Doubts of a Catholic about the critical position of the Catholic Church towards homologous insemination

https://doi.org/10.63189/BKAO7098

Procreation has always been an emotionally charged subject. The desire to have children, the anticipation of a child's birth, the delivery, and all ensuing circumstances are memories cherished for a lifetime by parents, older siblings, grandparents, and loved ones.

The inability to experience parenthood due to infertility has also been, and continues to be a source of profound emotional distress, though with an opposite emotional trajectory.

At the same time, reluctance toward having children, efforts to prevent conception and childbirth, fear of parenthood, and demands for the state to ensure full accessibility to all forms of contraception and abortion—including so-called abortion on demand—are contemporary ways in which the issue of procreation is also experienced.

With the advent of artificial reproductive assistance, hope emerged for infertile individuals. However, this development also gave rise to numerous concerns regarding the moral acceptability of such medical procedures.

In the debate on the permissibility of Assisted Reproductive Technology (called ART), the extreme positions can be summarized as follows:

• There should be no restrictions on the use of any medical procedures in this field as long as they are technically feasible.

• No artificial form of reproductive assistance is morally acceptable and should not be practiced.

The first of these positions is advocated by ethicists, medical professionals, lawyers, politicians (who are responsible for passing legislation), and others with a clear leftist background. Their stance is based on the belief in so-called reproductive human rights and the idea that no barriers should be imposed on scientific progress, particularly in the field of biotechnology. Globally, this view is often associated with thinkers such as Peter Singer and Greg Wells, while in Poland, it is represented by philosophers like Jerzy Hartmann and Magdalena Środa.

In legal literature, this perspective is particularly upheld by some scholars within the fields of human rights and medical law, who opt for the existence of a human right to reproductive health—or, more broadly, a right to reproductive freedom. This is understood as an individual's freedom to decide whether they want to have children or not, with the expectation that the state should support the realization of this right. From this standpoint, access to artificial reproductive procedures is considered part of a broader framework that includes not only the right to infertility treatment but also the right to abortion (without the need for justification and without restrictions based on the stage of fetal development—i.e., abortion on demand), the right to adoption (including by same-sex couples), and the right to any technically feasible ART procedure, including surrogacy.

A polar opposite to this position is the teaching of the Catholic Church, supported by conservative-leaning philosophers, theologians, medical professionals, and other researchers. The Catholic Church consistently opposes the artificial creation of human life, questioning the moral acceptability of all artificial forms of supporting human reproduction. It argues—in broad terms—that this is an encroachment on the competence of the Creator (the Giver of Life). Among its many additional arguments, the church points to the threat to the life of so-called surplus embryos, the violation of the dignity and health of embryos in the context of cryopreservation, and the necessity of a marriage act for conceiving a child, since only this method is natural and the conception of a child should result from conjugal love, which ought to be the cause for the creation of new life.

The presentation of the debate on the ethical admissibility of ART procedures is extensive and multifaceted, and as such, it goes far beyond the boundaries set by the title of this paper. In fact, it can easily be found in the relevant literature. This text does not aim to comprehensively address the complex philosophical, theological, medical, and legal issues related to ART, but rather refers only to its small segment—the one that arouses the least controversy. It addresses the argumentation of the Catholic Church banning any form of artificial support for procreation, including the method of artificial insemination of a woman with her husband's sperm (homologous insemination). The starting point for reflection on this topic is the acceptance of conservative, including religious (especially Catholic), criticism of the extremely liberal position, particularly regarding the admissibility of using ART in the form of surrogacy. Additionally, I present a critical stance toward legislation (including Polish law) that does not provide adequate protection for human life in its early embryonic stage, as is the case with the in vitro method and the treatment of so-called surplus embryos.^[1]

Before addressing the issue of infertility treatment within the homologous insemination procedure, it should be noted that such treatment, through any ART procedure, may be undertaken “after other treatment methods have been exhausted for a period of not less than 12 months,” unless “according to current medical knowledge, it is not possible to achieve pregnancy as a result of these methods.” This Polish regulation is the standard in the WHO. According to the Polish Infertility Treatment Act, a recipient of reproductive cells can use both cells from a donor who is a man in a marital or cohabiting relationship with her or reproductive cells from an anonymous donor.^[2] In the former variant, we deal with homologous insemination (AIH), and in the second with heterologous insemination.

