Well, Casey wanted some hate, so I’ll point out his error 😂 In Acts, the eunuch is not asking Phillip about the eunuch passage in Isaiah rather the passage about the lamb being led to slaughter.
My husband and I miscarried for the first time this past August. I was only 3 weeks along (far enough along to have a positive pregnancy test). I took further tests to make sure that the positive line was darkening, but instead it grew fainter. I had bloodwork done to confirm we had lost this child. Two and a half weeks later, I passed the pregnancy. The doctor’s office referred to it as a “chemical pregnancy,” but there was nothing just chemical about it. This was our baby. Fortunately, in our area, Morgan’s Place Cemetery helps families suffering loss of the unborn (miscarriage, stillbirth, and even abortion). Mollie Verdier and her husband Nathan who run Morgan’s Place are both, in my opinion, living saints. They are both Catholic and work to supply our local parishes with miscarriage kits free of charge and Mollie works closely with each family to help them grieve and prepare for burial if they wish, obtain paperwork for a fetal death certificate if they wish, are gifted small wooden urns made by an Abbey for burial of their baby, gifted a handmade memory blanket for their baby, given a donated and custom designed grave marker for their baby, Mollie organizes the burial with your local priest or deacon, and if you bury at Morgan’s Place, your burial plot and fees are 100% free of charge. Not to mention the Verdier’s have donated part of their 200 year-old family farm to establish this cemetery. My husband was also able to meet Nathan at the cemetery and my husband dug our baby’s spot for burial and placed our child’s grave marker with Mollie’s husband Nathan, too. It’s completely amazing and healing the work that Morgan’s Place (the Verdier’s) do. I had reached out to Morgan’s Place (Mollie) initially because I was not processing our miscarriage well and wanted to see if I could order a memory plaque for our child. I had not passed our pregnancy yet and Mollie asked if I was interested in burial? I thought I wouldn’t be eligible for a burial because of how early we were. She encouraged me to pick up a miscarriage kit from my local parish and I stayed home during the duration of my pregnancy’s passing and collected all I could for burial. When collecting in the middle of the night even, I initially thought this is so tedious. But then a moment of grace washed over me, and I thought, these are the late night feedings and diaper changes I get to do for this baby. Collecting everything I could was completely worth it. When I had gone through this initial grieving process of our child - preparing for and having our baby’s burial - (I am still grieving, I think this will be a grief that remains until I’m reunited one day with our little saint. I will always miss our child.), I was told by a relative going through IVF at the time that if they had grieved their losses in IVF like I grieved our loss, they would not be able to function. This saddened me so much. How we were able to grieve and give our baby a final resting place at Morgan’s Place Cemetery was so honorable and loving to our child and healing for our family. If only every unborn child could be given a final resting place, our society would have a stunning visual of the little saints who are populating heaven and hopefully have a deeper respect and love for the unborn.
Thank you for your valuable comment-all of the comments in this conversation are beautiful and valuable-especially the mention of Morgan’s Place Cemetery, of which I was unaware. May the Blessed Mother draw especially close to you and all who have lost a child, whether before or after birth.
Thank you so much. Mother Mary has been such a mother to us throughout this process (her intercession means so much to me, so thank you especially for asking for her intercession). I ask for Momma Mary’s intercession for my two children here on earth, for her to hold our little baby until I can hold him or her once again in heaven, and to intercede for the little one who is on the way (currently 15 weeks). I am so appreciative to your wife (I’m assuming this is Chris - Emily’s husband) for her courage to write about IVF last year and to all of you for discussing this difficult topic and with such compassion. Emily was the first Catholic writer I saw who addressed this topic.
IVF tugs at my heart so much because our little one that we lost would have been only days older (maybe a week at most) than embryos transferred or frozen for IVF.
