My fertility is in jeopardy and I am seriously struggling with the church’s stance on IUI

I’m a 28 yr old man and I have been with my girlfriend who is the same age for about three years. We’re about to get engaged.

But during the summer of 2024, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. That summer I quickly got the affected testicle removed. Everything seemed like it was going to be fine afterwards but recently one of my tumor markers have been going up and both my girlfriend and I have been struggling with the burdens of me potentially losing my fertility because like most couples we really want to get married and bring children into this world, but cancer might stop that from happening.

We thought for awhile that IUI would be an okay backup plan for getting pregnant as fertilization still occurred in her body with my sperm which would be preserved prior to getting any serious treatments. But we recently discovered that doing that is not licit in the Catholic church.

I intellectually understand why the church doesn’t allow it. I intellectually understand that separating the act of procreation from the sexual act violates natural law. I’ve read through other threads from this sub on it.

But as someone who is in a serious health crisis and have a lot to be anxious about, there are some things that I have to wonder:

- Why is natural law so important? Why should I or anyone care about natural law? I mean natural law doesn’t care about me or the struggles that I face so why should I care about natural law? Like why must we obey natural law all the time? I mean if someone is in critical condition and they need to get to a hospital, are you really going to care about obeying every single traffic law when getting to the hospital? Probably not, no. Ambulances disregard traffic laws all the time because there is a greater good of saving a human life than obeying traffic laws.

So that begs the question, why isn’t bringing life into this world particularly into a loving family headed by a married man and woman considered a good to be greater than that of obeying natural law?

Now I know that a common objection is going to be because being conceived against natural law violates someone’s dignity. Now there are two issues with that. First we can’t objectively know whether or not a certain form of conception violates someone’s dignity. Some people may be bothered by it and others might not. But even if you’re someone conceived through IUI, would you legitimately rather just not exist, than be here via IUI? I believe the vast majority of people would simply prefer to not exist over being conceived via IUI, so why doesn’t the good of a human getting the gift of life and existence not trump the issue of conception happening through less than ideal means?

- Secondly one thing I’ve seen in other posts here on this topic that really grinds my gears, is when people say, “well if you want to use IUI or any other artificial to achieve pregnancy, then you view a child as a consumer good rather than as a person”. I can’t stand this phrase and this line of thinking. Like do you really think that someone who has the same good wholesome desires as you to bring a child into this world all of a sudden becomes this greedy materialistic monster the moment their body starts failing to comply? Do you really think that my future spouse and I want to bring a child into this world for any reason other than to love said child? Really if we just wanted a child for vanity’s sake like you suggest, we wouldn’t bother with having kids and infertility wouldn’t phase either of us in the slightest.

Honestly sometimes it all feels so meaningless. There’s no meaning in getting cancer. There’s no meaning in me potentially becoming infertile. I feel like there’s no meaning in going through IUI nor is there any meaning in avoiding it like the church tells us to, because who’s gonna be able to tell how our child was conceived or who is gonna care about what we’re going through? And who is gonna care if we avoid using IUI either? I mean really what real good actually comes out of forgoing IUI and therefore forgoing procreation? I mean all you’re doing is just choosing to live in meaningless suffering and heartbreak because you could just make it all go away by sinning on a particular occasion but chose not to because God told you to. But you’re always supposed to avoid sinning each and every day. What could possibly be so special about avoiding the use of IUI? - Nothing. Avoiding using IUI is just like avoiding any other sin; it’s just what you’re supposed to do. How could there be any more significance to avoiding that sin then there is to avoiding any other sin? It’s just another task to complete in the job of being Catholic it seems.

I may not be thinking completely clearly on this here. But that’s why I’m posting and asking in order to get some help/perspective. Thanks for reading this and responding.