Chose to use artificial insemination - now what?

[Mom2Girls]

I am not sure if this is in the right section, I apologize if it is not. My husband and I have been struggling with our faith for some time. We are both catholic. We have been married for nine years. The most important thing to both of us was having a family. After trying to create a family for 2+ years we knew something was wrong and sought out the advice of a doctor. After several tests it was confirm that we were unable to conceive. Our chances were less than 1% without help. Our faith told us that the options available to us to conceive a child were immoral. After another year of trying conventionally we chose to do what we needed to do to have a family. I used infertility drugs and was inseminated with my husband’s sperm. I used this method twice and have two beautiful little girls. Personally I do not regret or feel guilty for my choices. My husband and I have struggled with our faith since this all began. I feel these are the children we were meant to have and this road has led us to them. However I miss my faith and my church community. We have not been involved with the church in a few years because of these differences. I don’t know where to go from here. I cannot ask for forgiveness as our priest suggests. To me I would be saying my children were a sin and I refuse to do that, I don’t feel that way. Is there common ground or is this it? Where do my children fit into all of this?

 

[Kevin42]

I am not sure if this is in the right section, I apologize if it is not. My husband and I have been struggling with our faith for some time. We are both catholic. We have been married for nine years. The most important thing to both of us was having a family. After trying to create a family for 2+ years we knew something was wrong and sought out the advice of a doctor. After several tests it was confirm that we were unable to conceive. Our chances were less than 1% without help. Our faith told us that the options available to us to conceive a child were immoral. After another year of trying conventionally we chose to do what we needed to do to have a family. I used infertility drugs and was inseminated with my husband’s sperm. I used this method twice and have two beautiful little girls. Personally I do not regret or feel guilty for my choices. My husband and I have struggled with our faith since this all began. I feel these are the children we were meant to have and this road has led us to them. However I miss my faith and my church community. We have not been involved with the church in a few years because of these differences. I don’t know where to go from here. I cannot ask for forgiveness as our priest suggests. To me I would be saying my children were a sin and I refuse to do that, I don’t feel that way. Is there common ground or is this it? Where do my children fit into all of this?

Your children are good! All life is good because it is created by God! The Church, and all of us here rejoice in the life of your two children and the happiness and love that the add to your family.

A completely separate issue though is that you have committed a grave sin. You need to realize that while God has still allowed much goodness to come from this, your sin was nonetheless an action that offended an infinitely good and holy God. For this, you need to pray that God guide your conscience into a more full idea of what is right. We all must ask forgiveness when we commit a sin against a God who is infinitely good. You must do this as well, and I would pray that you would go to confession. God, and all the saints want desperately for you to return to communion with Jesus and with His Church here on earth.

Peace be with you.

 

[elliejanba]

I have issues with what you did, personally. You should have adopted, you seem like loving parents, ideal for adoption, but you went through such drastic measures.

I think choice’s like yours makes people opt for abortion. When married couples have enough money or adequate insurance, to go through everything you did, but don’t look toward adoptions. It makes more irresponsible parents wonder will their child be better off, not alive? Will there be adequate loving parents to care for their child?

But as a Christian, I don’t think you should further separate yourself from the Church. You made a decision, ask forgiveness for your sins, but know that God blessed you regardless of your sins. God gave you wonderful children, despite your actions, because he is all loving.

 

[Tantum_ergo]

Suppose that you wanted to have a particular house. In order to get the house (in which you would then live), you falsified papers to show a higher income than you really had in order to get enough of a loan to qualify.

Now, in the end you got your house. If you hadn’t falsified the papers you would have had to settle for a less ‘nice’ house than the one you wanted. You might even have never had your ‘own’ house at all.

But did you do wrong to get the house you wanted? Yes, you did. The fact that the wrong thing resulted in something good for you doesn’t mean that it was not wrong. You are not sorry that you got what you wanted, but shouldn’t you be sorry that in order to get the ‘good’ thing you wanted, you did wrong?

Perhaps that will help you look at your actions again. You are not (and please don’t take this as nasty, it isn’t) ‘entitled’ to have a child. Had you not done this insemination, you cannot be certain that you would not have ‘beaten the odds’ anyway, and had a child or children without having committed sin to do so.

Suppose you had had your child out of wedlock. The child himself or herself is not ‘bad’. . .but the action by which he or she was conceived was. If you had a child out of wedlock you wouldn’t be sorry you had a child, but you would be sorry you had done sin. . .in fact, you would be sorry if you had fornicated even if a child did not result from the actioin.

