Donum Vitae
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's instruction on respect for human life in its origin and on the dignity of procreation: the respect owed to the human embryo, and the moral evaluation of artificial fertilisation, both heterologous and homologous.
Background and Occasion
The birth of Louise Brown in England in 1978, the first child conceived by in vitro fertilisation (IVF), opened a new field of medicine and of moral questions. Within a few years IVF had spread widely, along with donor gametes, embryo freezing, surrogacy and research on human embryos. Bishops, doctors and governments asked the Church for guidance.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, answered with the Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation, known by its opening words as Donum Vitae. It is dated 22 February 1987, the feast of the Chair of St Peter, and was approved by John Paul II. It does not claim to treat every question, but to give the principles by which the new techniques should be judged.
Structure
After an introduction setting out the anthropological principles, the instruction has three parts: Respect for human embryos; Interventions upon human procreation (heterologous and homologous artificial fertilisation); and Moral and civil law.
Central Teaching
The principles
The introduction insists that science and technology are valuable resources but must serve the human person. What is technically possible is not for that reason morally admissible. The instruction identifies two fundamental values at stake: the life of the human being called into existence, and the special nature of the transmission of human life in marriage. The human person is a unity of body and soul, and interventions on the body touch the person.
Respect for the embryo
The first part teaches that the human being must be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception. The instruction does not settle the philosophical question of when the spiritual soul is infused, but it argues that the presence of a personal human life is already indicated from fertilisation, and that this is enough to require the respect owed to a person. From this it draws conclusions:
- Prenatal diagnosis is permissible if it respects the life and integrity of the embryo and is directed to its protection or healing, but not if it is carried out with the intention of abortion should the results show a malformation.
- Therapeutic procedures on the embryo are licit if they respect its life and are directed to its healing.
- Research and experimentation on living embryos that are not directly therapeutic for them are illicit. Embryos must not be produced for use as biological material, and the freezing of embryos is an offence against the respect due to them.
- Attempts at fertilisation between human and animal gametes, cloning and the production of embryos for the selection of characteristics are contrary to human dignity.
Heterologous fertilisation
The second part first considers fertilisation using gametes from at least one donor outside the marriage. This is contrary to the unity of marriage, to the dignity of the spouses, to the vocation proper to parents and to the right of the child to be conceived and brought into the world in marriage and from marriage. Surrogate motherhood is excluded for the same reasons.
Homologous fertilisation
The instruction then considers the harder case: IVF using the gametes of the married couple themselves. It judges this also to be morally illicit, even when no embryos are destroyed. The reason is the inseparable connection, taught in Humanae Vitae, between the unitive and procreative meanings of the conjugal act. Conception achieved through IVF is the result of a technical action, not of the act of love in which the spouses give themselves to each other. The child has the right to be the fruit of that act, and is a gift, not an object to which anyone has a right.
The instruction distinguishes this from procedures that assist the conjugal act to achieve its natural end, which can be licit. It also insists that every child conceived by IVF, whatever the manner of conception, must be received as a living gift of divine goodness and brought up with love.
Moral and civil law
The third part asks the state to protect the inviolable rights of the human being from conception, and to prohibit practices that violate them, such as the destruction of embryos and surrogate motherhood. Civil law cannot authorise what is contrary to the natural law.
Theological Significance
Donum Vitae applied the Church’s teaching on marriage and on the dignity of human life to the technologies of assisted reproduction for the first time in a systematic way. Its central principle, that the embryo must be treated as a person from conception, was confirmed by John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae (1995). Its argument against homologous IVF extends the reasoning of Humanae Vitae: if contraception separates the conjugal act from procreation, IVF separates procreation from the conjugal act.
The instruction was updated in 2008 by Dignitas Personae, which addresses techniques developed since, while confirming every principle of Donum Vitae. The Catechism follows both documents (CCC 2373–2379).
For readers of this site, the instruction belongs with the moral theology tract and with the treatment of marriage, and it applies the anthropology of the person as a unity of body and soul taught in the course and in the philosophy course.