Reader Contributes What Journalist Does Not

The Chicago Tribune printed an article entitled “How Should Catholic Hospitals Balance Faith and Family?” in which Manya Brachear addressed the decision of hospitals affiliated with the Catholic Church to decline requests for in-vitro fertilization, commonly abbreviated IVF. IVF throughout the U.S. offer this non-surgical procedure, which has been largely simplified and increased in efficiency since it was first completed successfully in 1978. The process consists of retrieving oocytes (unfertilized eggs) from the female’s ovary, which are fertilized with the male’s sperm and some of which form pre-embryos. One of the pre-embryos is then placed in the woman’s uterus where it will hopefully develop into a newborn.
This procedure requires to surgery or even anesthesia and has helped many infertile couples become pregnant. However, the controversial question that one must ask is what is done with the extra fertilized pre-embryos? According to the Georgia Reproductive Specialists, IVF centers leave that decision up to the parents. They have the option to freeze the fertilized embryo for later use, or simply to “dispose” of them. This question is one of the defining factors in the Catholic Church’s stance against IVF. It is strange then, that this question is not even addressed in the Tribune article.
Instead, the Brachear attributes the negative view of this procedure by Catholic Hospitals to the experimental nature of the procedure, and then quickly cuts down that argument saying, “the process is hardly experimental anymore”. The viewpoints of several physicians at Loyola University are given addressing how patients inquiring about IVF are responded, but the reason for their refusal to perform the procedure is not mentioned whatsoever. This personally offended one Tribune reader who commented on the mishandling and misrepresentation of facts on the Tribune’s religion blog, The Seeker. She explained her understanding of the Catholic Church’s stance on the procedure and the reasoning behind it, something that should have been made known in the article.