So. . .you put ‘your will’ ahead of God’s will because you wanted children more than you wanted to trust in what God had planned for you. Because the odds were so ‘low’, you decided that if GOD wasn’t going to give you what you wanted, you would go ahead and take what you wanted and then feel self-righteous because after all, what you wanted wasn’t a ‘bad’ thing. . .in fact, it was something you felt you were justified to take, something you deserved, something you felt God was cheating you out of or withholding unfairly.

(Again, this is not a personal attack and especially it is not an attack on those precious babies).

I’m not condemning you in any way. I entirely sympathize with any person’s wish to have a child.

But I am trying to help you to recover or to better understand the whole concept of how the ends do NOT justify the means. Unfortunately, today’s society preaches the opposite. . .so it is not surprising that you were swayed into thinking what you did is something good and wonderful because the ‘result’ was good. It’s not surprising that in a culture in which the message is, “You deserve to have what you want and nobody has the right to impose a ‘judgment’ on you because everything depends not on whether an action is right or wrong, but on the MOTIVE you have in doing it”, that you accepted this message instead of God’s truth.

It’s not surprising. . but it’s still wrong, and God willing, with His grace, you’ll understand. Because nobody is ever going to condemn your babies as wrong or evil. In fact, nobody is going to condemn YOU as wrong or evil. All we as Catholics will do is give authentic Catholic teaching which is of God, and therefore totally good (absolutely). . .and by which you yourself, when you thoroughly inform your mind and conscience and as a Catholic accept the truth and authority of those teachings. . . will be able to judge yourself accurately regarding your ACTIONS.

God bless.

 

[rskempf]

Keep trying to fight your way back to communion with the church. But most important of all, be quick about it. Immortal souls are at risk. If you believe you are outside the state of grace now, get back in as fast as you can. You are vulnerable till you return. Your children are vulnerable without your grace-filled guidance.

Your children need you to show them the path to heaven. They are a gift from God and now it is up to you to make sure they return to God - for eternity. You need to be in the state of grace to complete this task. Remember, we are in a “fallen” world. This is not the garden of Eden anymore. There are enemies about - beware.

Do not let pride stop you from submitting to Truth during the Sacrament of Penance. After all, your eternal life, and possibly the eternal life of your children depend on it. This eternal end, is more than worth a small dose of humility on this side of heaven.

Think of what, or who, is holding you back.

Who do you want win.

I will be praying for you. God speed!

 

[teachccd]

For the most part you are receiving excellent advice here. Your two little girls are the gift that God gave you to show you that even when we don’t follow His plan He is love. Look at your two little gifts and realize that they are precisely why you will go and ask for forgiveness. How could you not repent to a God who is so infinitely kind that even when you turned from Him in sin He still blessed you? Why? Because from all eternity He knew that you would come to this forum and so many would guide you where you are already headed. Go to reconciliation, not out of any regrets concerning your children but out of thanksgiving…teachccd

 

[Mom2Girls]

I seriously do not understand how it is that my children are gift from God yet the act in which created them is a sin. I struggle with this greatly.

This is a sensitive subject for me, this decision did not come about lightly and without thought. I feel judged and attacked not only by comments here but in my real life. Even though people try to seperate the children from the act, I cannot.

I have also felt that my path maybe more excepted somewhere else if I cannot reconcile this with myself.

Thank you for taking the time to respond, it is appreciated.

 

[joandarc2008]

Think of it like this - and I am in no way judging YOU or your husband or your children. To give money to an infertility clinic is to give money to a place that is also storing embryos. While you may have been insemminated with sperm there are women in that clinic that do not share our religious beliefs who go as far as to have zygotes (fertilized embryos - really young babies) implanted into their uterus. So, if a clinic pays a young college girl $50,000 or so for a whole bunch of healthy embryos with only a short surgical procedure chances are the clinic is going to have more embryos than they can implant. Well here is what happens to those tiny little zygotes and embryos:

1. They are implanted successfully and become babies - the good news here that with the extra fertility drugs some split and become twins
2. They are implanted unsuccessfully (some women go through 8-10 cycles with no success at $10,000 each so the clinics certainly aren’t going to stop trying as long as the couple is willing) and become miscarriages or dead babies that never really had a fair chance at life
3. They are excess and destroyed (unfrozen and thrown away as medical waste) - basically the same as aborted fetal tissue
4. They are excess and sold to pharmaceutical companies for stem cell research.

By doing this you may have unwittingly done three things:

1. Financially supported embryonic stem cell research on fetal tissue
2. Financially supported abortion (if you define abortion as the killing of an unborn child - the unborn child being the zygote mentioned above)
3. Taken away an orphan’s chance at having a home

My df and I are infertile. We know this because before I was Catholic I had a tubal ligation for medical reasons. I did not understand being open to life. Our plan is to adopt and older child that is “stuck” in the sytem(most people seem to want the babies and young kids) so that we can provide hope and a good Catholic upbringing to a child that may go a completely wrong path if raised by group homes. Your children are not bad. It was just the means. Love them every day. But please go to reconciliation come back home to the Church, and further educate yourself on the full scope of the choices you make.

