Donum Vitae (1987): “[T]he gift of human life must be actualized in marriage through the specific and exclusive acts of husband and wife, in accordance with the laws inscribed in their persons and in their union.”(Introduction, #5) “[I]t sometimes happens that a medical procedure technologically replaces the conjugal act in order to obtain a procreation which is neither its result nor its fruit. In this case the medical act is not, as it should be, at the service of conjugal union but rather appropriates to itself the procreative function and thus contradicts the dignity and the inalienable rights of the spouses and of the child to be born.” (Part II, Section B, #7)
Evangelium Vitae (1995): “The various techniques of artificial reproduction . . . actually open the door to new threats against life. Apart from the fact that they are morally unacceptable,since they separate procreation from the fully human context of the conjugal act, these techniques have a high rate of failure. . . Furthermore,the number of embryos produced is often greater than that needed . . . and these so-called ‘spare embryos’ are then destroyed or used for research which . . . reduces human life to the level of simple ‘biological material’ to be freely disposed of. Prenatal diagnosis, which presents no moral objections if carried out in order to identify the medical treatment which may be needed by the child in the womb, all too often becomes an opportunity for proposing and procuring an abortion. This is eugenic abortion, justified . . . on the basis of a mentality . . . which accepts life only under certain conditions.” (#14)
Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997): “A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. The ‘supreme gift of marriage’ is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged ‘right
to a child’ would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right ‘to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents,’ and ‘the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception [the first moment of a child’s existence].’” (#2378)
Dignitas Personae (2008): “[A]ll techniques of heterologous artificial fertilization, as well as those techniques of homologous artificial fertilization which substitute for the conjugal act, are to be excluded. On the other hand, techniques which act as an aid to the conjugal act and its fertility are permitted.” (#12)
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