Vatican Issues Advice: Have Babies! Unless You’re Infertile!

So, a group of celibate male senior citizens has come out with a list of rules that women who want to have sex and/or children should follow. Not shockingly, those rules are at odds with almost all the women's actual normal practices, as well as how they live their most intimate life choices. I'm speaking, of course, of the Vatican, which just issued a sweeping pronouncement on sex and reproduction, including reiterating the church's longstanding opposition to contraception and advanced reproductive technologies — in other words, we want you to have lots of babies! Unless, of course, it's hard for you to have babies, in which case, don't seek medical help! 

I guess the priests' line of thinking is that both contraception and IVF are in essense "playing God," because each is an instance of human beings stepping in to make choices — for sperm and egg to meet, or not — that until fairly recently have not been choices left up to human beings to make. And yet, what's a more egregious example of paying God than to reach into someone else's life, home, and marriage and tell them how to live? 

If their real motivation is to nurture and grow a loving family of Catholics, I'm afraid they're pretty much messing that up. What better gift can you give your IVF child than to choose a religion to raise her in that doesn't denounce her very existence?

I'm not a Catholic, but I have friends who are. Some are bound to the church by generations of tradition and habit, while others have sought the more liberal aspects of a faith that has at times led the fight for social justice. But for the women I know, Catholic and not, who have struggled with infertility or any other aspect of their reproductive lives as women, the pronouncements of this group of old men sound anything but wise, moral, or holy.