God bless,

 

[teachccd]

I seriously do not understand how it is that my children are gift from God yet the act in which created them is a sin. I struggle with this greatly.

This is a sensitive subject for me, this decision did not come about lightly and without thought. I feel judged and attacked not only by comments here but in my real life. Even though people try to seperate the children from the act, I cannot.

I have also felt that my path maybe more excepted somewhere else if I cannot reconcile this with myself.

Thank you for taking the time to respond, it is appreciated.

Take a minute to hear what we are saying. We all sin. All of us each and every day. My wife and I contracepted for years and yet God gave us three beautiful children. Yes, we decided to take a break from the grave sin but God did not say that because we were sinning we would not receive our three gifts.

You are lumping what we do with what God can do. This is where you are in error. God can make good out of any bad that we can come up with. You certainly do not mean to say that your children are not gifts from God, do you? I know that that is not what you mean. You just feel so guilty about your sin that you cannot justify that an Almighty God can overlook what you are bound with and bless you anyhow.

Now, for an extreme: I personally know o woman who is the product of a rape. Her mom always considered her a gift from God even though she was conceived in a most violent act. Should her life be any less because she was conceived in that way? Of course not. Now, I know that her mom did not sin but none the less a gift resulted from an act that God would never approve of.

We are not judging you. You are. In fact, you are judging yourself more harshly than God does. Of course this is a sensitive issue. And rightly so. But God is sensitive God and He wants what’s best for you. And these feelings are not what’s best for you.If you feel that the act was not sinful only because it resulted in two precious gifts then we are all not guilty of any sin since God blesses us daily. I’m not sure how you are not accepted here but we love you as a sister in Christ and we mean the best for you. I hope that nothing that I said is offensive or insulting. I would pray that I could only be of help. May God bless you and give you peace…teachccd

 

[emeraldcoast]

God bless you and your husband on your children! Praise God for this awesome blessing!

~Your sister in Christ

 

[Ruthie]

I can see how it could be it hard to confess; it would feel like a betrayal of them. You feel like, to make a valid confession, you would have to regret *having *them. Am I right?

Your desire for children was not a sin. Your love for them is not a sin. Giving birth to them was not a sin! Your husband and you being their genetic parents is not a sin. Can you see how I’m narrowing this down? The sin is in removing their conception from the marital act. It is only that part of their existence that is sinful - and it does not attach to them in any way. And it only attaches to you until you take it to confession!

That sin does ***not ***make your love for your daughters sinful, or make them anything other than beautiful gifts of God.

It is my prayer that you come to understand why that method of conception is wrong, and understand that you sinned in choosing it, and come to Reconciliation and get right with the Lord.

God bless you,

Ruthie

 

[Kevin42]

Even the fall of Adam and Eve brought about great goodness! Have you ever heard “Oh happy fault”? This is referring to the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden.

From the Exultet (performed at Easter Vigil Mass):

“O certe necessarium Adae peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est!
O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!”
(O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam,
which gained for us so great a Redeemer!)

“God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom.”

I would consider these two things while you ponder your own situation.

 

[AHapka]

I’ve been to confession for the same thing.

Though in my case, I don’t know if my son was the result of the insemination or the marital act (could have been either). Nonetheless, I still incurred sin by performing the act (and sin in the method to generate sperm).

Our children were not a sin. Look at it this way. If the child were conceived out of wedlock, the action would still be a sin but the child would not.

She was created in the likeness and image of God. Also, Jesus tells us that children do not pay for the sins of the parents.

The end result is not a sin, it’s the method used to acheive the end result that’s the sin. And yes, it is possible to repent of the method and still love the child.

I can say that I regret doing what I did and that my child is a gift in the same sentence only because God did what only He could, and brought good out of the evil that I did. I know it’s an odd feeling to both regret what I did, and be happy with the outcome at the same time, but it is a bit of a paradox.

Our faith at no time requires us to consider that any child is less then any other based on the method of conception. If you think that by regretting anything that you did means you have to regret your children in any way, it just isn’t so!

Once you seperate the two in your mind (which is what I think is causing you hardship), I think you’ll be able to make a good confession and no longer be conflicted about this.

 

[elliejanba]

I seriously do not understand how it is that my children are gift from God yet the act in which created them is a sin. I struggle with this greatly.

This is a sensitive subject for me, this decision did not come about lightly and without thought. I feel judged and attacked not only by comments here but in my real life. Even though people try to seperate the children from the act, I cannot.

