When an Alabama court last year ruled against an in vitro fertilization clinic that carelessly allowed the destruction of frozen embryos, it set off a media feeding frenzy that ended in President Donald Trump taking a maximalist pro-IVF position.
One Catholic leader is trying to steer public officials in a different direction.
“In a misguided attempt to respond to challenges surrounding marriage, family formation, falling birth rates, and fertility,” Bishop Michael Burbidge of the diocese of Arlington, Virginia, writes, “elected officials are rushing to support an IVF industry that kills or freezes hundreds of thousands of embryonic children every year and facilitates the exploitative practice of surrogacy.”
Burbidge, in the apostolic letter released today, is responding to Trump’s campaign promise to make IVF free for would-be parents. This would involve forcing…