Mollie is incredible. I didn’t know how to begin processing this grief. I felt overwhelmed and just so sad. It was very difficult. I submitted on online “contact” form through their website and within 30min, I had a message from Mollie saying she was free to call. She felt deeply and was sad with me when I told her of our loss. She validated that God has a divine plan for this child, and then helped us as described above and so much more. She holds a grief support group for parents. We have visited our baby’s resting place several times and have seen Mollie there. I believe the Verdier’s have helped in the hundreds of families. I was fortunate that Mollie visited our parish to speak just two weeks prior to our learning of our miscarriage and a close friend encouraged me to reach out to Morgan’s Place when we did miscarry. Mollie is truly called to this ministry. Her and her family’s story is incredible. I just can’t say enough good things about the Verdier’s and Morgan’s Place.
My prayers are with you, Emily, Kate, and Casey as well! I enjoy your podcasts very much. They are delightful, insightful, full of good learnings and I just enjoy all the good-natured banter. I share them with my husband and friends, and I share Emily’s writings, too!. God’s blessings to you all!!!
One aspect of IVF that I've reflected on quite a bit as I was going through my own multiple miscarriages is the way in which it sanitizes and industrializes miscarriage. With the children I lost, many of them likely would have been discarded or died in the IVF process for not being fit enough for transfer, and some people would celebrate that as sparing me having to experience the miscarriages and losing time to going through that process before trying to conceive again. That's all I could think about when IVF and IUI were offered me before we figured out what was causing my miscarriages, that it wouldn't stop the loss of embryos, only speed me through that loss to get to a healthy child faster. Because the healthy child is the wanted child, and not the ones that are going to die anyways. But that thought process does such a disservice to the humanity of the unborn by considering the time we carried them and the experience of losing them as not worthwhile, or as something to be avoided (not to mention encouraging an ableist perspective of children, which is something we also see in the pro-choice movement). I think Emily's point about the rights of the child really hits this home. They have a right to their mother's love, and grief, just like her healthy children. And it's a beautiful opportunity to be a mother, to mother your children in the midst of losing them, as hard as it is to go through.
I want to echo Emily's endorsement of NaPro technology. I've had 7 miscarriages, but at the same time I've managed to successfully carry two children to term. The issue I have is clearly somewhere in the early conception and survival of our children. My OBGYN practice is fortunately a pro-life practice with largely Catholic physicians, and my GYN is NaPro certified, and like Emily I was coming at this already well formed on the issues of IVF and some knowledge of the benefits of NaPro technology. But nonetheless I did all the tests with multiple specialists to try and figure out why we kept losing our babies and everything kept coming back negative: I was by all measures a completely healthy woman in her early thirties with just "unexplained recurrent miscarriage" and was recommended IUI and IVF by different specialists. Fortunately my GYN did not give up though and eventually through blood testing we discovered I had a particularly severe luteal phase defect which we treated with tamoxifen, which is a "sister" drug to chlomid that boosts the luteal phase without increasing the chance of having multiples, and that in turn gets your body to naturally increase hormone production to support a pregnancy. I still had another miscarriage after starting the routine, but then came my rainbow baby. And like Emily said, even before that I noticed a significant improvement in my general health in other ways on the treatment because at a minimum it was just bringing my hormones back to normal. I'm really big on sharing my story because I have been consistently amazed how little information on this is out there, including how little info there is on just how to get through miscarriage (that's a ministry I think the Church could easily get into, and I'm currently noodling trying to get started in my diocese, especially since what NaPro I do is shared during pre-Cana is generally ABYSMAL) and what to expect, and I'm really grateful for you guys having the conversation!
Gabriela-Thank you for sharing the pain and joy of your 9 children. May your 7 in Heaven pray for us all! You are so right. There is such an opportunity and need for education and real apostolates and ministries surrounding infertility, miscarriages, morally good ways to pursue babies, etc…
Thank you all for modeling how to have a thoughtful, sensitive conversation about very difficult and personal topics while still being faithful to the Church. In particular, Emily, thank you for sharing your story; I’ve read what you’ve written on some of these topics before, but it’s a little different hearing you talk about them.
My sister-in-law and brother-in-law have not been able to have biological children and have adopted two beautiful girls. My sister-in-law is a convert to Catholicism; her family are non-practicing Methodists, very occasionally going to church on Christmas or Easter. Her family had a very hard time with their pursuing adoption and has not been very supportive. They wanted to know why they didn’t want to have “their own” children and why they didn’t want to try IVF. I think that has been very painful for her, as they have very different fundamental beliefs about these issues.