I have also felt that my path maybe more excepted somewhere else if I cannot reconcile this with myself.

Thank you for taking the time to respond, it is appreciated.

It seems strange to me that you are so desperate to be accepted by what you did. It sort of reminds me of gays who want to be married instead of civil unions. They believe so strongly that since it feels so right, it must be right.

Life doesn’t work like that unfortunately. We are not meant to be without hard choices as Catholics, in fact as Christians we are meant to lead harder lives. If you look at Jesus’ life forgoing all comforts, and then you look at the average Western lifestyle, they are two diametrically opposed things.

 

[graceandglory]

Where do my children fit into all of this?

About where my children fit in.

My twins were conceived on the birth control pill.
When you combing ABC + antibiotics, the result is fertility hormones.

You can do what I did and devote yourself to understanding why the Church teaches what it does. Above and beyond all things, God cares about your heart. When a couple is infertile and will go against what they are taught is right and correct in the sight of God in order to get what they want, it is sin.

You can confess your sin and get right with your Catholic faith.
Begin to receive the Eucharist once you have confessed your sin.
Trust that God will bring something good from that 1% chance of conceiving.

God wants us to TRUST HIM. When you take matters into your own hands you are basically turning your back on God’s will, and seeking your own instead. That puts your immortal soul at risk.

I know. I’ve lived this reality. I spent an hour in confession with a good priest.

Start here:
Good News About Sex and Marriage by Christopher West.

Bottom line: God is going to accept us or condemn us based on what is in our heart. If your heart is set on your own will over God’s will for you, that will separate you from knowing God and knowing His will.

Start with your heart.

 

[leonie]

You can have imperfect contrition. This is where you realize intellectually that your action is wrong, but emotionally you don’t feel sorry.

It’s okay to confess with imperfect contrition.

Pray for contrition.

I agree with those who suggest talking to a good priest about this.

 

[Lorik]

I’m really glad you are trying to resolve your conflicted feelings about this. It’s absolutely necessary.
My situation is somewhat in the same category. My first daughter was conceived outside of wedlock. The condition of her conception is a grave evil. Her existence is not. In fact I think her creation was an act of mercy for me. As I was on such a path of destruction I don’t think I would be alive today had I not conceived her. God is so good He even brings good of our sin. My sin was a rejection of God’s plan for me. He had something different in mind for me and I said “NO”. But the best part is is that God in His goodness can and will bring us back on track to His original best plan for our lives. We must find it and He is eager to help us find it. We need His direction. Maybe that means there’s an orphan somewhere in the world that is meant to be your child, maybe not. The point is that he had a plan for you and for me and we both decided to go in another direction but we have to get back to the path he created us for. Bless you on your journey. One thing is for certain, is that if we seek the Lord He will be found. But time is not on our side. We can’t delay.

 

[brandymmiller]

You chose to use artificial insemination. You don’t think you did anything wrong. However, I think you are not looking deeply enough. Aside from the inclusion of a third party in your marital act, how many children were created in that petri dish during your efforts? What happened to those offspring? Were any of your children killed, frozen, or “donated”? If you have frozen children, do you plan to give them a chance at life? All of them? Or are you only going to give life to the two you have.

 

[Mom2Girls]

You chose to use artificial insemination. You don’t think you did anything wrong. However, I think you are not looking deeply enough. Aside from the inclusion of a third party in your marital act, how many children were created in that petri dish during your efforts? What happened to those offspring? Were any of your children killed, frozen, or “donated”? If you have frozen children, do you plan to give them a chance at life? All of them? Or are you only going to give life to the two you have.

I would recommend educating yourself on IUI before jumping in and passing judgement on something you obviously know nothing about. No eggs were removed from my body. No embryos were destroyed or sitting frozen anywhere. The sperm from my husband was injected directly into my uterus. We did NOT use IVF.

Between the above answer and that comparing this act to that of gay marriage and my being responsible for a womans choice to abort a child are ridiculious. No need to respond any further. My husband and I have decided to move forward in our search for a more accepting church. We will never agree on this issue and I won’t be held hostage by it either. No further advice is needed.

 

[Debra_C]

Your children are most certainly not a sin. They are children. I understand what a torment it must be for you to feel separated form the Church over this. To return and reconcile would involve going to Confession. But you also feel that to say your sorry would be to renounce the two children you have concieved this way. But renouncing your children is not what the Church asks of you at all. Rather, she asks you to recognize that you have placed your own wants and wishes before God’s will and commandments and accept again His healing mercy. When you are able to understand in this light, perhaps it will not be so hard to say I’m sorry without feeling you are turning your back on your two children. Rather, in the process, you will be able to embrace them with even more perfect love.