One Religion, Two Paths: Making Sense of US and Belgian Catholic Hospitals' Approaches to IVF

Abstract

This article comparatively analyses the development of Catholic hospitals' approaches to In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) in Belgium and the U.S. Our comparison highlights the different cultures of Catholic healthcare in each of these countries, and their different relation to Vatican opinion on medical matters. We first discuss the roots of Catholic healthcare in both countries and the history of IVF as a viable medical therapy for infertility. Next, we turn to the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) where an infrastructure for bioethics brought patient needs and progressive thinking into conversation with Church pronouncements, creating room for IVF within the walls of a Catholic hospital. We then contrast this trajectory with the subsequent versions of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care (ERDs) in the U.S. The ERDs came to serve as a binding policy document for American clinicians and centralized medical authority in the hands of the U.S. bishops, who adhered closely to the Vatican ban. Comparing the two contexts, we demonstrate how within the Catholic Church approaches to IVF unfolded along two different paths: one of restriction through a unified conservative voice, controlled by the bishops (U.S.), and one of bio-ethical decision-making in dialogue with progressive Catholicism (Belgium).