Thank you for this. A few years ago, there were very few resources about the morality of IVF. Now, Emily (thanks, for writing!) on Substack has written about IVF extensively and Word on Fire has also published a great review on IVF. This topic needs to be addressed widely. IVF is affecting more and more families. I’m glad you are discussing this. It’s a tough and personal topic and so important because it is about the sanctity of human life. How are the parents treated and how are the babies treated during the process? Embryo grading. Which embryos are graded as worthy of immediate transfer? Which embryos are graded as worthy of freezing for trying to transfer later? And in cases, embryos discarded. What about embryo storage? Parents pay this fee. Some parents say they aren’t up for another child or financially decide not to pay the fee and those embryos are discarded. A big topic. Thank you for your courage. And thank you for addressing the mystery of God’s providence in all of this.
Follow up questions: Morality of frozen IVF embryo adoption? Morality of embryo freezing to be transferred at an undefined later time? How to educate more Catholics about this?
For children conceived in IVF. They can be conceived on one date, frozen, and then years later be transferred for implantation (pregnancy). How would a child handle knowing they were conceived many years before they were given the opportunity to grow in their mother’s or another woman’s womb (in case of surrogacy)? What does the Church teach about IVF embryo treatment after the embryos have been created? Should Catholics adopt IVF embryos?
Thank you, again, Cassandra. I was able to read this section and did find it helpful. I’ve been confused because within our family of parishes, I’ve heard of families adopting IVF embryos (frozen, cryopreserved) and this being generally accepted. This section helped explain that yes, even embryo adoption (although it seems this would be good), is actually still illicit. There are so many downstream considerations to the respect for human life with IVF. It seems that there needs to be discussions on IVF within parishes. Many do not know what IVF entails and (myself included - this article is helpful in outlining the nuances involved and subsequent ethics) the numerous considerations for human life that need to be made if someone is to cooperate with the IVF process in any way. I included the part of section 19 below that touches on embryo adoption.
“The proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which make artificial heterologous procreation illicit as well as any form of surrogate motherhood; [38] this practice would also lead to other problems of a medical, psychological and legal nature.
It has also been proposed, solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are otherwise condemned to destruction, that there could be a form of “prenatal adoption”. This proposal, praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life, presents however various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above.
All things considered, it needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved. Therefore John Paul II made an “appeal to the conscience of the world’s scientific authorities and in particular to doctors, that the production of human embryos be halted, taking into account that there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons”.”
I have some of these same questions. I have an acquaintance from our parish who has adopted four frozen embryos, on two occasions, which has resulted in one living child for her and her husband. This little girl was frozen as an embryo for 19 years. This woman’s journey has been very painful, but I wonder how she would even begin to explain to explain to her daughter at some point how she was created, frozen for so long, and then adopted.
On the one hand, it seems more respectful of the dignity of the person for the frozen embryos to be adopted and then given the possibility of being born; but on the other hand, it is still violating other rights the child has. It’s all very complicated. I would love to hear more from the Church about how to think about this part of fertility treatments; IVF is very clear to me, but this seems more difficult.
I recently (6 weeks ago) had twin boys. Through the process several nurses asked me if my twins were “natural or IVF”. When I said natural they always responded with relief and said “natural twins tend to be much healthier than IVF twins.” I don’t know if there are studies to back that up, but I found it intriguing.
The podcast Biohacked is worth listening to. Not from any sort of religious standpoint but the host delves into the reproductive industry. It was incredibly eye-opening and I think if more people knew about its inner workings and lack of regulations they would think twice before promoting it or taking part.
Well, Casey wanted some hate, so I’ll point out his error 😂 In Acts, the eunuch is not asking Phillip about the eunuch passage in Isaiah rather the passage about the lamb being led to slaughter.
Great episode otherwise!
