Denver Catholic

23 DENVER CATHOLIC | APRIL 18-24, 2015 I 'm not sure why, but I don't really like the color yellow. It's a perfectly fi ne color as colors go, just not my favorite. Yet, as I made my way through the grocery store last month, I was captivated by the beau- tiful bouquets of yellow tulips, daisies and sunfl owers. The color and vibrancy burst forth, screaming to me: spring is here, spring is here! But as I stood in the fl ower aisle, the faith and promise of another spring was overshadowed by my feelings of desolation and shame. I was empty, depleted, with my arms wrapped tightly around a bleakness I couldn't shake. Though I could see the yellow hope in spring, the new life bursting around me, I couldn't feel it. Was my spiritual dryness going to end? Did I have the conviction and faith my friends seemed to have with a new season upon us? I suspect most people struggling with an addiction have faced those feelings at one time or another. For years, actually decades, I never thought of my eating disorder as an addiction. Actually, it wasn't until recently that I thought of my years of bulimia and binge eating as a sin. I'm a "good Catholic"—I attend Mass regularly, serve my church and com- munity, am in a small faith-shar- ing commu- nity, seek spiritual guidance, try to be a loving and wise parent, and a devoted wife. But behind closed doors, in the secrecy of my darkest hours, I run to food as my comforter and healer. After- wards, I put on a mask that announces to all that I am happy, all is well, and I am OK. But with disgrace and guilt running through me, I enter back into the world trying the best I can to keep my head above water. Once again, I'm back in my loneliness and desolation. For me, it was easy to separate my addiction with the rest of my life. Consumed with humiliation, I did every- thing I could to hide this side of me. It never occurred to me that I was living a life Christ wouldn't desire for me. It may start out harmless enough, but soon I became entrapped with deceit as my guide. I convinced myself that the life I was living was good enough for God. I was doing all the "right" things. In some strange way, I suppose I thought that what I was hiding from everyone else, I was also hiding from God. My sin. I now realize that bringing only part of me, the "good" part of me to the altar, to Eucharist, to reconciliation, isn't good enough. I need to bring everything, all of my faults, my failures, my human- ness, my sin, to Him who is the greatest of healers. It's taken a long time for me to reach this awareness, and I'm not perfect. I struggle regularly, sometimes daily, sometimes monthly. When I long for the old blanket I now recognize as sin, I run to the Lord. Well, let's be honest, some- times it's more like a stroll. I'm blessed with a support system that encourages me and loves me, warts and all. I've developed a desire, actually a longing, to spend time with Him in adoration and attend daily Mass when I can. It is only through Him that we are restored and made new. It is only through Him that our sin can be redeemed. The hardest part is coming clean with myself. I'm not sure how long I stood in the fl ower aisle. Contemplation comes to me at the strangest time, even when world is bustling about. Winter has come and gone, Lent is complete and we have rejoiced in our holiest of days, Easter. It's time to embrace this beautiful season; it's time for me to embrace the yellow. I decide on the tulips. As I reached for the bouquet, I added in sunfl owers. They look great in my home. Sue Berscheid is a wife, mother, special education professional and catechist at Risen Christ Parish. She is passionate about supporting teens as they navigate this often-challenging time in their lives. Guest Column SUE BERSCHEID How I convinced myself addiction wasn't sin A n ethical Rubicon was crossed when the fi rst in vitro fertiliza- tion (IVF)-conceived baby came into the world in 1978. With human reproduction no longer limited to the embrace of a man and a woman, people felt empowered to take their own sperm and eggs, or those of others, and create their much desired children bit-by-cel- lular-bit. As they mixed and matched these cells, they soon were drawn into other twists and turns of the advanc- ing technology, including screening the genes of their test-tube oŸ spring and eugenically weeding out any undesired embryonic children by freezing them in liquid nitrogen or simply discarding them as laboratory refuse. Recent developments have exac- erbated this situation by oŸ ering additional options and choices for generating children, recasting human embryos as modular constructs to be assembled through cloning or through the creation of three-parent embryos. While cloning involves swapping out the nucleus of a woman's egg with a replacement nucleus to create an embryo, three-parent embryos are made by swapping out additional cellular parts known as mitochon- dria through the recombination of eggs from two diŸ erent women. Even more baroque approaches to making three-parent embryos rely on destroy- ing one embryo (instead of an egg) and cannibalizing its parts so as to build another embryo by nuclear transfer. We risk trivializing our human pro- creative faculties and diminishing our oŸ spring by sanctioning these kinds of "eggs-as-Lego-pieces" or "embryos-as- Lego-pieces" approaches. Ultimately there is a steep price to be paid for the ever-expanding project of upending our own beginnings and rupturing the ori- gins of our children. Part of that price includes the signif- icant health problems that have come to light in children born from IVF and other assisted reproduction techniques. Researchers have found an overall doubling in the risk of birth defects for children born by these technologies when compared with rates for children conceived in the normal fashion. For retinoblastoma, a childhood eye cancer, a six-fold elevated risk has been reported. Assisted reproduction techniques are also associated with heightened risks for a number of rare and serious genetic disorders, including Beck- with-Wiedmann syndrome, Angelman's syndrome, and various developmental disorders like atrial septal and ventricular septal defects of the heart, cleft lip with or without cleft palate, esophageal atresia and anorectal atresia. Considering the various harsh and unnatural steps involved in moving human reproduction from the marital embrace into the petri dish, it should perhaps come as little surprise that ele- vated rates of birth defects have been observed, even when certain genetic defects may have been previously screened out. As children born by assisted repro- ductive techniques become adults, they are starting to be tracked and studied for various psychiatric issues as well. A growing number of young adults are vocalizing their strong personal con- cerns about the way they were brought into the world through techniques like anonymous sperm donations, because they fi nd themselves feeling psycho- logically adrift and deprived of any connection to their biological father. It should be obvious how any approach that weakens or casts into question the integral connection between parents and their oŸ spring will raise grave ethical concerns. Whether it be three-parent embryos, anonymous sperm donations, or surrogacy, we need to protect children from the harmful psychological stressors that arise when they are subjected to uncertainties about their own origins. As one fertil- ity specialist bluntly commented, "As a nation, we need to get a conscience about what we are doing here. Yes, it's nice when an infertile couple is able to build a family, but what about the chil- dren? Shouldn't their needs be in the mix from the very beginning too? I think it is ridiculous that a donor-conceived child would need to 'research' to fi nd out their genetic origins. Give me a break. What if you had to do that? Is it fair?" Beyond these immediate concerns about the wellbeing and health of our progeny, we face further serious con- cerns about our human future in the face of these burgeoning technologies. As procreation becomes reduced to just another commercial transaction, and our children become projects to be assem- bled piecemeal in the pursuit of parental desires, we invariably set the stage to cross another signifi cant ethical line. That bright ethical line involves the creation of humans that have heritable genetic modifi cations (changes that are passed on to future generations). When the fi rst three-parent baby is born, which will likely take place in the next year or two, we will have stepped right into the middle of that hubris-fi lled brave new world of manipulating the genetic traits of future children. We will have transitioned to a paradigm where biomedical experimentation on future generations is seen as acceptable and justifi able. Now is the time to ponder carefully the implications of our rushed reproductive choices, and to stand fi rm against the preventable injustices that inexorably fl ow from assisted reproduc- tive technologies. Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D., serves as director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, www.ncbcenter.org. Making Sense of Bioethics FATHER TADEUSZ PACHOLCZYK, PH.D. Pondering implications of three-parent embryos

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