What is the churches view on egg donation? My girlfriend is an agent who finds couples who are unable to have children of their own and pairs them with a young woman who donates her eggs to them so the mother can carry the child. I know that the church teaches that the only way life can be brought into this world is through natural conception between a married couple. Where does this fall? Is she at fault being the agent who pairs them? What about the other two parites? How is this different then what doctors do when they are saving the life of someone who should have died? Will this prohibit us from being married in the catholic church? I need a definitive answer if at all possible, please. This very well may determine our relationship. Thank you.
One of the problems with this is that they don’t just take one egg, fertilize it, and implant it. What they generally do is take a bunch of eggs, fertilize them, insert some of them and hope that one will implant, and they save the rest “just in case.” When the others are no longer needed, they are “discarded.”
So, in short, they’re making a whole bunch of babies just to kill all but one of them.
Anyone who assists in or enables the process is guilty of the murders.
The actual text of the Church’s teaching on this subject is found here.
Egg donation is gravely immoral, but the correct reference is paragraph 2276 of the Catechism:
*Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses’ "right to become a father and a mother only through each other.
I recommend reading the paragraphs around that one, too.
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