Monsignor Wynyard Katende has strongly criticized the increasing trend of what is termed as “test tube†babies saying it is not natural and is a sign of moral decadence.
A recent report indicated that about 100 Ugandan couples who were unable to have biological children have been helped to get biological children through test tube fertilization of a man’s sperm and a woman’s egg. The fertilized egg is then placed in the woman’s womb and the baby grows and is delivered normally.
But Monsignor Katende says technology is not good because it goes against God’s order of having children through a married man and a married woman.
While preaching about the day of the family at Rubaga Cathedral on Sunday, Katende said test tube babies are not natural and can not feel the motherly love since their first creation is carried out artificially in a test tube.
He says since many women are being paid to produce such test tube babies as surrogate mothers, this trend is increasing immorality with the important family institution being achieved against God’s order.
However, Dr. Tamale Ssali of Women’s International and Fertility Center which is offering the “test tube†fertilization says the technology is necessary to enable some people who have biological shortcomings to have heir own biological children.
Dr. Ssali says the technology helps men with weak sperms and women with abnormal uterus to have biological children. He says a married man with weak sperms which fail to fertilize his wife can be helped by collecting his sperms and his wife’s egg, fertilizing them in a test tube and injecting the fertilized egg back into the wife to become pregnant.
Dr. Ssali says some women have abnormal uterus due to natural factors while diseases like fibroids stop many women from becoming pregnant. He says such women are helped to get their own biological children by collecting their egg, fertilizing it with the husband’s sperms in a test tube, and then placed in another normal woman – a surrogate mother, to deliver a biological baby for the woman who can not get pregnant.
