TheCatholicSpirit.com has a good article on two men of science and their very different approach to fertility. Dr. Josef Roetzer, the Austrian doctor whose work led to the development of the sympto-thermal method of natural family planning, died this year on October4. That same day British biologist Robert G. Edwards was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for developing the process of in vitro fertilization – a profoundly evil act which the Catholic Church opposes for a number of reasons. Not the least of which being the fact that it is contrary to the dignity of the child. How? Fr. Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center explains:

“Laboratory glassware is not the way new human members of our family should enter the world…A human being has the right to be conceived under his or her mother’s heart.”

Children are a gift, a blessing, not a right and certainly not a commodity. Still, some find the Church’s position on IVF is odd considering the goal is to create life, not destroy it. But, IVF has the added complication of typically creating “surplus” embryos so that, while some life flourishes via IVF, other life is either left frozen in perpetuity or destroyed – thrown in the garbage as medical waste or harvested for its stem cells in the name of science.

Thanks to doctors like Josef Roetzer, IVF is no longer the “only option” for women who suffer the heartache of infertility. I have written frequently on here about the Creighton Model Fertility Care System (a modification of the cervical mucus method taught by Dr. Roetzer) and NaProTECHNOLOGY which together help women successfully achieve and maintain pregnancy without having to resort to manufacturing their children in a petri dishes. Using this technology, couples still respect and cooperate with His divine plan for the creation of human life rather than taking the matters of life in their own hands and forcing God to cooperate with them. NaProTECHNOLOGY can be used to treat male infertility as well as female and problem of recurrent miscarriage.

This week, Faith and Family highlighted the work of Dr. Anne Mielnik, Director and co-founder of Gianna: The Catholic Healthcare Center for Women which is dedicated to helping women treat infertility in a way that does not violate the tenants of their faith. There are clinics like this all over the country, but, if they’re anything like the one in my hometown, they are struggling and they need our support! If you don’t have one in your hometown, most diocese have an NFP coordinator who can provide help.

Check it out:
Last month, Dr. Thomas Hilgers, director of the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction and co-developer of the Creighton Model Fertility Care System, was a guest on EWTN’s The World Over with Raymond Arroyo. Video of that interview can be seen here.