A reader writes:
I happened to bump into someone’s blog, and I was just curious about her personal blogs about what she plans with her husband. What she stated is below. Can you please advise about the Church’s stance if any on what she is referring to below, which is "In Vitro Fertilization Adoption." Correct me if I’m wrong, but adopting embryos still seems like its morally unacceptable or at least questionable according to Catholic Moral Theology, since you’re still harvesting them?
"Yes I am Catholic. And yes I know that in vitro is wrong. That is why I want to adopt an embryo. I told my husband before I married him that I didnt feel right about in vitro because I hold to the doctrine of the church. My husband just converted and is more of a liberal catholic. I have already talked to a priest about our situation. Adopting an embryo is taking the embryos that other couples that did in vitro didnt use and instead of throwing them away or giving them to research, couples can adopt. I find this a better alternative for these little lives then letting them stay frozen, die, or even to research."
Thanks, please advise,
Rome has not yet issued a finding regarding the moral acceptability of adopting embryos who would otherwise die in the freezer or be actively destroyed. I anticipate a decision in the coming years, quite possibly during the current pontificate, but for right now Rome is letting moral theologians kick this one around and work out the issues involved.
At present the community of orthodox moral theologians is split: Some have the intuition, as you do, that this is wrong–not because it involves harvesting embryos (implanting them isn’t harvesting them; "harvesting" refers to killing them so that they can be used for possible medical treatments) but because they feel it is intrinsically wrong to implant an embryo from one woman into another. In arguing this, they may appeal to the idea that the development of the child in the womb is part of the reproductive process and is thus inviolable.
Other moral theologians have the opposite intuition, that embryo adoption is morally justifiable in this case becaues the alternative is letting the child die (or be actively killed when the embryo bank decides to junk it). This is not the same situation as surrogate motherhood, where one woman has a child on behalf of another and thus circumvents the normal reproductive process. It is allowing one’s womb to be used to rescue a child who has already been created and who would otherwise die.
Catholics are permitted at present to take either view.
My own instincts are with the second group–that it is morally permissible to adopt embryos in order to keep them from dying.
To my mind, the definitive moment of reproduction is conception. When that happens is when you have a new human being. What happens to it next is not reproduction, because the reproduction has already taken place and we have a new person. What follows (implantation in the womb and subsequent gestation) is simply caring for a new person who already exists and thus is not subject to the same kind of moral unalterability as the act of reproduction itself.
In other words, human reproduction is inviolable, which is why IVF (like adultery) is wrong, but most of what is happening during pregnancy is not reproduction. A new human is produced–and thus reproduction takes place–at the very beginning of pregnancy. What follows is growth, development, and care.
I would analogize the frozen embryo adoption situation to that of a wet nurse. If a child’s own mother is unable or unwilling to nurse the child, it has been a practice throughout human history to have another woman–who is willing and able to nurse the child–to do so. The second woman thus provides the nourishment from her breasts that the child needs when the biological mother is unable or unwilling to do so.
Adopting a frozen embryo strikes me as the same thing, morally: In this case a second woman provides the nourishment and protection from her womb that the child needs and that the biological mother is unable or unwilling to do so.
In both cases care is being provided for the infant by a second woman, the difference being the age of the infant and thus which organs of the overall reproductive system (breasts or the womb) is being used to provide the care that the infant needs at that stage.
This, from my perspective, deals with the intrinsic moral nature of the act. Some might wish to bring in extrinsic considerations, such as whether doing this would encourage people to create more snowflake babies (as they are called).
I do not think that this argument has weight for two reasons;
1) The number of children who can be so-adopted is miniscule compared to the number of frozen embryos that there are. There is no way that anything more than a small fraction of them could be adopted, and thus I do not see that allowing embryo adoption would have an appreciable effect on the number that are created.
2) It could likewise be argued that allowing wet nurses–or even adoption–also encourages people to create children that they are unable or unwilling to care for. No doubt some people do–and certainly they historically have been–sexually looser than they otherwise would have been, in the knowledge that they could put the children that might result up for adoption. That doesn’t mean you let the resulting kids die of neglect. You do what you can to save them, even if you can’t save all of them. In fact, historically Christians were known for picking up foundlings, caring for them, and raising them as Christians.
To my mind, this is a high-tech version of the same thing.
