In reviewing the news yesterday I learned of a teacher in Indiana who had been fired for utilizing IVF in order to realize her and her husband's dream of having children. Click on this link to see an article about it: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/04/catholic-school-teacher-claims-she-was-fired-for-using-ivf/1#.T5q7gKumiSo. This case is quite involved and while I want to be on one side i find myself understanding the other.
Lets begin. In the eyes of the Jewish faith we are commanded to procreate. One of the earliest commands given to humans was פרו ורב, be fruitful and multiply. This is found in the 28th verse of the entire Torah. Our tradition has understood this strange repeating of the same concept to be an allusion to the view that Judaism sees sex for both procreation and for pleasure to be valid and to be blessings from God. The issue for me is that this verse says:
וַיְבָרֶךְ אֹתָם, אֱלֹהִים, וַיֹּאמֶר לָהֶם אֱלֹהִים פְּרוּ וּרְבוּ וּמִלְאוּ אֶת-הָאָרֶץ
Or in the english language: And God blessed them and said to them "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. That blessing is lacking in far too many people today. 1 in 8 couples are plagued, not blessed and they feel a deep lacking in them that cannot be filled in the same ways that it is filled for the other 7/8 of the population. To have your work and your religion then turn around and tell you that you are unwelcome, and that the various modes of realizing that blessing are to be forbidden to you seems to be a great betrayal. I want to be careful here because I am not a Catholic and I am not intending this to be seen in any way as bashing the Church. I am calling on them to revisit this issue and to try to find a way to at least support those going through this. I am not asking that they give their blessing, I am asking that they perhaps find new and innovative ways to deal with it.I asked myself the other day if I would be in favor of firing a teacher at a Jewish Day School who did not keep kosher, and the answer was no. However, I could see that being a valid decision of another leader, just not my own. The problem is that the two are not comparable to one another. A couple trying to attain the blessing of parenthood and a Jewish person eating at McDonalds are not comparable in the magnitude of what they convey and what they mean. You see to the Jewish people keeping kosher is central to our identity and our tradition, and yet the request that leaders adhere to the dietary laws is not so intrusive on the lives of the leaders. But the opposite is partially the case in the IVF conundrum in the Catholic Church. The Church's view on questions of life and when it begins and ends is central to who they are today. But asking that all of their leaders and teachers adhere to every one of their positions in all cases is as intrusive as it can get. I pray that Emily Herx and her husband are able to realize their blessing of parenthood soon and with as little emotional trauma as possible. I pray that they can understand that this is not a simple decision made by the school in which Emily taught. But I also pray that the Church can soon revisit this issue and see that the tradition which is the foundation on which their tradition was built, has made it a point to try to being this blessing into fruition for as many of our people as possible and try to find a way through which they can help bring that blessing to their people as well.
