"The sexual act should reflect the total self-giving of two couples in love, through marriage. Likewise it should express the quality and the potential of the relationship as open, loving and life-giving."

"Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception; abortion and infanticide are the most abominable of crimes"

Statement from the Roman Catholic Church

"From the time that the ovum is fertilised a new life is begun which is neither that of the father or the mother. It is the life of a new human being with its own growth. It would never become human if it were not human already"

Document on Procured Abortion (1974)

"Artificial Insemination (AI) is different from natural intercourse.  AI violates the dignity of the person and the sanctity of marriage. It is therefore contrary to the Natural and Divine Law. In an address to Catholic doctors, Pope Pius XII condemned AI. It is condemned because a third person becoming involved in a marriage is like "mechanical adultery": the donor fathers a child (with his sperm) yet he has no responsibility to the child; and a process that isolates the sacred act of creating life from the marriage union is a violation of the marriage union (which alone is the way to create life). However, if the marriage act is preserved, then various clinical techniques designed to help create new life are not to be condemned."
Adapted from Modern Catholic Dictionary

According to the Catholic Church, IVF and AI are acceptable as long as:

(1) ‘spare embryos’ are not produced

(2)  the sperm and the ovum belong to the married couple and are not donated by a third party

(3)  IVF and AI are not used to replace the act of sexual intercourse in which the husband and wife express their love

Surrogate motherhood strikes at the heart of the family and the dignity of motherhood and is not acceptable.

1987 Respect for Human Life in its Origin and the Dignity of Procreation

"The human embryo has the right to proper respect. ‘Test tube babies’ are real babies not simple embryos to be manipulated, frozen or left to die.... Human beings are not be treated as a means to an end"

The Roman Catholic Truth Society - 1985