Infertiliy and fidelity

Alicia is sending out occasional updates from her trip to Omaha, where she is attending the NaPro Technology conference. In her last post, she remarks,

I have never thought IVF to be a good idea even without the moral implications, but I will admit that I have thought about it from the woman’s POV. This tale of woe caused me to think about the man’s experience, suffering shame and humiliation and performance pressure, for love of his wife and desire for a child of their genes. It is really sad that our culture has so adopted the mentality of ‘bypass’ rather than ‘diagnose and cure’ for infertility.
Maybe we have adopted that erroneous mentality in other areas of life, as well.

There is so much to unpack in Alicia’s paragraph I hardly know where to start. Most of us are familiar with the immoral, dehumanizing choices faced by women seeking treatment for infertility (I wrote a bit about my own experiences here.) As Alicia says, the emphasis is not on “diagnose and cure” but on “bypass.” The objective is to make that baby. (A local IVF clinic is advertising on the radio, Successful delivery of a live baby or your money back!) So in addition to the evil of bypassing the unitive dimension of the marital act and turning the baby into a commodity instead of a creation, a woman being treated by the “bypass” model runs the risk of having the health problems that are causing her infertility go undiagnosed.
It would be interesting to view the presentation Alicia’s referring to and hear more about infertility treatment from a man’s point of view, for the options commonly offered to men are just as offensive and dehumanizing. If I were a man, I don’t think I’d appreciate being treated like a faucet. (attention — biology alert)

The basic test for assessing male infertility is a semen analysis, and the standard way of obtaining one is to give the patient a specimen cup, an immoral magazine, and a private room. Now there are other ways to obtain this sample that do not violate the dignity of marriage. But many labs will not accept samples obtained this way, and those that do put so many restrictions on submitting the sample that it makes it all but impossible to do the test. All this — on top of the existing pressure and emotions surrounding doing the collections. And then — for what? I haven’t been able to find much in the “diagnose and cure” department for men (besides surgical intervention) — the emphasis is mostly on taking the man’s seed and moving it someplace else.
It’s funny. We’ve made such strides in health care; we no longer fear diseases like typhoid and cholera as we once did, and we can survive devastating injuries. And yet in such a basic area of life — a place where we are invited to pro-create, to be a little like God — we are failing. One out of every six couples is struggling with infertility. And instead of seeking God’s answers for our sterility, we ignore Him and mock His laws, and look for ways to make the life He does not seem to give. And we are excited by our success. But, as is usual with sin, our “success” comes at a terrible price. And we have no concept of exactly how big that dreadful bill is going to turn out to be.