UPDATE: For a detailed treatment of the question of intersex persons and the possibility of sex change, see Christopher Tollefsen writing at Public Discourse, “Sex Identity.”
***
A friend shared two articles about genetically XY women who conceived via IVF. She wonders what we are to make of such cases. A few thoughts:
1. The real scandal in these particular stories (here and here) is the use of IVF, which is gravely immoral.
2. I’m not aware of any particular Church teaching on how to handle cases where there is genuine question about a person’s gender. (There are a number of so-called “intersex” conditions that are not ambiguous at all.) I think it’s more or less up to the person involved and his or her physicians to do their best to discern how to proceed.
3. Other than resorting to IVF, there doesn’t appear to be anything out of order whatsoever in these two ladies’ actions. Infertility is not an impediment to marriage.
4. Obviously unjust discrimination is right out. It takes a special kind of stupid to think that a person in such a situation is somehow defective in his or her personhood by dint of an unusual set of circumstances.
5. None of this confounds the question of “gender identity” for the rest of the humans. That there exist cases where gender is difficult to discern no more demonstrates that gender is fluid than my being nearsighted demonstrates that eyesight is a cultural construct.
6. Theological speculation: It doesn’t even matter if it turns out there are a handful of genuinely “neither male nor female” human persons out there. All the angels meet that description, there’s no reason God can’t toss in a couple humans so-created, if indeed that’s what He’s doing. It in no way changes the reality that humans are (ordinarily) male or female, just like the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption don’t change reality for anyone who isn’t so blessed.
More this topic:
- Transgender Nuns, Ho-Hum. In which I tell people to quit getting their pants in a wad over this stuff. The Church has a long history of recognizing the exceptions that prove the rule.
- Transgender Children: What’s a Christian Parent to Do? We run through all the things that aren’t problems, then discuss what to do if it turns out you are in that difficult situation you feared.
- Is There a Christian Answer to the Transgender Problem? How about BIID? Review of the moral options for dealing with body-identity disorders, and a reminder that yes, the Catholic Church is for everybody.
- IVF, Torture, and Other Hot Moral Topics: Do the Ends Justify the Means? Refresher on the moral principle that sustains every viable ethical system, with links to tutorials for more detail.
Enjoy.
Photo by Beinecke Library [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
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