Question:
We are a Christian couple; we have not been able to have children, so we decided to adopt a child; we did it and we are very happy, but we want to have more children and we are going to start a second adoption; now, we recently learned about the possibility of adopting an embryo since it is another life, a new human being (and that its natural parents do not want), but we do not know what the Catholic Church says about this issue, if it is correct or not. It is very important for us to know. Thank you for your attention.
Answer:
This is a very difficult question on which not all moralists agree, because the two alternatives (implant them or leave them frozen until they die) have their moral drawbacks. This impasse is one more sign of the immorality of in vitro fertilization and subsequent embryo freezing (= cryopreservation).
Some authors are against the so-called “rescue” of frozen embryos, such as Msgr. William Smith and Mary Geach. Smith relies on texts of the Instruction Donum vitae (where “surrogate motherhood” or “womb for rent” is condemned, and because the document expressly states that these embryos “are exposed to an absurd fate, without it being possible to offer them safe and licitly pursuable ways of survival”[1])- Geach considers that the implantation of an embryo in a woman is tantamount to an act against chastity[2].
Others accept the lawfulness, such as Grisez, Surtees and Watt[3] and May[4]. These criticize Smith for taking the passage from Donum vitae out of context and that the document’s “surrogate motherhood” does not include “adoption”; and against Geach they distinguish between perverting the conjugal act and the decision to rescue a human being already conceived.
Basically they argue that a distinction must be made between:
(a) separating the two meanings of the conjugal act in an act of procreation (such as artificial in vitro fertilization)
(b) separating them in an act not of procreation but of acceptance of an already existing offspring. Some, such as Grisez and May, even accept the possibility that the “rescue” of embryos by unmarried women (as long as they can guarantee their future moral and affective education; therefore, not in the case of lesbians or women in a bad life, etc.) can be licit.
Others accept the implantation of the frozen embryo as an “extreme ratio”; for example Maurizio Faggioni[5]. I transcribe part of his solution: “Embryo manipulation activities and the aberrant legislative provisions that allow them are part of the distorted mentality that presides over many practices of artificial reproduction. In particular, in vitro fertilization, violating the inseparable connection between the gestures of incarnate love of the spouses and the transmission of life, obscures the profound meaning of human generation. It is not, therefore, licit to produce embryos in vitro, much less to produce them voluntarily in excessive numbers, so that cryopreservation is necessary. This seems to be the only reasonable response to the question of embryo freezing, and in this sense the Holy Father has challenged scientists. However, the unnatural way in which these embryos have been conceived and the unnatural conditions in which they are found cannot make us forget that we are dealing with human creatures, living gifts of divine Goodness, created in the image of the Son of God himself. We are then asked how to intervene to save these creatures, resolving the unpleasant dilemma in an ethically acceptable way.
Once the embryos are conceived in vitro, there is certainly an obligation to transfer them to the mother and only if an immediate transfer is impossible could they be frozen, always with the intention of transferring them as soon as the conditions are met. Indeed, the mother’s womb is the only place worthy of the person, where the embryo can have some hope of survival, spontaneously resuming the evolutionary processes artificially interrupted. Even those who – in contrast to Catholic morality – consider it right to have recourse to extra-corporeal methods cannot exempt themselves from respecting that ethical minimum which is constituted by the protection of innocent life. Not even in the case of divorce could the husband oppose the wife’s request to receive the embryos already conceived because, once human life has begun, the progenitor has no right to oppose its existence and development. The embryo, in fact, does not derive its right to exist from the common acceptance of its parents, from the acceptance of the mother or from a legal determination, but from its condition as a human being. The child’s status as a human being is not the result of the parents’ acceptance or of a legal determination, but of its condition as a human being. It should be emphasized, moreover, that in a delayed pregnancy, the meaning of procreation, in its complex anthropological dynamics, is further disturbed and disrupted: the artificial split between sexual union (when it has taken place) and conception, already drastic and unacceptable in extra-corporeal techniques, becomes maximum in the case of the implantation of a cryopreserved embryo.
If the mother cannot be found, or refuses the transfer, some authors, including Catholics, have considered the possibility of transferring the embryos to another woman. This would be a prenatal adoption different from surrogate motherhood and heterologous fertilization with oocyte donation: here there would be no injury to the marital unit and no imbalance of kinship relations, since the embryo would be, from the genetic point of view, in the same relationship with both adoptive parents. The more intense and deeper bonds established between those who are adopted before birth and the adoptive parents should attenuate some psychological problems observed in traditional adoptions, while exalting the meaning of adoption as an expression of the fruitfulness of conjugal love and the fruit of a generous openness to life, which leads to the welcoming into a family of children deprived of parents or abandoned, and especially of those abandoned because of handicap or illness.
The solution, suggested as an extreme ratio to save embryos abandoned to certain death, has the merit of taking seriously the value of life, even if fragile, of embryos and of courageously accepting the challenge of cryopreservation in order to limit the harmful effects of a disordered situation. However, the disorder in which ethical reasoning takes place profoundly marks the very attempts at a solution. Indeed, the serious questions raised by this solution cannot be ignored and, in particular, the fear that this singular adoption will not be able to escape the efficiency and dehumanizing criteria that regulate the technique of artificial reproduction: will it be possible to exclude all forms of selection, or to prevent the production of embryos for adoption? Is it possible to imagine a transparent relationship between the centers that illicitly produce embryos and the centers where they would be licitly transferred to adopted mothers?
Is there not a risk of legitimizing and even promoting, unconsciously and paradoxically, a new form of objectification and manipulation of the embryo and, more generally, of the human person?
In the case of frozen embryos we have a striking example of the inextricable labyrinths in which a science is imprisoned when it puts itself at the service of particular interests and not of the authentic good of man, only at the service of desire and not of reason. For this reason, faced with the scope of the issues at stake – questions of life and death – the Christian people feel more strongly than ever the mission entrusted to them by the Lord to proclaim the Gospel of life and, together with all people of good will, they commit themselves to respond to the emerging problems with bold solutions, but always respectful of the values of persons and their native rights, especially when it is a question of the rights of the weak and the last”.
Fr. Miguel A. Fuentes, IVE
[1] DV, II, 3; y I, 5. Cf. William Smith, Rescue the Frozen?, “Homiletic and Pastoral Review, 96.1 (Oct. 1995), 72-74.
[2] Mary Geach: Are there any circumstances in which it would be morally admirable for a woman to seek to have an orphan embryo implanted in her womb?, en: Issues for a Catholic Bioethic Proceedings of the International Conference to Celebrate the Twentieth Anniversary of the Foundation of The Linacre Centre 28-31 July 1997, London 1999, pp. 341- 346.
[3] Cf. Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 3, Difficult Moral Questions, Franciscan Press, 1997, p. 242; Geoffrey Surtees, Adoption of a Frozen Embryo, Homiletic and Pastoral Review 96, August-September 1996, 8-9; Hellen Watt, Issues for a Catholic Bioethic, pp. 349-350.
[4] Cf. William May, Catholic Bioethics and the gift of Human Life, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Huntington, 2000, pp. 94 ss.
[5] Cf. Maurizio Faggioni, o.f.m., La cuestión de los embriones congelados, “L’Osservatore Romano”, edición española del 30 de agosto de 1996, p. 9 y 11
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