Embryo Adoption in the News
Italy regulated IVF, only permitting 3 to be created at once and requiring that all embryos that come into being in the procedure be implanted.
Had the USA implemented such a policy, we wouldn't have 400,000 embryos in deep freeze. Some look at these nascent humans as a natural resource for use in research. Others, on the other hand, feel called to "adopt" these excess embryos and gestate them to birth.
This procedure is known as "embryo adoption," and it is beginning to gain a lot of attention, evidenced by a front page story in today's Seattle Times. From the story:
Lancaster has now started her own embryo adoption service.The day the frozen embryo arrived via FedEx was the day Maria Lancaster began experiencing firsthand what she had always believed: that human life begins at conception.
Lancaster was 46 and, after having three miscarriages, she and her husband, Jeff, longed for a child. One day, they heard about "embryo adoptions"--where couples who've gone through in vitro fertilization donate any leftover embryos to infertile couples. Several months of soul-searching later, they received a frozen embryo from a North Carolina clinic--cells that were thawed and implanted in Lancaster's womb. Now Lancaster looks at her 5-year-old daughter Elisha--lively and precocious--and thinks: miracle. "It was a demonstration to us that every embryo is a complete, unique and total human being in its tiniest form," Lancaster said.
I wrote about embryo adoption and a similar service called "Snowflakes" in Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World, in which I interviewed both adopting mothers and the donors. The donor was thrilled her son was brought to birth, and the boy's parents were absolutely ecstatic about their growing family. During our interview, I heard the baby crying and marveled that he had been in the deep freeze only a little while before.
There are debates in some circles about the morality of this. I think this flows from opposition to the IVF procedure per se. Others may object to one woman carrying the baby of another. And still others may resent the pro life message as presented in the story. As for me, regardless of what one believes about any of that, bringing the child to birth is in keeping with the reason the embryo was brought into being in the first place. It isn't the answer to the embryo surplus because there are so many in cold storage. But surely, it is one answer.
Labels: Embryo Adoption.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 4:39 PM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
This is one area where the Catholic Church isn't as clear to me as I would like.
To the Church, surroget motherhood, IVF, etc, are all degrading to the human being. Children are supposed to be a gift of love, not something someone demands because he or she feels a "right" to one. I agree with this philosophy.
To that end, the Church looks down on embryo implantation since it's not the natural production of a child by a loving union between Mother and Father. Again, I'm okay there.
But my issue is, the Church isn't very clear (at least, not to me, and I've been looking) about embryonic adoption for the sake of growing the baby, so the baby has a chance at life, and not just being stuck in a deep freezer.
I know that pro-lifers of other stripes (Protestant, Non-Denom, Jewish, Atheist, etc) all feel comfortable adopting embryos for this reason. But I wish there were clearer guidlines to go by for it from my Church, because if adopting embryos was encouraged, like you said - it wouldn't stop the problem, but it would be a good start. Blah.
I feel very sorry for the kids in deep freeze. They ought to have a chance at running around and playing games, not just being a few cells forever.
TE Fine-
Everything I've seen treats these kids the same as children of rape; the things that happened to bring them into being were bad, but the kids aren't to blame, and we should take care of them.
TE Fine, I don't know if that's the case that your church looks down on embyro adoption. I was driving home last night and heard Fr. Frank Pavone talking about it. It was beautiful. He said that he saw this as an early case/form of adoption. I think he also said that it was a wonderful that the woman would use her body to bring this child to life and then raise, educate and care for one of these frozen people. I have to say that I was surprised by the beauty of what he said. I think you are going to see more comments like that from the Catholic church. I have to admit that as a non-catholic, that the prescience of your church in Humanae Vitae and then what it has said on IVF has been stunningly prophetic. I think the concern for these frozen people by pro-lifers says a lot about our cause. We truly care for the very least of Jesus' brothers, the weakest members of our society.
