First published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and then the Washington Post, Glenn McGee makes the provocative claim that American Catholics aren’t any more likely to follow the most recent edict from the Vatican that Catholics should not use IVF for reproduction than they are heeding admonitions against using birth control.
The statistics say that only 4% of married Catholic couples use natural family planning–so what do you think the rest of them are using? So to extrapolate, what do you think that Catholic couples having trouble with fertility are going to do? Listen to Rome and not have a child or go see a fertility specialist and use reproductive technologies? What do you think?
I think McGee has it right. The teachings of the Church are out of sync with that American Catholics are likely to do–but hey, it’s not the first time.
Summer Johnson