Question:
What should be done with frozen embryos? Can they be implanted in a voluntary marriage?
Answer:
It is a very difficult question, as both alternatives (implanting them or leaving them frozen until they die) have their moral drawbacks. This inescapable dilemma is a sign of the immorality of in vitro fertilization and the subsequent embryonic freezing. Implantation is proposed as an ‘extreme last resort’. This topic was addressed by Fr. Maurizio Faggioni, o.f.m., in ‘L’Osservatore Romano’, Spanish edition, August 30, 1996, p. 9 and 11 (‘The Question of Frozen Embryos’). Below, I transcribe his response to the question ‘What is to be done?’.
‘The activities of embryo manipulation and the aberrant legislative provisions that permit them are part of the distorted mentality that presides over many artificial reproduction practices. In particular, in vitro fertilization, by violating the inseparable connection between the gestures of the spouses’ incarnate love and the transmission of life, obscures the profound meaning of human generation. It is, therefore, not lawful to produce embryos in vitro, and even less so to voluntarily produce them in excessive numbers, making cryo-preservation necessary. This seems to be the only reasonable response to the issue of embryonic freezing, and in this sense, the Holy Father has challenged men of science. However, the unnatural manner in which these embryos have been conceived and the unnatural conditions in which they find themselves cannot make us forget that they are human creatures, living gifts of Divine Goodness, created in the image of the very Son of God. We are then asked how to intervene to save these creatures, resolving the unpleasant dilemma in an ethically acceptable manner.
Once embryos are conceived in vitro, there certainly exists 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 conditions allow. Indeed, the maternal womb is the only dignified place for the person, where the embryo can have some hope of survival, spontaneously resuming the evolutionary processes artificially interrupted. Even those who—in contrast with Catholic morality—consider it right to resort to extra-corporeal methods could not exempt themselves from respecting that ethical minimum 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 already conceived embryos, because once human life has begun, the parent has no right to oppose its existence and development. The embryo, in fact, does not obtain its right to exist from the common acceptance by its parents, from the mother’s acceptance, or from a legal determination, but from its condition as a human being. It must be emphasized, on the other hand, that in a deferred 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 maximal in the case of implanting a cryo-preserved embryo.
If the mother cannot be found, or she refuses the transfer, some authors, including Catholics, have considered the possibility of transferring the embryos to another woman. This would be a form of prenatal adoption, different from surrogate motherhood and heterologous fertilization with egg donation: here, there would be no injury to marital unity nor an imbalance in kinship relations, as the embryo would be, from a genetic point of view, in the same relation to both adoptive parents. The more intense and profound bonds established between someone adopted before birth and the adoptive parents would have to mitigate some psychological problems observed in traditional adoptions, while exalting the sense of adoption as an expression of the fruitfulness of conjugal love and the result of a generous openness to life, leading to the welcoming into a family’s womb of children deprived of parents or abandoned, and above all, those abandoned due to disability or illness.
The solution, suggested as an extrema ratio to save embryos abandoned to a certain death, has the merit of taking seriously the value of the embryos’ life, however fragile, and of courageously accepting the challenge of cryo-preservation by seeking to limit the disastrous effects of a disordered situation. However, the disorder within which ethical reasoning must operate profoundly marks the very attempts at a solution. Indeed, the serious questions raised by this solution cannot be silenced, and in particular, the fear that this singular adoption may not manage to escape the efficiency-driven and dehumanizing criteria that regulate the technique of artificial reproduction: Will it be possible to exclude all forms of selection, or to prevent embryos from being produced with adoption in view? Is a transparent relationship conceivable between the Centers that illicitly produce embryos and the Centers where they would be licitly transferred to adoptive mothers? Is there not a risk of legitimizing and even promoting, unconsciously and paradoxically, a new form of commodification and manipulation of the embryo and, more generally, of the human person?
In the case of frozen embryos, we have an impressive example of the inextricable labyrinths in which a science becomes imprisoned when it is put at the service of particular interests and not the authentic good of man, solely at the service of desire and not of reason. Therefore, faced with the scope of the issues at stake—matters 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 commit themselves, together with all people of good will, to respond to emerging problems with even bold solutions, but always respectful of the values of persons and their native rights, especially when it concerns the rights of the weak and the least.’
Fr. Miguel A. Fuentes, IVE
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