My husband and I miscarried for the first time this past August. I was only 3 weeks along (far enough along to have a positive pregnancy test). I took further tests to make sure that the positive line was darkening, but instead it grew fainter. I had bloodwork done to confirm we had lost this child. Two and a half weeks later, I passed the pregnancy. The doctor’s office referred to it as a “chemical pregnancy,” but there was nothing just chemical about it. This was our baby. Fortunately, in our area, Morgan’s Place Cemetery helps families suffering loss of the unborn (miscarriage, stillbirth, and even abortion). Mollie Verdier and her husband Nathan who run Morgan’s Place are both, in my opinion, living saints. They are both Catholic and work to supply our local parishes with miscarriage kits free of charge and Mollie works closely with each family to help them grieve and prepare for burial if they wish, obtain paperwork for a fetal death certificate if they wish, are gifted small wooden urns made by an Abbey for burial of their baby, gifted a handmade memory blanket for their baby, given a donated and custom designed grave marker for their baby, Mollie organizes the burial with your local priest or deacon, and if you bury at Morgan’s Place, your burial plot and fees are 100% free of charge. Not to mention the Verdier’s have donated part of their 200 year-old family farm to establish this cemetery. My husband was also able to meet Nathan at the cemetery and my husband dug our baby’s spot for burial and placed our child’s grave marker with Mollie’s husband Nathan, too. It’s completely amazing and healing the work that Morgan’s Place (the Verdier’s) do. I had reached out to Morgan’s Place (Mollie) initially because I was not processing our miscarriage well and wanted to see if I could order a memory plaque for our child. I had not passed our pregnancy yet and Mollie asked if I was interested in burial? I thought I wouldn’t be eligible for a burial because of how early we were. She encouraged me to pick up a miscarriage kit from my local parish and I stayed home during the duration of my pregnancy’s passing and collected all I could for burial. When collecting in the middle of the night even, I initially thought this is so tedious. But then a moment of grace washed over me, and I thought, these are the late night feedings and diaper changes I get to do for this baby. Collecting everything I could was completely worth it. When I had gone through this initial grieving process of our child - preparing for and having our baby’s burial - (I am still grieving, I think this will be a grief that remains until I’m reunited one day with our little saint. I will always miss our child.), I was told by a relative going through IVF at the time that if they had grieved their losses in IVF like I grieved our loss, they would not be able to function. This saddened me so much. How we were able to grieve and give our baby a final resting place at Morgan’s Place Cemetery was so honorable and loving to our child and healing for our family. If only every unborn child could be given a final resting place, our society would have a stunning visual of the little saints who are populating heaven and hopefully have a deeper respect and love for the unborn.
Thank you for your valuable comment-all of the comments in this conversation are beautiful and valuable-especially the mention of Morgan’s Place Cemetery, of which I was unaware. May the Blessed Mother draw especially close to you and all who have lost a child, whether before or after birth.
Thank you so much. Mother Mary has been such a mother to us throughout this process (her intercession means so much to me, so thank you especially for asking for her intercession). I ask for Momma Mary’s intercession for my two children here on earth, for her to hold our little baby until I can hold him or her once again in heaven, and to intercede for the little one who is on the way (currently 15 weeks). I am so appreciative to your wife (I’m assuming this is Chris - Emily’s husband) for her courage to write about IVF last year and to all of you for discussing this difficult topic and with such compassion. Emily was the first Catholic writer I saw who addressed this topic.
IVF tugs at my heart so much because our little one that we lost would have been only days older (maybe a week at most) than embryos transferred or frozen for IVF.
Mollie is incredible. I didn’t know how to begin processing this grief. I felt overwhelmed and just so sad. It was very difficult. I submitted on online “contact” form through their website and within 30min, I had a message from Mollie saying she was free to call. She felt deeply and was sad with me when I told her of our loss. She validated that God has a divine plan for this child, and then helped us as described above and so much more. She holds a grief support group for parents. We have visited our baby’s resting place several times and have seen Mollie there. I believe the Verdier’s have helped in the hundreds of families. I was fortunate that Mollie visited our parish to speak just two weeks prior to our learning of our miscarriage and a close friend encouraged me to reach out to Morgan’s Place when we did miscarry. Mollie is truly called to this ministry. Her and her family’s story is incredible. I just can’t say enough good things about the Verdier’s and Morgan’s Place.
