IVF, surrogacy, others are not morally admissible — Catholic Priest

Reverend Father Joseph Obada, a priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Abuja, has said that IVF, surrogacy, other medical procedures used to tackle infertility, are not morally admissible.

Speaking in a recent interview with PMNews, he said: “Any procedure we have is usually a product of ideas. There is a philosophy behind this, it is called the contraceptive mentality which is one of the by-products or natural child of the s€xual revolution of the 1960s or thereabouts.

So, this mentality came as a way of isolating the concept of pleasure from the concept of responsibility. So, they now started having s#x without responsibility – which of course gave birth to contraceptive behaviour. The natural child of that is all of these methods like surrogacy, and Invitro-fertilisation.

For instance, if we concretise the very common method of the idea, which is invitro-fertilisation, and it’s a way of helping out couples who cannot have children through the natural way of s€xual intercourse. If we are going to analyse this kind of thing, concerning this topic, you need to study the nitty gritty, what exactly goes on in each of these methods? We cannot pretend and say, “oh! I can’t have a child and science can help, so let’s apply science.” That is d@ngerously simplistic.

There are cases of infertility; the numbers are alarming for a myriad of reasons. But the idea that it is the scientific method that can help is problematic. The fact that something is scientifically possible doesn’t make it morally admissible.

So, yes, is it possible that we get some advantages with regards to scientific experimentations from foetuses? Yes. Pharmaceutical companies and others are doing a whole lot on that. But where the question comes in is how to analyse the ethical issues. There are principles to deliberate on. To make it quite simple, first, the thing you are doing must be good. Second, the means through which you are doing it must be good. And third, the purpose for which you are doing it must be good. All three must be good at the same time otherwise, you run into a problem.”