Earlier this week, we featured two stories that stood out as witnesses – whether those involved realized it or not – to the value of every life. The Italian nuns, doctors and government officials defending the life of a comatose woman, and the homicide detectives who mourned the death of an abandoned newborn remind us that life – all life – is worth fighting for when in danger and grieving over when destroyed.
Yesterday's Seattle Times ran another story that reflects that truth, albeit in a different way.
“Embryo adoption gives new life to some couples’ hopes for a child,” the headline proclaims, with the article going on to tell various couples’ stories of their adoption of a frozen embryo.
What makes the story so great is the personal angle: it captures the awe the Lancasters felt when realizing that their adopted daughter – who Maria Lancaster carried in her womb for nine months before giving birth – was her own, unique person, even in her frozen, embryonic stage. The accompanying video is especially powerful in this way.
“It was a demonstration to us that every embryo is a complete, unique and total human being in its tiniest form,” said Maria, whose daughter, Elisha, is now 5-years-old.
And then, after telling the Lancasters’ story, the article explains the implications of Maria’s above statement, focusing on the source of those frozen embryos in the first place: leftover products of in vitro fertilization, which are discarded, donated for research (that inevitably destroys them), indefinitely frozen or, in minority cases such as the Lancasters, offered up for adoption.
While the practice of donating embryos to infertile couples is, in itself, not particularly controversial, the question of what's to be done with some 400,000 frozen embryos in storage nationwide touches on some of the most controversial issues of the day, from abortion to stem-cell research.
… For many fertility clinics, it comes down to letting patients decide for themselves when human life begins. And "from there, they choose the option of what to do with their embryos," said Stephanie Frickleton with Pacific Northwest Fertility in Seattle, which runs its own embryo-donation program.
For the record, Catholic teaching does not allow for in vitro fertilization, as it divorces the unitive and procreative ends of sexual relations, as well as subjects the conceived child “into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person.” Said simply, it gives human beings, not God, rein over the very existence of another human soul.
“Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church continues (2377), quoting the Vatican document Donum vitae.
However, the Church has not issued an official teaching on the morality of embryonic adoptions – a practice some say is saving lives that would otherwise be literally discarded without a second thought.
All that said, the Seattle Times quotes are very telling, as those who don’t share the Lancasters’ views of conception – and don’t want others to share them, either – speak out.
For example, the spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine says he supports embryonic adoption – but just doesn’t call it that.
That term, he said, is used by groups who want to “elevate the moral status of the embryo to be the equivalent of an existing child."
And if that were the case, the spokesman concludes, “you can't allow freezing of these embryos for later use (because) we don't freeze babies.” He admits it would also rule out abortion and the use of certain contraceptives.
Ironic, isn’t it, how accurate those statements are.
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