My prayers are with you, Emily, Kate, and Casey as well! I enjoy your podcasts very much. They are delightful, insightful, full of good learnings and I just enjoy all the good-natured banter. I share them with my husband and friends, and I share Emily’s writings, too!. God’s blessings to you all!!!
Thank you for sharing your story. So beautiful and meaningful!! I just said a Hail Mary for you and your husband. ♥♥♥ to you...
Thank you so much for your prayers, Silvia. They mean so much to me. May Mother Mary intercede for you and yours as well 🙏🏻
One aspect of IVF that I've reflected on quite a bit as I was going through my own multiple miscarriages is the way in which it sanitizes and industrializes miscarriage. With the children I lost, many of them likely would have been discarded or died in the IVF process for not being fit enough for transfer, and some people would celebrate that as sparing me having to experience the miscarriages and losing time to going through that process before trying to conceive again. That's all I could think about when IVF and IUI were offered me before we figured out what was causing my miscarriages, that it wouldn't stop the loss of embryos, only speed me through that loss to get to a healthy child faster. Because the healthy child is the wanted child, and not the ones that are going to die anyways. But that thought process does such a disservice to the humanity of the unborn by considering the time we carried them and the experience of losing them as not worthwhile, or as something to be avoided (not to mention encouraging an ableist perspective of children, which is something we also see in the pro-choice movement). I think Emily's point about the rights of the child really hits this home. They have a right to their mother's love, and grief, just like her healthy children. And it's a beautiful opportunity to be a mother, to mother your children in the midst of losing them, as hard as it is to go through.
I want to echo Emily's endorsement of NaPro technology. I've had 7 miscarriages, but at the same time I've managed to successfully carry two children to term. The issue I have is clearly somewhere in the early conception and survival of our children. My OBGYN practice is fortunately a pro-life practice with largely Catholic physicians, and my GYN is NaPro certified, and like Emily I was coming at this already well formed on the issues of IVF and some knowledge of the benefits of NaPro technology. But nonetheless I did all the tests with multiple specialists to try and figure out why we kept losing our babies and everything kept coming back negative: I was by all measures a completely healthy woman in her early thirties with just "unexplained recurrent miscarriage" and was recommended IUI and IVF by different specialists. Fortunately my GYN did not give up though and eventually through blood testing we discovered I had a particularly severe luteal phase defect which we treated with tamoxifen, which is a "sister" drug to chlomid that boosts the luteal phase without increasing the chance of having multiples, and that in turn gets your body to naturally increase hormone production to support a pregnancy. I still had another miscarriage after starting the routine, but then came my rainbow baby. And like Emily said, even before that I noticed a significant improvement in my general health in other ways on the treatment because at a minimum it was just bringing my hormones back to normal. I'm really big on sharing my story because I have been consistently amazed how little information on this is out there, including how little info there is on just how to get through miscarriage (that's a ministry I think the Church could easily get into, and I'm currently noodling trying to get started in my diocese, especially since what NaPro I do is shared during pre-Cana is generally ABYSMAL) and what to expect, and I'm really grateful for you guys having the conversation!
Gabriela-Thank you for sharing the pain and joy of your 9 children. May your 7 in Heaven pray for us all! You are so right. There is such an opportunity and need for education and real apostolates and ministries surrounding infertility, miscarriages, morally good ways to pursue babies, etc…
Whoops—thanks for catching this!
Thank you all for modeling how to have a thoughtful, sensitive conversation about very difficult and personal topics while still being faithful to the Church. In particular, Emily, thank you for sharing your story; I’ve read what you’ve written on some of these topics before, but it’s a little different hearing you talk about them.
