There has been a lot of debate surrounding the topic of in vitro fertilization (IVF) lately, especially following President Trump’s Executive Order promoting the practice. This national attention has made many people wonder how IVF fits into a Christian worldview and a desire for children.

This week on Family Policy Matters, NC Family’s Adamo Manfra welcomes Dr. Stacy Trasancos, a professor and author of the book IVF is Not the Way: The False Promises of Artificial Procreation, to discuss approaching in vitro fertilization (IVF) with a Christian worldview.

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Family Policy Matters
In God’s Image: Science, Morality, and the IVF Question (with Dr. Stacy Trasancos)

ADAMO MANFRA: Thanks for joining us for Family Policy Matters. Filling in for Traci this week, this is Adamo Manfra, Director of Research and Education here at North Carolina Family Policy Council. While of the seemingly endless executive actions President Trump has taken in his first few months, one that has created particular controversy among his base of voters is his executive order aimed at expanding IVF. This complex issue touches on the foundations of our humanity as creatures made in the image of God, as citizens, and as husbands and wives, parents and children. We are joined today by Dr Stacy Trasancos, whose new book, IVF Is Not the Way: The False Promises of Artificial Procreation, will be available in mid-May. With a doctorate chemistry and experience as a research chemist for DuPont, Dr Trasancos now applies her scientific expertise to matters of theology and philosophy in numerous writing and media outlets. She also has teaching roles in the science and theology programs at three colleges, Seton Hall University, Holy Apostles College and Seminary, and Belmont Abbey College here in North Carolina. Dr Stacy Trasancos, welcome to Family Policy Matters.

STACY TRASANCOS: Thank you for having me on the show. It’s an honor.

ADAMO MANFRA: It’s great to have you. So, let’s start with a very basic groundwork question, what is IVF?

STACY TRASANCOS: Well, IVF process can be described as a cycle of five steps. Egg stimulation, where the woman’s egg production is stimulated with drugs containing hormones that cause the ovaries to release more than one egg per month. The second part, then, is egg maturation and removal. So, the woman receives hormone injections that cause the eggs to mature further, and then they are removed with an aspirator. Then there is a sperm collection from the man that is done. And then the fourth step is the artificial insemination, that’s when, in the lab, the mature egg that’s been removed from the woman and the sperm from the man are put together and embryos are produced. And then the last step is to transfer some of the embryos into the woman’s uterus with a small catheter and give her medications to help one of those embryos to implant in the uterus and begin to grow as a pregnancy. Obviously, in that last step, other embryos that aren’t used, because the cycle is very expensive, they’ll make more than one embryo, and the extra embryos that aren’t implanted are either destroyed or stored in a cryogenic tank until another decision is made later.

ADAMO MANFRA: Wow. Okay, quite the process. Why do you think IVF is such a uniquely sensitive topic in science, theology, philosophy, it seems to touch all of these things?

STACY TRASANCOS: It’s an important topic because it is a scientific procedure, and so it’s something that’s possible. But with everything in science, you have to ask, just because we can do it doesn’t mean we should. And so, there’s always a virtue component in any decisions about how we use science to better the human race. And so, there’s a scientific component because the scientific technology for assisted reproductive technology is still developing. There are still more things being done. They’re trying to create humans in the lab in a variety of different ways that are going to cause problems in the future if we don’t stop it. But then there’s also the theological aspect, because you cannot make this argument, I am convinced, you cannot make this argument against IVF, unless you start with God exists. The human person is made in the image and likeness of God. We have a body and rational soul. We are made for unity in marriage. You’ve got to start all the way from the beginning. So, you’ve got to have the theology there and then philosophy helps bridge the two. Philosophy helps make sense of why we need theology guiding science. It helps make sense of what we mean when we use words, make distinctions, provide the clarity. So, you need all three, and this is one of the most significant intersections of science, theology, and philosophy of our time.

ADAMO MANFRA: You have said, I think that one of the things that you’re sort of excited about this executive order bringing IVF to the foreground is that this will increase the national conversation on IVF and really examining what it means to be human. You mentioned that IVF touches all of these key areas. How does it then lead to the conversation of what it means to be human?

STACY TRASANCOS: Because a lot of people don’t understand what that means. I mean, philosophy is funny that way. We all use words we think are obvious, like, I’m a human. I want to have a baby. A baby is a gift. We use these words human dignity, and we don’t really know what we mean by them. And that’s the job of philosophy is to give us more than just a dictionary definition. It’s to really dig down to the true meaning of the words. Our words are a gift of our intellect, and that means that we take a concept in our mind and we express it, but the concepts in our minds should be conforming to reality. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing, is looking at the universe and seeing what’s there and then conforming our words and our thoughts to the reality. That is the proper way to communicate. And so, I honestly don’t think most people, I know I didn’t before I became Catholic. I don’t think most people think about what it means to even be human, or what it means to become a parent, or what it means to say a child is a gift, or that humans have dignity. And so, I see this topic as really, I think we’re fortunate to be able to have these conversations, because we can make the case for those things to people, it’s very possible that through discussions about IVF, some lonely woman or some downtrodden man out there is going to also rediscover that they, too, are gifts to the universe from God, and discover their own dignity.

ADAMO MANFRA: That’s beautiful. So, you’ve argued that there are five principles of human life that should guide our thinking on this and so many other important issues. What are those five? How do they drive this conversation in our assessment in this area?

STACY TRASANCOS: I credit Joseph Boyle, a philosopher, in a Linacre article from 1988. He had one paragraph that summed up these five principles, and so I just gave him a name, so I’m crediting him, but he also took these from donum vitae from the church. So, this is just all of us trying to express what the church is saying more concisely, but the principle of existence. Humans are made in the image and likeness of the one and Triune God. God grants the existence of each one of us, not just at conception, but throughout our whole life, God’s holding us in existence now. That’s the principle of existence. Principle of totality, we are composed of body and rational soul, and those two are inextricably intertwined. We are spiritual and bodily creatures, which leads then to the principle of dignity. We are to be treated with the full respect due a person, because we’re not objects that are a means to an end. We are made in the image and likeness of God. And so that’s the principle of dignity. And then the principle of procreation says, in marriage, the most dignified way for mother and father, husband and wife to cooperate with God in the bringing into existence of a new human is to work with God and not separate the unitive and the procreative aspects of the conjugal act.

I fully believe you cannot say that phrase to a society that doesn’t understand what it means to be human or be married and have it make any sense. It’ll sound like theological gobbledygook, but that’s the principle of procreation, you can’t separate unitive and procreative aspects of the conjugal act of marriage. And then that also leads to the principle of inseparability. I like the way Joseph Boyle put it, the love making and the life giving cannot be separated, cannot be dissociated. Conception is as much a spiritual act as it is a bodily act, so it wreaks havoc in lives, marriages, families and nations and the world. So those are the five principles.

ADAMO MANFRA: Why do you think people are so drawn to IVF and tend to see it so positively? It was such a rush in the past couple years to affirm IVF in many political spaces, and then where do your key concerns with IVF meet those inclinations and motivations, but with the truth that you’re bringing to this conversation?

STACY TRASANCOS: People are drawn to IVF because it sounds like a solution, and that’s the hard part about it. It’s as natural as wanting to breathe air, to want to be a mother or a father, and if you’re in a loving marriage, it’s natural to want to bear a child that literally is the union of your love. And there’s nothing more beautiful about that, and it’s very Trinitarian. It’s very much who we are, and the child is a gift from God, though. And so that’s the problem. People very much want that good thing. They want that child. But what we miss here is that children are gifts. You’re not owed a child. As much as you may want that child, there may be situations where there are true infertility, and a lot of people get into that path of IVF because they’re convinced they’re broken, they’re convinced they’re infertile, they’re convinced that they have a right to have this child, and without even realizing, they’re starting to think of their own children as commodities. They’re not putting the rights of the child before the wants of the adult, without even realizing. I think a lot of people are very good people, and they don’t even realize they’re doing that. They go down this path of dominating nature and trying to put God to the side, put the conjugal act to the side. You can do it however you want to do it. You don’t even need to be married. And so, they don’t realize they’re going down this path. It’s a solution to a perceived problem. But by going down this path, you miss the real issue, and therefore you don’t ever solve the actual issue that is here in our society that has President Trump thinking about IVF and the fertility rate.

