IVF
OFFICE OF LIFE
IVF
If you have walked the path of IVF or are considering it, you are welcome here.
A place to begin
Maybe you carry questions you have never said aloud. Maybe there is grief — for children lost, for embryos waiting in storage, for a road that did not go the way you hoped. Maybe there is guilt, because something in you sensed it was wrong even then, or because you only came to understand later, and you do not know where to put that weight. Maybe there is silence, because it has never felt safe to speak of any of it. Whatever you are carrying, you do not have to carry it alone, and you will not find judgment here. You will find accompaniment, and you will find mercy — which is always greater than our regrets.
The Church holds out a sure hope: that the God who knows every one of His children walks with you now, in mercy, toward healing and peace. This page is a place to begin.
Your child is loved — fully, and without condition
Some parents hold back from this page because of a fear that runs very deep: that if the Church teaches against IVF, it must not love their child — or worse, that it is saying their child should never have lived, or does not deserve life.
Please hear this clearly: that is not what the Church believes, and it is not true.
Your child — like every child, however he or she came to be — was willed and loved by God from the first moment, made in His own image, of infinite and equal dignity. No child is ever a mistake. No child is ever less of a gift. Your child is precious beyond measure, cherished completely by God and by His Church, and you are right to love and treasure that child without reservation.
The Church’s teaching is about the way IVF brings life into being — never a verdict on the child who results, and never a measure of your love as a parent. Loving your child and seeking healing are not in conflict. They belong together.
The child is never the problem.
But also remember, The child is never the problem. The Church’s moral concern is the dignity of procreation and the respect owed to human life from its beginning. The Church grieves the embryos harmed, destroyed, or left waiting in IVF, precisely because she sees each one as a beloved child, exactly as you see yours.
At the same time, it is also important to be honest about what the Church teaches morally: the Church judges IVF itself to be morally illicit, because it dissociates the actions directed to fertilization from the conjugal act proper to marriage, replacing what belongs to the spouses’ covenantal self-giving with a technical procedure. For this reason, even when embryos are not allowed to die, the Church remains opposed from the moral point of view to IVF as a method of conception.
So you can hold both at once. You can cherish your child with your whole heart, and still bring to the Lord whatever grief, guilt, or questions you carry about the road that brought you here.
A place to be accompanied: Shiloh
Shiloh: A Post-IVF Ministry was founded by Catholics who have lived this themselves. They offer faithful, compassionate accompaniment to the women, men, and couples who come to them — not a checklist and not condemnation, but a companion for the journey toward healing and discernment.
Shiloh can walk with you through questions such as:
- Finding healing and peace after participating in IVF
- Discerning, prayerfully and without pressure, how to care for embryo children in storage in a way consistent with their inviolable dignity and the Church’s teaching, including seeking qualified Catholic moral guidance
- How to speak with your children about how they came to be
- Reconnecting with the sacraments, including reconciliation, when you are ready
Shiloh is not a medical or counseling clinic. It is a ministry of accompaniment, free and confidential, available to people anywhere.
FAITHFUL • COMPASSIONATE • CONFIDENTIAL
You do not have to carry this alone.
A companion for the journey toward healing, discernment, and peace.
If you are still considering IVF
If you have found this page while weighing whether to pursue IVF, we are especially glad you are here. Before you decide, we hope you will talk with us, or with Shiloh — not to be lectured, but to be accompanied, and to be sure you have the whole picture, including ethical paths that honor both your longing for a child and the dignity of every life. There is real hope here, and you do not have to walk it alone.
If you are weighing questions about embryos
If you are weighing questions about your frozen embryos in cryostorage, please know that you do not have to face this alone. These decisions are genuinely heavy, and they require careful, personal, and faithful discernment rather than a quick answer. You are warmly welcome to speak with us here at the Office of Life—we will listen and walk through the questions with you, step by step. For one-on-one guidance on the specific moral questions involved, the National Catholic Bioethics Center offers free consultation with their staff.
In the Church’s teaching, a human embryo is to be treated as a person from conception; therefore the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed like every other human being.
That moral obligation is why the Church insists on protecting embryos as subjects of essential rights, even when the practical situation is deeply complicated. The Church recognizes that the thousands of abandoned frozen embryos represent an injustice which in fact cannot be resolved, and it notes that there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding their human destiny—hence they “should therefore be protected by law as human persons.”
Accompaniment, not a formula
We will also be honest with you about how hard this can feel. Because there is no morally licit “fix” that makes everything right again, you may experience the weight of wanting to do right and the absence of any easy path forward. If that is what you are carrying, please know this: you are not failing.
You are facing something genuinely difficult, and you are meant to be accompanied—not left to sort through it by yourself. This is precisely why what we offer is not a formula, but accompaniment: to pray with you, to think it through with you, and to help you seek the most faithful and loving way forward within the Church’s moral teaching, together.
You may also be carrying grief
The losses bound up with IVF are real losses, and grief is not a sign of weakness or a lack of faith — it is love with nowhere to go. If you are mourning, please know our Office of Life is here, and you are welcome to reach out to a priest or to us directly. (See also our pages on [infertility] and [pregnancy and infant loss] for related support.)
PRIVATE • COMPASSIONATE • PASTORAL
Reaching out
Contacting us is private, and there is no wrong way to begin — even a few words is enough.
Office of Life — St. Thomas Chaldean Diocese
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“Dignitas personae” — the dignity of a person, which must be recognized in every human being from conception to natural death.