Embryo Adoption

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xixxvmcm85

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Does the Catholic Church have any teachings regarding the adoption of embryos from fertility clinics for the use of implanting them in others?

The way I see it, this saves souls in earthly limbo and allows them to reach their full potential as actualized human beings.

What are the moral issues with such? And what is your personal opinion?
 
The Church does teach that surrogacy is morally wrong. This interferes with the natural process of God’s creation. A life formed in the marital act of a loving husband and wife. Anything outside of this is morally unacceptable.

Although adoption and implatation is a solution, it’s not a morally justifiable solution and it doesn’t seem likely the Church will accept this. The reason we don’t have an answer from the Church is because it’s a very complicated issue. Human beings are playing God with lives, such injustice is difficult to reach a good solution.

The injustice to these embryos is that they are frozen and the moral thing to do is remove from the frozen state, to restore their human dignity. Although this would lead to their death, death would not be the intent, only the result of the injustice they already recieved by being imorally created. They would be like martyrs. This is more likely the way it will have to be. It’s difficult to understand and if the Church goes this way, they will get beat up on it.
 
06convert said:
The Church does teach that surrogacy is morally wrong. This interferes with the natural process of God’s creation. A life formed in the marital act of a loving husband and wife. Anything outside of this is morally unacceptable.

Although adoption and implatation is a solution, it’s not a morally justifiable solution and it doesn’t seem likely the Church will accept this. The reason we don’t have an answer from the Church is because it’s a very complicated issue. Human beings are playing God with lives, such injustice is difficult to reach a good solution.

The injustice to these embryos is that they are frozen and the moral thing to do is remove from the frozen state, to restore their human dignity. Although this would lead to their death, death would not be the intent, only the result of the injustice they already recieved by being imorally created. They would be like martyrs. This is more likely the way it will have to be. It’s difficult to understand and if the Church goes this way, they will get beat up on it.
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I’m asking if it would be wrong for, say, a Catholic to adopt already fertilized embryos in order to right a wrong so to speak. The “playing God” part had already been done, and not at the hand of the Catholic.

The way I see it, such a Catholic would be saving a soul from life in a cryonic freezer.
 
…someone said a long time ago, that even if a right is achieved in the end, a wrong to achieve it is error… IMHO
 
Spiritoftruth said:
…someone said a long time ago, that even if a right is achieved in the end, a wrong to achieve it is error… IMHO
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And what ‘wrong’ would that be? As far as I know, the Church is against IVF not due to the implantation of embryos, but due to the mass fertilization of embryos which are destined for the freezer or the trash.

I might be wrong, but I’d appreciate some kind of definitive source.
 
xixxvmcm85 said:
And what ‘wrong’ would that be? As far as I know, the Church is against IVF not due to the implantation of embryos, but due to the mass fertilization of embryos which are destined for the freezer or the trash.

I might be wrong, but I’d appreciate some kind of definitive source.
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Did you read the link?
 
Seatuck said:
Did you read the link?
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No, as it was way too extensive. It was over 35 pages long!

Can you provide me something a little more concise or tell me where specifically the pertinent information is found among those 35 pages?
 
06convert said:
The Church does teach that surrogacy is morally wrong. This interferes with the natural process of God’s creation. A life formed in the marital act of a loving husband and wife. Anything outside of this is morally unacceptable.

Although adoption and implatation is a solution, it’s not a morally justifiable solution and it doesn’t seem likely the Church will accept this. The reason we don’t have an answer from the Church is because it’s a very complicated issue. Human beings are playing God with lives, such injustice is difficult to reach a good solution.

The injustice to these embryos is that they are frozen and the moral thing to do is remove from the frozen state, to restore their human dignity. Although this would lead to their death, death would not be the intent, only the result of the injustice they already recieved by being imorally created. They would be like martyrs. This is more likely the way it will have to be. It’s difficult to understand and if the Church goes this way, they will get beat up on it.
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I beg to differ, in that the Church has not “ruled” on adoption of frozen embryos, and that the morally the thing to do is to unfreeze them.

Unfreezing them is an action that directly leads to their death; there can be no other reasonably forseen outcome other than their death and it would seem that the opposite of what you say would be the case i.e. that unfreezing them is killing them and would morally wrong to do.

What would be the intent to unfreezing them? One cannot “restore another’s dignity” by killing them.

The problem is that the only possible solutions are:
  1. Discarding them, which would be morally objectionable.
  2. Implanting them, which has moral problems.
  3. Keeping them in frozen stasis, which also is morally questionable.
  4. Allow them to die a natural death in frozen stasis, which is difficult to assertain without unfreezing them.
Choosing between these 2 and 3 are difficult options, 4 is problematic as well, as once you unfreeze them they cannot be re-frozen and must be implanted in order to give a chance to survive.

This is one moral sticky wicket. Methinks option 2 is the option which, VERY carefully defined, the Church will eventually settle upon.
 
xixxvmcm85 said:
No, as it was way too extensive. It was over 35 pages long!

Can you provide me something a little more concise or tell me where specifically the pertinent information is found among those 35 pages?
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Dignitas Personae is the only “official” statement of the Church on this issue, as far as I am aware. It is well worth reading in full, but as you asked, here is Paragraph 19 where “embryo adoption” is discussed in particular. The bolding is mine.
  1. With regard to the large number of frozen embryos already in existence the question
    becomes: what to do with them?     Some of those who pose this question do not grasp its ethical
    nature, motivated as they are by laws in some countries that require cryopreservation centers to
    empty their storage tanks periodically. Others, however, are aware that a grave injustice has
    been perpetrated and wonder how best to respond to the duty of resolving it.
    Proposals to use these embryos for research or for the treatment of disease are obviously
    unacceptable because they treat the embryos as mere “biological material” and result in their
    destruction. The proposal to thaw such embryos without reactivating them and use them for
    research, as if they were normal cadavers, is also unacceptable.37
    The proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a
    treatment for infertility is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which make artificial
    heterologous procreation illicit as well as any form of surrogate motherhood;38 this practice
    would also lead to other problems of a medical, psychological and legal nature.
    It has also been proposed, solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are
    otherwise condemned to destruction, that there could be a form of “prenatal adoption”. This
    proposal, praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life,
    presents however various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above.
    All things considered, it needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned
    embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved.     Therefore John
    Paul II made an “appeal to the conscience of the world’s scientific authorities and in particular
    to doctors, that the production of human embryos be halted, taking into account that there
    seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and
    thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should
    therefore be protected by law as human persons”.39
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DIGNITAS PERSONAE
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20081208_dignitas-personae_en.html

The document of the CDF cited above is not definitive; it does not establish an infallible doctrine, nor does it definitively rule out any possible saving of frozen embryos.

This article has a nice balanced discussion of the issue:
catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0041.html

I’ll add that the truths of the Faith are from Tradition and Scripture and Magisterium, not from Magisterium alone. And the faithful are called to participate in the search for truth with the Pope and the Bishops, and not merely to wait for definitive answers to each question.

There are estimated to be over 400,000 frozen embryos in the U.S. alone. They have a limited shelf-life; without implanation, they will die in the freezer. It is an intrinsically evil sin of omission, for those who are able to do so, not to attempt to save their lives.

The other considerations, such as not cooperating with the evil of IVF (e.g. not acting in such a way that IVF is done more often in order to provide for embryo adoption), must be taken into account. But none of these cautions absolutely prohibits saving these prenatal lives.
 
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