When it comes to treating infertility, look to where the money points.

A 12-page special advertising section of the Chicago Tribune published three days ago called “Fertility and Pregnancy” gives a glimpse of the mammoth infertility industry. There is a load of articles on the artificial means of procreation, but scant attention paid to a less expensive approach that is actually more effective.

That would come as no surprise to the three hundred-plus participants of the Dignitas Personae conference held in Chicago the same weekend. It was a gathering of fertility and respect life workers sponsored by the Archdiocese of Chicago. Dignitatis Personae, Latin for “On the Dignity of the Person,” is the name of the document released last Sept. 8 by the Vatican that treats bioethical questions related to in-vitro fertilization, or IVF.

“The medical profession has skipped over the root causes of infertility,” said Dr. Thomas Hilgers, pioneer of one of the nation’s leading methods of treating infertility naturally. Hilgers, who spoke at the conference, said that infertility treatment took a “sharp left turn” in 1978. Today, “IVF is promoted as the only way to get pregnant,” he said.

What may be surprising to the millions of women who cannot conceive and bring to term a child is that NaProTechnology is nearly three times more successful than IVF for assisting infertile couples, according to a group founded by Dr. Hilgers at the Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, NE called the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction.

Infertility at the institute is treated by determining the fertile time of a woman’s cycle, as well as by using surgical techniques such as laser treatment and ovarian wedge resections. Couples travel from all over the country to the university for treatment, or get help from the 215 fertility care clinics in the United States trained in NaProTechnology.

With artificial means, couples can spend up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for the various means to “produce” a child, which involve donor eggs and sperm, surrogate mothers, and hyperstimulation of a woman’s ovaries with dangerous levels of hormones, Hilgers said. And, I would add, don’t forget the many tiny human beings in zygote stage “left over” from these processes now awaiting an uncertain future in frozen orphanages around the country.

The costs are great in dollar terms as well, with a couple paying $5,000 to $40,000 for the successful harvesting of an egg. A gestational surrogate, or one who carries the baby until birth, can cost as much as $100,000. The costs go on and on, depending on the type of treatment. And yet less than one-half of one percent of all women with fertility problems are helped by IVF to have a child, said Dr. Hilgers.

With that kind of money flowing, it’s no wonder that the medical profession as a whole is led by the nose by the pharmaceutical industry. It’s time to direct the healing effort toward the woman and man’s own body, in a way that respects the dignity of the human person.

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Discover your fertile time with Natural Family Planning. Find classes in your area by contact the national office of the Couple to Couple League. Or contact CCL of Chicago.

Contact the national headquarters for NaProTechnology in Omaha, NE. In Rockford, IL contact the Family Health Center at (815) 972-1000. In Phoenix, AZ, contact Life Choices Women’s Clinic.