Dear Jonathan:

In most cases not all embryos inserted in the woman implant in the womb and survive until birth -- that fact is the whole reason why multiple embryos are inserted.

In cases wear multiple babies to implant in the womb the medical people usually talk to the parents about "selective reduction" (which mean picking some of the babies to be killed in abortion). Of course couples may refuse "selective reduction" and accept all the babies.

But the common procedure is expected to have the death of several of the babies in order to have one or two live births.

These deaths are NOT in God's hands. This is not a natural situation, but an artificial situation created by man and created with the expectation of some of the embryos dying. Are we to accept a procedure that will most likely kill some of our children? Without man committing a sin in the first place these babies would not be dead.

But the IVF procedure is actually more murderous than that. Typically up to 20 or more eggs are fertilized and then the resulting babies are evaluated as to which are more likely to survive. Also genetic character may be evaluated as well. Once they decide on which of the babies they will insert in the mother, the many of those remaining are placed in a medical trash can.

Those which are not thrown away summarily are frozen usually to languish and eventually die never to be used.

This is a nasty business and one that rapes the dignity of the human person.

This disgusting and immoral procedure as NO CONNECTION WHATSOEVER to the natural phenomenon where a baby normally conceived may not implant in the mother's womb and thus dies. That happens all the time. None of us have any idea how many children we may have until we get to heaven. Virtually all couples will have babies not implanted and thus die without the couple ever knowing it.

This is a natural phenomenon in the same way that sickness is a natural phenomena that may kill a baby after birth, but we do not purposely put our children in harm's way.

IVF is NOT natural. It is man intruding upon the natural process with unnatural means of conception and with the full knowledge that this immoral activity will place babies in harm's way and net dead babies and yet they do it anyway.

NO COMPARISON.

"In IVF, children are engendered through a technical process, subjected to 'quality control,' and eliminated if found 'defective.'"

That is a quote from John Haas in his article, Begotten Not Made: A Catholic View of Reproductive Technology

As for your second question, which is related to the first, the Church does not condemn moral fertility therapies. See the article above and also Donum Vitae. Donum Vitae teaches that if a given medical intervention helps or assists the marriage act to achieve pregnancy, it may be considered moral; if the intervention replaces the marriage act in order to engender life, it is not moral.

God bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary