In the News...

I am not sure where to even begin on this article. (Forewarning: it is LONG) I found the link in the media review section on a fellow IFs blog. I realize that the Catholic church (and its siblings, Episcopalian & Lutheran, what I like to call Catholic Lite) is very anti-ART. I know, just from watching a dear soul on a message board feel emotionally tortured by whether the decision to use Clomid was right in God’s eyes; it is more than frowned upon.

The author left me feeling disturbed and even a bit angry:

• “Here is the plain truth. I do want a child of my own flesh and blood. But I want the child to come from my love for my husband. Not love in the abstract; love in the flesh, for a child in the flesh."***
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• “We are a big mistake. We are an abomination in nature—we exist pointlessly because we cannot make more of our species. We are an abomination according to the charge of Genesis, because we cannot be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Our love does not bear fruit.” ***

This excerpt really exacerbates the myth dealing with IF is equal to us being ~broken~ and beyond repair; that any child born of ART is not a flesh a blood child to be loved and cherished as a child of conventional conception would be. Believe me when I say that a child “created” outside of the womb or by way of IUI is not created by anything but love. Only love would allow us to endure the tests, procedures, pills, needles, etc required to achieve pregnancy.

It also gives the impression that marriage and love are only complete when conception occurs. Basically, a child is what makes love in the marriage blossom and grow. This is not the point of marriage. We no longer live as Puritans, marriage is not just for child bearing and sex is not for procreation only. That thought pattern is absurd.

And, going by the the teachings in the Church, God is infallible, so to imply we are a "...big mistake" and "...an abomination in nature" is to imply that God is fallible. In some churches that would be considered blasphemy and you could be shunned.

• “This is not a blessing to live everyday life by… It a blessing for the end… an apocalyptic blessing intruding on the present and on the desire of the present for family, children, hearth, home.”***
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• “… the barren, and the adopted, and the adoptive, live in the middle of an apocalyptic blessing.”***
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• “Childlessness was not only sorrow for the moment, but everlasting death…As the barren of the new covenant, my husband and I are cut off from the immortality of the bloodline. Our adopted children will likely bear children of their own, just as our parents bore us, but there is a circle drawn around the two of us and our barren marriage, excising us from the rising up and passing away of generations.” ***

As a child of adoption, I do not in the appreciate my mere existence being referred to as an “apocalyptic blessing.” Is she serious? Barrenness is an “apocalyptic blessing”? IF was only ~cured~ in the OT? Really? Modern day IF is due to it being the “…end times.” Adoption (not ART) should be sought out because the “Church” is just a bunch of adopted kids in God’s eyes? Jesus was adopted by Joseph so from that point on only adoption is the ~cure~ to infertility? Wow! How closed and simple-minded is she?

For her include the references she uses, from the Bible mind you, is laughable. The article is the perfect example of why non-Christians think we are all whack jobs. She uses scripture to fit her meaning and does not take into context the surrounding stories or events taking place. Cafeteria Christianity. “I’ll take a little bit of this and that but I don’t want to see anything else. I have all I need.”

This thinking is dangerous. It creates a mindset that can be damaging to those around us, not to mention ourselves. To tell a couple with adopted children that their children are a blessing born of a curse is cruel and selfish, even if said person has also dealt with IF. To imply that barrenness is to be revered and exalted as a sign of the Apocalypse is pure madness. Never have I read anything around the the IF and TTC world that is as dark, daunting, and discouraging. (Wow, talk about alliteration, lol)

So I beg to ask this question; when will knowledgeable, grounded, educated people start talking openly about the IF world? Not in closed circles or mass media designed only for those TTC or experiencing IF. I am talking about an honest to goodness onslaught of information that will put these people back into their little boxes and begin to mend the damages they have done.

As a comment on one of my entries implies, until the IF world makes as much noise as we possibly can, the fertile world will really never understand.

***All excerpts were from Sarah Hinlicky Wilson - Christianity Today - posted 12/07/2007 09:21AM Sarah Hinlicky Wilson is the pastor at St. John Lutheran Church in Trenton, New Jersey, and the editor of Lutheran Forum.