Both homologous insemination and heterologous insemination can pertain to intrauterine fertilization (in vivo assisted reproductive technologies) as well as to ART outside the woman's body, i.e., extrauterine (in vitro artificial fertilization). In this discussion, however, only in vivo fertilization methods—referred to as artificial homologous insemination—are considered, namely those that involve intrauterine insemination, i.e., the transfer of sperm originating from the husband directly into the recipient’s fallopian tube. In the context of the moral norms prevailing within the Catholic Church, it is significant that homologous insemination concerns a wife who is artificially inseminated in the uterus with sperm derived from her husband. This occurs without the involvement of the married act. Therefore, an important argument put forth by proponents of Catholic moral teaching is that, as such, homologous insemination is contrary to the nature of conjugal love. From the perspective of Catholic ethics, the method of obtaining the male sperm—if it involves masturbation—and the selection of this sperm, which gives the insemination a eugenic character, also raise serious concerns.^[3]

Relying on the special status of the family and the dignity of its members, the Church points out that in the pursuit of having offspring, one must respect not only the rights and aspirations of spouses who wish to take on the role of parents, but also the natural rights of the children who would be born as a result of using an ART procedure.^[4]

I am far from considering the above arguments trivial, contrived, or doctrinaire. From the perspective of Catholic sexual ethics and the Church’s teaching on the transmission and protection of life, they are justified and are a consequence of religious and theological assumptions. No one is forced to belong to any religion or denomination, and many people, by rejecting such or other religious norms, leave churches. The Catholic Church’s stance on artificial procreation is also seen as a pretext for taking such a step. Noting the glaring contradiction between the in vitro procedure and the moral teachings of the Catholic Church—especially in relation to surrogacy—as well as, for example, the permissibility of ART for homosexual couples and other possibilities of using these procedures, it is clear that they differ enormously from homologous insemination as a method of treating marital infertility.

Firstly, this concerns spouses—that is, a union perceived by the Church as fertile, in the sense that fertility is a moral duty.

Secondly, this concerns spouses both in the genetic aspect (the child is to be conceived using their reproductive cells) and in the educational aspect, meaning that they are to fulfil the role (or duty) of the child’s parents.

Thirdly, a child born as a result of homologous insemination will be raised by their parents (fulfilling the child’s right to life in a family).

Fourth, in the case of homologous insemination procedures, masturbation as a method of obtaining sperm from the husband for the recipient is not a deviant fulfilment of erotic fantasies but a means of acquiring cells for the conception of one’s own child. In my opinion, the collection of sperm should be viewed as a manifestation of the determination of the man undergoing this procedure, which is, by its very nature, extremely awkward and even embarrassing. In fertility clinics, there is the option to collect sperm in a manner that does not involve masturbation.

Fifth, the determination of both spouses is consistent with the mandate that spouses be fruitful and subdue the earth, even in critical situations when, despite being fertile, they lack the opportunity to become parents. An example of such a situation is the collection of sperm from a man who, as a result of being diagnosed with testicular cancer, might lose his fertility, since such outcomes can be caused by surgical intervention as well as therapy in the form of chemotherapy or radiation. Collecting sperm and depositing it in a sperm bank prior to the surgical procedure—or even afterwards but before the commencement of the aforementioned therapy—could, if infertility were indeed to occur, give the spouses (or engaged partners) the opportunity to become parents of their own genetically related child.

Sixth, the genetic bond provides the child with protection when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of various disorders that it may encounter in the future.

Seventh, the position of the Catholic Church regarding ART procedures is part of at least two strands of teaching. The first concerns the protection of life from conception to natural death—in the case of in vitro fertilization, surplus embryos are either destroyed or frozen, which poses a threat to their existence, a threat that does not occur with insemination. The second, on the other hand, relates to the method of conception in which the Church's stance is based on the aforementioned postulate of naturalness—that is, conceiving a child through the conjugal love of the spouses. The Catholic Church has expressed its position on this matter in the form of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae,^[5] in which the issue is discussed in general terms, as well as in the Donum Vitae Instruction issued in 1987 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and an Instruction of this Congregation Dignitas Personae of 2008, which outline the detailed observations mentioned above.

The form in which the position is expressed (instructions are not of high rank) as well as doubts (concerning axiological and theological aspects) that are put forward by Catholics and presented above offer hope for the possibility of modifying the adamant stance of the Catholic Church in the future.

^[1] Rylski, 2000, pp. 123-161.

^[2] Gałązka, 2018, pp. 155-165; Kwiecień, 2016, p. 52-54; Czujek, 2014, pp. 79-101; Haberko, 2016, pp. 121-176.

^[3] Czujek, 2014, p. 131; Lis, 2022, pp. 189-226.

^[4] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Question, Vatican 2008. Available at:

https://bip.brpo.gov.pl/sites/default/files/Prawa%20cz%C5%82owieka%20a%20wyzwania%20bioetyczne%20zwi%C4%85zane%20z%20nowymi%20technologiami.pdf. (Accessed: 1 Jan. 2025); Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Donum Vita on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and the Dignity of Procreation. Vatican 1987. Available at: https://opoka.org.pl/biblioteka/W/WR/kongregacje/kdwiary/zbior/t_2_19.html. (Accessed 20 Jan. 2025); Czujek, 2014, p. 132.

[5] Jan Paweł II 1995, Evangelium vitae on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life (25 March 1995). Availableat: https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/pl/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html. (Accessed 25 Jan. 2025)/