Short answer, Tabs: Catholic theologians disagree about embryo adoption, and Rome has so far refrained from making a definitive pronouncement. Some statements already "on the books" can be interpreted to forbid it, but it can also be argued that the person writing those statements hadn't thought of the specific case of embryo adoption. So Catholics can take either position.
My prediction is that the Catholic Church will continue to leave this one up in the air as far as definitive statements, because a definitive statement in either direction has pragmatic drawbacks. A definitive statement that embryo adoption is wrong would encourage the destruction of frozen embryos and prevent faithful Catholics from rescuing embryonic human beings if they were otherwise inclined to do so. A definitive statement that embryo adoption is morally okay could "lead to" greater approval of IVF in the first place and to pre-arrangements where extra embryos were deliberately conceived with the intent that they would be adopted.
Lydia is absolutely correct, and the Church does teach that all human beings are precious no matter how he or she came into being.
Living in Seattle, and knowing Maia, I responded to that article with a letter to the editor:
I was amused by the comments of Sean Tipton, spokesman for the Society of Reproductive Medicine. This scientific "expert" failed to reach the logical conclusion of the science, and implicitly asks us to draw an illogical conclusion in the process. First, he dons the hat of moral philosophy expert with his quip that groups "want to elevate the moral status of the embryo to be the equivalent of an existing child." Wrong. Science shows the embryo to be a complete human being. "Child" is a stage of development of a human being. He tries to "prove" his point by noting that only 25 percent of fertilized eggs (embryos) develop into babies. And what is the percentage of babies that develop into children, or children into adolescents, or adolescents into adults? Is a child less of a human being than an adolescent or adult? Due to disease, accidents or other maladies, not all embryos will eventually become adults, nor children become adolescents. Yet, each and everyone is a human being.
Equally bizarre were the comments by NARAL's Karen Cooper. Perhaps someday she will stop viewing unborn human beings through her abortion lobby lens and start recognizing them as her fellow humans - like Elisha.
Thanks for the input, guys. I appreciate it. I know that at some point in my life I'd like to adopt a child, but I'm sort of in a toss-up. Babies get adopted quickly. So do small children. It seems to me that the kids who need parents the most are either frozen embryos or older kids (ages 7+, particularly teens). On the one hand, older kids who need good homes usually come from broken families these days - fewer kids up for adoption are true orphans. They've had a rough past and need stability.
On the other hand, single-celled kids are in deep freeze and can't grow in any respect, and I'm not sure what the duration is for their existance. I mean, how long can a baby survive as a frozen object when it's that little? The longer they're in deep freeze, the greater a chance of death. Bleugh.
I have adopted both frozen embryos and older children (ages 12 and 1/2 and almost 7 year old from Russia)now ages 10 and almost 16. I am blessed beyond measure with 2 snowflake children ages 5 years and 1 year old. I have many friends who have adopted embryos that were frozen 10 plus years and have beautiful children.
Both adopting embryos and older children have been complete miracles. I am in awe and humbled how God chose to bless us.
Between the stance on the Catholic Church on animals and the destructive impact that has had on the history and philosophy of science and on us (by which I mean animals, human and otherwise), and what I've just lived through (and the person who didn't want the plug pulled on them didn't) courtesy of a "guardianship" organization run by a Catholic diocese which cited the "official position" of the Roman Catholic Church as one which okays the disconnection from life support of any person "who wishes to avoid causing excessive cost to their family and the community" (a mission handily able to be expedited by a "living will" that might have been written long ago, before the person had any idea of specifically what the actual circumstances would be if they ever arose, and of course the local diocese has come out in print endorsing such documents), among other things, I'm no fan of the Catholic Church. But it's right on this one, and this is what I would have expected its position to be. The human mind, however, is perfectly capable of making the right decision on its own, without having to check with the institution into which its owner happens to have born.
Anything that protects the embryos already created is a good thing. The policy should be (as some other nationa do) to create only as many embryos as one intends to implant.
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