's this new job--no more drone work behind the cash register, I actually have a professional job where I'm paid to be creative and write and play with the computer. I'm about to start classes to get a certification in.(I taught myself years ago by looking at source codes, but finally decided to learn it for real, and at some point in the not-too-distant future this site will reflect the new stuff I've learned.) I'm getting it together with my business too, aiming to reopen my etsy shop by November (it was August, but despite diligent work all summer I have nowhere near what I wanted to have in my shop). Then today my friend Nathan hooked me up with a guy who needs photography work for his CD. I'm not in the least confident I can do it, but I can certainly fake it. So, all this stuff is happening, and I'm no longer passively watching life go by while I accomplish nothing and hope for nothing, and it's like living in Bizarroland. All my life I've been tucked into myself too scared to move, and now who is this person who is doing things?

Labels: general

♠ ~ 3:15 PM ~ 0 ♥ ~

Sally Quinn on Communion Sally Quinn, a Washington Post writer, explains why she received Communion at Tim Russert's funeral.



The essence of the piece is here:

Like most of us, I am searching for meaning in my life, looking for markers from all faith traditions which touch me in a spiritual way. In this moment of loss I felt invited to take part in this sacrament.

She didn't receive Communion (not "took," as she repeatedly writes in the piece) because she believed it was the Body and Blood of Christ, but because she was searching for meaning. But how does one achieve meaning when one doesn't believe in the meaning? I'm flabbergasted. What she did was abuse of the Faith--using it, in a narcissistic way, to make herself feel spiritual, without actually respecting what it means.

I gather from this piece that she cobbles together a spirituality based on what appeals to her from different faiths, and she's genuinely surprised, even offended, that this would bother anyone. Best of all is her resort to "That's not what Jesus would do." No, Jesus would never be offended that someone act in a supremely hypocritical manner by proclaiming Communion with a Church that they have no Communion with.

Labels: Communion

♠ ~ 9:40 AM ~ 1 ♥ ~

Abortion and animal rights The other night, while I was away in Tennessee visiting my brother, my roommate tortured herself by watching YouTube videos about abortion (I'd have stopped her in the interest of our supply of Kleenex, had I been there). When I came back and she'd regaled me with details of the videos, we started talking about the rise in the belief that the murder of babies up to four or five months is acceptable. Why, she asked, would anyone say that?

Well, for the same exact reason animal testing is permitted. Sadly, most Christians don't see anything wrong with animal testing, factory farming, or hunting, but the same logic that permits animal testing and factory farming applies not just to legal infanticide, but to abortion and the cloning of human beings for research. It goes like this: A higher consciousness is necessary to feel pain. Animals don't have the consciousness of selfhood that sentient beings have, and so they cannot feel pain. (Yeah, they howl and scream and whimper, but they only look like they feel pain.) Therefore, you are not harming them by testing on them or by crowding them into dark pits of their own feces for their entire lives. They don't know any better, and therefore, you're justified in refusing them any dignity as creatures of God in their own right.

Now, since babies don't theoretically have a sense of self, they are not persons, and can't think, and therefore, aren't protected as persons, and can be killed--just like an animal.

It is, to me, lopsided to be pro-life, but not against animal testing. C.S. Lewis wrote about this half a century ago--when you start viewing one class of God's creation as products to be used for your own gain (as is the mentality behind factory farming and animal testing), you start viewing certain classes of humans that way, too. So, voila, we start cloning human beings to test on.

Now, to end with, here's Pope John Paul II on the issue of how to treat creation:

In this desire to have and to enjoy rather than to be and to grow, man consumes the resources of the earth and his own life in an excessive and disordered way. At the root of the senseless destruction of the natural environment lies an anthropological error, which unfortunately is widespread in our day. Man, who discovers his capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through his own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of the things that are. Man thinks that he can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to his will, as though it did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which man can indeed develop but must not betray. Instead of carrying out his role as a cooperator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannical than governed by him.


--Love and Responsibility

Labels: abortion, animal rights

♠ ~ 9:00 PM ~ 1 ♥ ~