Being pro-life through infertility

Being Catholic means being pro-life, which often means pro-life rallies, rosaries and other events surrounded by large Catholic families with seemingly dozens of children. For those struggling with infertility, it can be hard to find one’s place within a movement teeming with reminders of what you can’t have. Where do people who can’t have children fit in a movement fighting for more babies?

There are two obvious answers that are right for many who seek to further the pro-life agenda even through seasons of infertility: adoption and foster care. Adoption provides a loving home for babies whose mothers might not have chosen life for them otherwise. Foster care helps children who may have never known love or stability to find a place to call home. Although these are both excellent pro-life options that all couples should be open to, sometimes neither is right for a particular family. For some couples, private adoption can be prohibitively expensive. Couples who must travel or move frequently for work or have other complicating factors in their lives may not be able to foster children in their home. 

A lesser thought-of possibility is the idea that having no children is pro-life. Enduring the looks of fellow parishioners who hear you’ve been married “for how long?” without having children can be stressful. Hearing your friends complain about motherhood can be heartbreaking. The questions from non-practicing Catholic friends and relatives are predictable, but near-total strangers often suggest immoral means of having children, such as IVF and surrogacy. Well-meaning acquaintances may suggest options which the Catholic Church has not declared an official stance on, like embryonic adoption. But choosing to stay faithful to Church teaching, faithful to your husband and faithful to your body is pro-life, even if it means not having children at all. By choosing not to pursue anti-life options, you're standing up for life. By not commodifying children, you're protecting a culture of life and your options of showing it are limitless. 

St. Edith Stein wrote, “The woman's soul is fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold.” Your heart is big enough to be a shelter for others. Maybe you already shelter your nieces, nephews and godchildren. You may even harbor your students, clients, guests or patients. But your heart is even bigger than that. You have more room for others, which brings me to my next point: service.

While there are some obvious ways that you can be in service of life, like volunteering at a pregnancy center, praying outside abortion clinics or babysitting for low-income mothers, that can be too much for some women to handle while grieving infertility. But there are hidden ways to serve pro-life organizations and ways to serve that indirectly support life. If you are a gifted organizer or administrator, you may find a role that helps on the administrative side of a pro-life apostolate. Although it may seem pedestrian, many organizations need help with mundane tasks, like stuffing envelopes. Within other structures that support a culture of life, there are also other ways to help, such as court appointed special advocates in the foster care system or child mentoring programs. There are many ways to both directly and indirectly serve pro-life causes and culture-of-life apostolates who desperately need the help. 

Alternatively, there are organizations that indirectly serve life by practicing the corporal works of mercy. If you survey most ministries or apostolates in the Church, you’ll see that the average age of the volunteers is seventy. Soup kitchens are filled with retirees because families with young children can’t always dedicate time to helping those outside of their immediate circle. But infertile couples might have the time and energy to help in ways parents wish they could. You can bring hope for the future of organizations who are used to the grey-haired set. You could bring your vigor to apostolates that sorely need you. You can use your spiritual motherhood to help those who need help in basic ways, which also promotes a culture of life. 

Your heart is big enough to shelter the poor, the weak and the vulnerable. Your heart is big enough to let in those who have nowhere else safe to land. Your heart is big enough to find your particular way of being pro-life, even through seasons of infertility. 

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For more ideas, read our blog post on how to get involved in the pro-life movement.