The moral teaching of the Church is not random.

I teach this to my senior students at an all-boys Catholic high school, explaining why the Church holds certain things to be true.

In the last third of the course, we cover in-vitro fertilization (IVF). This will be my sixth year teaching this curriculum, and each year the questions, doubts and disapprovals of the Church’s teaching on this topic have grown. The young men find it challenging to understand how it could be a bad thing to help people have children. Even those students who come from very faithful families either do not know that the Church teaches it is wrong or they do not know why it is wrong.

I have also had a growing number of students who were conceived through IVF or have family or friends who were. Inevitably, the question arises: Does their life have less value because they were conceived this way?

The questions that revolve around this issue are almost always springing from deep emotions. I also see this when working with couples and adults at my parish. There have been several occasions where IVF has been brought up as a positive thing, with the line of thinking that it is helping people have children who would never be able to have them.

That student in my classroom or parishioner at an event misunderstands why IVF is wrong.

Of course, every human life has inestimable value. Of course, those who were conceived through IVF are equal to all other children who are conceived naturally.

As the U.S. bishops stated this week, “Every human person is a precious gift with infinite dignity and worth … People born as a result of IVF have no less dignity than anyone else. It is our moral responsibility to uphold the dignity of their brothers and sisters who are never given the chance to be born.”

As Catholics, we must look at the details of what IVF actually does.

As the USCCB also explained this week: “The IVF industry treats human beings like products and freezes or kills millions of children who are not selected for transfer to a womb or do not survive.”

The massive destruction of embryos for the sake of a few embryos who might have a chance to live is the critical discussion point.

EWTN News reported last year that 93% of embryos who are conceived through IVF are discarded or frozen forever. While explaining the full details of the IVF process has occasionally convinced someone that it is morally wrong, such instances are rare.

The greatest success I’ve had — though admittedly not in large numbers — has come from placing Jesus at the center of the conversation, explaining that Jesus founded the Church and gave Peter, and the popes who succeeded him, the authority to teach in his name. This means that when the Church speaks definitively on moral issues, it is Jesus himself who is speaking.

People must also know that there are Church-approved alternatives to IVF.

In my opinion, IVF is one of the most urgent moral issues of our time that must be understood in light of Church teaching. As with all moral teachings, we are invited to see Jesus as the one calling us to trust in him — especially when those around us struggle to discern right from wrong. Trusting in him means trusting the Church — and recognizing how that trust leads to true human flourishing and a deeper respect for the dignity of all.