ADAMO MANFRA: So, you talk about you end up addressing the wrong issue. Are there alternatives to IVF that people are missing, that we should be exploring, supporting, prioritizing, getting the good word out?

STACY TRASANCOS: Yeah, I love the Creighton model or the fertility care system. I’m a convert. I’m a chemist. I like data. I like science. And I had never heard anything like that. I mean, it’s good old fashioned natural family planning, but I had never heard of a system that actually treats the woman’s body. I have seven children, and I can tell you firsthand, even doctors in Catholic hospitals, they don’t understand the hormone cycles in a female’s body the way they should to be able to treat her. But the Creighton model and fertility care system, it says to the woman, let’s not go into all these scientific treatments before we understand you. We need to listen to the data of your own body and figure out what it’s saying. Not all women have a 28-day cycle. Not all women are fertile on the same days of the month. Sometimes stress changes that. And what fertility care teaches the woman to do is to listen to your own rhythms of your own body and how the decisions you’re making in your life, stress, drinking, eating not well, you know, those things affect what your body does. And so, if you want to cooperate with God to bring a new life into the world with your husband, the healthiest way to start is by listening to your own body and understanding that first.

And Creighton model practitioners will tell you, there’s lots of stories of women who, the medical community told them they were infertile, and it turned out they weren’t infertile. There’s one woman I know of, she wasn’t infertile at all. She just had a shorter than 28-day cycle, so she was fertile on a different day of the month than the doctors realized, and once she understood that, she was pregnant in a month, and she didn’t even need to go down this path of IVF. And that’s not true for everybody. There are also people who are mysteriously infertile, and they don’t know why, but I go into that in the book too. What do you do when you’re given a gift that’s bitter, that may not be the gift you wanted.

ADAMO MANFRA: Well, speaking of listening, one last question, and perhaps above our pay grades, but it’s fun to explore. If you were advising President Trump, considering his recent policy on this topic, what recommendations would you provide? Would you urge him to consider?

STACY TRASANCOS: I’m hoping that he and Vice President Vance do read this book. I mean, I wrote it with them and anybody who advises them in mind. But I also wrote it for the lay Catholic to know these arguments, to be able to make them to people. You know, we have to speak the truth. Whoever hears it is up to God. But I would say to him, think bigger. I know this is not a foreign concept to President Trump. He knows how to think big, obviously. But the low fertility rate problem cannot be solved by treating humans like livestock, where breeding more bodies equals populational success. You cannot solve the problem of the fertility rate that way, not with humans. The low fertility rate in our nation is a serious issue, but it’s going to be solved by teaching people that sexual relations are sanctified. That you don’t just throw your body away. You don’t just have one-night stands. By strengthening marriage, by teaching people that you need the grace of Christ in your marriage so that you can have that glue that’s going to keep you united. That marriage takes work. But by strengthening marriage, by making marriage something beautiful, and by promoting the wholeness in each human person, that each one of us are gifts from God, by promoting virtue, and by making family, marriage, childhood, being human, and God in our culture, great again.

ADAMO MANFRA: Very good.

STACY TRASANCOS: You can’t get that on a hat.

ADAMO MANFRA: Yeah, that’d be, it would have to be small font, I think. We’re just about out of time, but before we go, where can our listeners go to get a copy of your new book, IVF Is Not the Way: The False Promises of Artificial Procreation?

STACY TRASANCOS: You can obviously find the book on Amazon or at the Sophia Institute Press website. I also have been keeping all of my work on a sub stack now, StacyTrasancos.substack.com, I’m going to be posting information about the book, but I also write about a lot of other issues, so you can find me there.

ADAMO MANFRA: Wonderful. Well, Dr Stacy Trasancos, thank you so much for being with us on Family Policy Matters.

STACY TRASANCOS: Thank you.

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