VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — An article by Vatican News, the official news outlet of the Holy See run by the Dicastery for Communication, appeared to normalize in vitro fertilization (IVF), only criticizing the increased involvement of AI in the immoral practice but not criticizing IVF itself.
In the July 21 article written by Davide Dionisi entitled “Assisted Reproduction: When AI Is Used Against Humans,” citing Dr. Laura Palazzani, an Italian bioethicist and member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, discussed the potential dangers that “Aura,” the first fully automated IVF laboratory powered by AI and launched earlier this month by Ivi Rma Global, poses to the reproductive process.
However, the story not only makes no explicit mention of the Church’s condemnation of IVF and also normalizes it by discussing the dangers AI poses to the wicked practice, as if it were an option for the faithful.
“The bioethical shift lies in the transition from technology as a tool to technology as an operational, physical, and decision-making agent,” Palazzani told Vatican News. “Human reproduction thus risks being interpreted as a sequence of procedures to be optimized. But procreation involves the suffering caused by infertility, the woman’s body, the couple’s relationship, parental responsibility, the condition of the embryo, and the well-being of the future child.”
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“Technology can support the clinical process, but it cannot replace the relationship, discernment, and responsibility of the physician. Information, counseling, and human accompaniment therefore remain indispensable at every stage,” she added.
Here, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life presents IVF as if it were a completely normal, morally neutral process, showing concern only about how AI might impact the process.
However, the Catholic Church has consistently taught, based on the natural law, that IVF is gravely immoral because it separates the sexual act from procreation and violates the right of the child to be born of a conjugal union.
Regardless of the involvement of AI, the process entails the creation of scores of “excess” embryonic humans only to be killed, and human lives being treated like commodities to be bartered over. It has been estimated that more than a million embryos are frozen in storage in the United States after IVF, and that as many as 93 percent of all embryos created through IVF are eventually destroyed. A 2019 NBC News profile of Florida IVF practitioner Craig Sweet acknowledged that his practice has discarded or abandoned approximately a third of the embryos whom it places in cold storage.
Later in the story, Palazzani stresses the ethical concerns of entrusting reproductive decisions to an algorithm rather than a human physician, while again omitting any mention of the moral and ethical problems of IVF itself.
“We need to clarify which decisions are entrusted to the algorithm, what its degree of autonomy is, and what human oversight remains effective,” Palazzani points out, emphasizing that “the primary concerns relate to the technology’s reliability in terms of safety and efficacy, the quality of the data used for training, potential biases that reduce reliability or may disadvantage certain patient groups, and the explainability of the criteria adopted to ensure the algorithm is understandable and traceable.”
In the final sentence of the article, Palazzani did note that bioethical innovation should remain “at the service of the person — especially the most vulnerable,” possibly referring to the unborn and the elderly and sick who are often the victims of euthanasia and assisted suicide. However, she stopped short of declaring the Church’s teaching on IVF.
The Pontifical Academy for Life is notably led by the controversial Archbishop Renzo Pegoraro, who has made several statements that contradict perennial Catholic teaching.
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In a 2022 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Pegoraro addressed the question of contraception, stating that while the norm against it “signals values to be preserved in married life,” other values might justify exceptions. He cited as an example situations involving “a conflict between the need to avoid pregnancy for medical reasons and the preservation of the couple’s sexual life.”
These remarks diverge from magisterial teaching, including the 1988 affirmation by Pope John Paul II that the prohibition of contraception belongs to the permanent patrimony of the Church’s moral doctrine.
Pegoraro declined to respond to inquiries concerning those earlier statements to LifeSiteNews in June 2025.