Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Artificial Fertilization

2 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Künstliche Befruchtung

Note: The ethical judgments on this page refer exclusively to the action — never to the person who performs it. Every person possesses inalienable dignity, regardless of what they do or have done. Cf. Note on ethical judgments (German).

Artificial fertilization (fecundatio artificialis) is the generic term for all procedures in which the union of egg and sperm cell is brought about technically, rather than occurring through the conjugal act.

Ontological classification

Procedures

  • In Vitro Fertilization (IVF): bringing together egg and sperm cell in the laboratory. → Own page
  • Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI): direct injection of a sperm cell into the egg cell.
  • Intrauterine insemination (IUI): introduction of prepared sperm cells into the uterus.

Ethical assessment

Artificial fertilization separates the begetting of a new human being from the personal act of conjugal self-giving. It makes the beginning of human life an object of technical production. Since the embryo is, from fertilization onward, a person with full ontological dignity, the logic of production violates the personalist norm: the person is not received, but produced.

Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.

Further sources:

  • Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1987): Donum Vitae. Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation.
  • Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2008): Dignitas Personae. Instruction on Certain Bioethical Questions.
  • Spaemann, Robert: Persons. The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’, transl. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 (orig. 1996).

See also

Graphansicht

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