My sister-in-law and brother-in-law have not been able to have biological children and have adopted two beautiful girls. My sister-in-law is a convert to Catholicism; her family are non-practicing Methodists, very occasionally going to church on Christmas or Easter. Her family had a very hard time with their pursuing adoption and has not been very supportive. They wanted to know why they didn’t want to have “their own” children and why they didn’t want to try IVF. I think that has been very painful for her, as they have very different fundamental beliefs about these issues.
Thank you Rebecca. Blessings on your In-laws and their generosity, including the pain of being misunderstood.
Thank you for this. A few years ago, there were very few resources about the morality of IVF. Now, Emily (thanks, for writing!) on Substack has written about IVF extensively and Word on Fire has also published a great review on IVF. This topic needs to be addressed widely. IVF is affecting more and more families. I’m glad you are discussing this. It’s a tough and personal topic and so important because it is about the sanctity of human life. How are the parents treated and how are the babies treated during the process? Embryo grading. Which embryos are graded as worthy of immediate transfer? Which embryos are graded as worthy of freezing for trying to transfer later? And in cases, embryos discarded. What about embryo storage? Parents pay this fee. Some parents say they aren’t up for another child or financially decide not to pay the fee and those embryos are discarded. A big topic. Thank you for your courage. And thank you for addressing the mystery of God’s providence in all of this.
Follow up questions: Morality of frozen IVF embryo adoption? Morality of embryo freezing to be transferred at an undefined later time? How to educate more Catholics about this?
For children conceived in IVF. They can be conceived on one date, frozen, and then years later be transferred for implantation (pregnancy). How would a child handle knowing they were conceived many years before they were given the opportunity to grow in their mother’s or another woman’s womb (in case of surrogacy)? What does the Church teach about IVF embryo treatment after the embryos have been created? Should Catholics adopt IVF embryos?
The Church addresses embryo transfer in Dignitatis Personae, specifically #19, if that’s helpful!
Thank you, again, Cassandra. I was able to read this section and did find it helpful. I’ve been confused because within our family of parishes, I’ve heard of families adopting IVF embryos (frozen, cryopreserved) and this being generally accepted. This section helped explain that yes, even embryo adoption (although it seems this would be good), is actually still illicit. There are so many downstream considerations to the respect for human life with IVF. It seems that there needs to be discussions on IVF within parishes. Many do not know what IVF entails and (myself included - this article is helpful in outlining the nuances involved and subsequent ethics) the numerous considerations for human life that need to be made if someone is to cooperate with the IVF process in any way. I included the part of section 19 below that touches on embryo adoption.
“The proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which make artificial heterologous procreation illicit as well as any form of surrogate motherhood; [38] this practice would also lead to other problems of a medical, psychological and legal nature.
It has also been proposed, solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are otherwise condemned to destruction, that there could be a form of “prenatal adoption”. This proposal, praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life, presents however various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above.
All things considered, it needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved. Therefore John Paul II made an “appeal to the conscience of the world’s scientific authorities and in particular to doctors, that the production of human embryos be halted, taking into account that there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons”.”
That is very helpful, thanks!
I will look this up! Thank you!
I have some of these same questions. I have an acquaintance from our parish who has adopted four frozen embryos, on two occasions, which has resulted in one living child for her and her husband. This little girl was frozen as an embryo for 19 years. This woman’s journey has been very painful, but I wonder how she would even begin to explain to explain to her daughter at some point how she was created, frozen for so long, and then adopted.
On the one hand, it seems more respectful of the dignity of the person for the frozen embryos to be adopted and then given the possibility of being born; but on the other hand, it is still violating other rights the child has. It’s all very complicated. I would love to hear more from the Church about how to think about this part of fertility treatments; IVF is very clear to me, but this seems more difficult.
I recently (6 weeks ago) had twin boys. Through the process several nurses asked me if my twins were “natural or IVF”. When I said natural they always responded with relief and said “natural twins tend to be much healthier than IVF twins.” I don’t know if there are studies to back that up, but I found it intriguing.
The podcast Biohacked is worth listening to. Not from any sort of religious standpoint but the host delves into the reproductive industry. It was incredibly eye-opening and I think if more people knew about its inner workings and lack of regulations they would think twice before promoting it or taking part.