Dear Friends of Catholic Action for Faith & Family,

The news media frenzy over the eight babies born to one mother in Southern California is amazing in that they are obsessed with the number while oblivious to the means. Yes, eight surviving multiple births is indeed newsworthy. Sadly, the secular culture of death despises large families and thus the mortal sin, from their perspective, is having so many babies at one time. Morally speaking, however, from a Judaeo-Christian and even from a Natural Law perspective, the amount of pregnancies is irrelevant. Whether a woman has one child, twins, triplets or even octuplets is ethically neutral. The moral act is not the number of children but the method and means used to procreate them.

The secular media is blind to the sinfulness and immorality of IVF (in vitro fertilization). Nevertheless, it is wrong to conceive artificially outside the womb and outside the conjugal act of husband and wife. This woman is unmarried but the media is blind to illegitimate pregnancies.  She had her eggs artificially fertilized, which again does not bother the press. In fact, many newspapers and television reporters took moral umbrage that the normal practice of selective embryonic transfer did not take place.  Usually, several eggs are harvested either from one woman over period of time or from several women all at once. Then either donated sperm from an anonymous donor or from the husband (or boyfriend) are used to fertilize in a test tube or Petri dish.  If eight embryos are produced, only two to four are harvested an inserted inside the womb of the mother and the rest are destroyed or frozen.  Later, as the pregnancy progresses, the better looking and developing embryos are allowed to live and one or more of the 'less attractive' ones are destroyed.  Usually, IVF results in at least one to four or more aborted embryos when all said and done.

Ironically, the unethical treatment of embryonic human life is never examined in the media. They prefer to focus on the fact that a woman wanted and got multiple births and the sheer number of them intrigues these social elites. Forget that she got pregnant using immoral techniques and that now she wants to make a million dollars telling her story on Oprah. Out of wedlock regnancy, in vitro fertilization, et al. is but means to an end. How utilitarian, pragmatic and typically secular. It is a blessing that all eight children survived.  According to the world, it is a sin that so many were born. In the eyes of God, the sin was the means and method employed to bring about the pregnancies. At least she did not terminate some of the embryos before or after implantation.  That would have been abortion, which our world condones. Her crime in secular terms is that she is a multiple mother.

This is why we NEED Catholic Action for Faith & Family to TEACH our people that the only morally good act (end) is one that is done with and by morally good motives (intention) and means. We need to remind our people that killing one or more embryos in IVF is as much murder as aborting them in the womb.  We need to promote sound morality where sex and having children is reserved within the confines of traditional marriage of one man and one woman in a permanent and faithful covenant of mutual love.  We must reward and not penalize large families and help all parents not just the ones who have more socially acceptable smaller numbers of children.  Movie stars and celebrities must stop glamorizing children out of wedlock as well as sex outside marriage. Basically, we need to reaffirm what Pope Paul VI taught in Humanae Vitae 40 years ago to a world that has gone deaf and blind to the moral truths surrounding marriage, family and sexuality.

Rev. John Triglio, PhD, ThD

Rev. John Triglio, PhD, ThD