Chapter 3.

2 Natural Reproduction Respects Nature

Knowing Lovingly

“In his hand is the soul of every living thing, and the life breathe of all mortal flesh” (Job.12:10). Every
human life, from the moment he was conceived until he dies is sacred because the human person was created in
the image and likeness of the living and holy God (cf. CCC 2319). “Whoever is without love does not know God,
for God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8). Because of this, man should be aware that his very existence and sense of fulfillment
depend on God whom he has to reflect through love since he is of His image and likeness. When an embryo is
formed in his mother’s womb, this should be treated as a person and, therefore must be defended in its
integrity, must be cared of, and reared like any other human being (cf. CCC 2323). A human being is made for
love and cannot live without love (cf. CSDC 223); thus, any act done in the absence of love or anything that takes
him away from love violates his right as a human being to live.

The unborn child must be guaranteed the best possible conditions of existence through a stability of a
family founded on marriage, through the complementary of two persons- father and mother.

Fathers and mothers are called parents. They are ministers of life and are stewards of God’s highest
creation-man. They must never forget that the spiritual dimension of procreation is to be given greater
consideration than any aspect: “Fatherhood and motherhood represents (sic) a responsibility which is not only
physical but spiritual in nature; indeed through these realities, there passes the genealogy of the person, which
has its eternal beginning in God and which must lead back to Him.” Together, they form a family. “The family is
presented, in the Creator’s plan, as the primary place of humanization for the person and society” and the
“cradle of life and love.” Thus, families are irreplaceable.

The family should have a strong communal life and stability of commitment in order to properly rear up
human beings that are totally integrated as a person. (cf. CSDC 213). That is why Jesus instituted the sacrament
of matrimony. It ensures that married life be lived out within the bounds of goodness, truth, and love with Him
as the third party to that union so that the couples finds the fullness of dignity and thus create a family solidly
founded in these as well. He warned anyone who would separate the two will be answerable to God because the
couple’s responsibility is not only confined to themselves and their love but to the eventual fruit of that love-
their children.

In the past, sexuality focuses on the sex act rather than a person. Sexuality refers to what makes man a
man and woman a woman and is for love-either married or celibate love (cf. NCDP 287). A person’s sexuality is
for human completeness and for procreation. It “signifies the essential dimension of the whole person by which
he/she enters into a relationship with others. It therefore touches every aspect of personal life, and has to be
developed by all men and women just as life itself.”

Human sexuality is God’s gift to us. He precisely created man as male and female, making them
complementary as they are different. Though the sexual nature of the man and woman, they relate each other in
love thus sharing in God’s life of love and in His creativity. As men and women, we are to associate with one
another through interpersonal relationships respecting the sexuality and proper bodily expression of each other
(cf. CFC 1062).
 Nature is a gift offered by the Creator to the human community, entrusted to the intelligence and moral
responsibility of men and women. If, out of respect for the order, beauty, and usefulness of individual living
beings and their function in the ecosystem, man intervenes by modifying some of their characteristics or
properties, he does not commit a prohibitive or illicit act. But if these human interventions damage loving beings
or the natural environment, these deserve condemnation.

The Church’s social doctrine emphasizes that all these reproduction techniques (the donation of the
sperm or ova, surrogate motherhood, artificial fertilization, etc.) that make use of the uterus of another woman
or the reproductive cells of another person other than the married couple, and all those that could harm or
violate the right of the child to be born of one father and one mother biologically and legally are unethically
unacceptable (cf. 2377). Equally unacceptable are those methods that separate the unitive act from the
procreative act in the process of reproduction of human life. In the unitive act of the couples, love is present
because it involves the total giving of oneself to his partner. In the procreative act, the couple is adhering to the
Lord’s commissioning to them to be fruitful and to increase in number and participating with the Lord as
procreators through the sacredness of the sexual act.

Techniques involving homologous artificial insemination and fertilization dissociate the sexual act from
procreative act. These acts are needed to conform with the dignity of the person. Those acts that bring the child
into existence without the giving of the two persons, male and female, to one another entrusts the life and
identity of the embryo into the power of the doctors and biologists =, thereby establishing the domination of
technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. This is contrary to the dignity and equality that
must be common to parents and children.

There is also the issue of human cloning these days. This has created a serious moral implication
affecting our social and cultural norms and values. This term refers per se to the reproduction of a biological
entity that is genetically identical to the originating organism. Such cloning according to the judgment of
Magisterium “is contrary to the dignity of human procreation because it takes place in total absence of an act of
personal love between spouses, being agmic or asexual reproduction”.

It is only right then, that we avoid resourcing to artificial reproduction of human beings because they
replace God as the beginning, the source of life, and the creator of humankind. Neither should we recourse to
different forms of “assisted procreation” that replace the marriage act to give respect, both to the parents and to
the children that they intend to generate, to the integral dignity of the human person (cf. CSDC 235).

When man interferes with the way God wants man to be reproduced, he is playing god. He takes away
what is of God if it is done against His percepts and teachings and tampers with the uniqueness of man. The
genealogy of the person artificially reproduced does not begin in God anymore. If his beginning is not of God
then to what does he goes back to in the end? Research done “at the service of the human person, of his
inalienable rights and his true and integral good according to the design and will of God” is to be encouraged.
Other than that, it is unethically unacceptable and is considered a sexually immoral act.