Mom delivers baby from frozen embryo

[anneramones]

True weird story. Opinions? What’s the stance of the Church on something like this?

 

[Beryllos]

The Church’s stance on embryo adoption is summarized in this news article:

Vatican on Embryo Adoptions

The new Vatican bioethics document, Dignatis Personae, provides guidance on the controversial issue of adopting frozen human embryos. Rome’s judgement: Such...

www.ncregister.com

And here is a lengthy excerpt:

Rome’s judgement: Such adoptions are not a moral solution to the quandary posed by the existence of frozen embryos.

One of the many morally problematic consequences of IVF treatments is that the treatments result in the creation of large numbers of so-called “surplus embryos” that are frozen rather than implanted in their mothers’ wombs.

Dignitas Personae states that in creating these embryos, “a grave injustice has been perpetrated.” The document stresses that discarding these embryos or using them for research are both morally unacceptable courses of action.

But Dignitas Personae instructs that allowing “pre-natal adoptions” of such embryos — an approach favored by some pro-life groups — is also morally problematic. That’s because such adoptions cause those who participate in them to be associated with the immoral action of conceiving embryos outside of the marital act, and with practices like surrogate motherhood which are also immoral.

“This proposal, praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life, presents however various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above,” Dignitas Personae states. “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.

The link in that news article to the Vatican document is outdated (doesn’t work), so here is a link that works:

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/c...cfaith_doc_20081208_dignitas-personae_en.html

 

[Beryllos]

Opinions?

Life is good. I am happy for the parents and the child.

 

[1Lord1Faith]

The CDF document is fairly easy to understand. I think it gives some pretty good reasons why adopting frozen embryos isn’t something that should be a norm, or something that should be practiced at all.

The conclusion that the CDF draws about frozen embryos is difficult to face. But that’s the conclusion.

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”.

 

[anneramones]

So…on one hand embryos are human beings and their life needs to be defended but on the other hand there is no way possible to defend it… but why it is so wrong to implant frozen embryos into a woman’s womb and give them a possibility in the world? Couldn’t it being seen like adoption when the “womb” mother and her husband are not biologically related to embryo ?

 

[Beryllos]

I agree with you totally. When my wife and I were younger, we considered embryo adoption, and likely would have done it, but the laws in our state at the time made it impossible. (We ended up adopting the normal way.)

 

[PetraG]

… but why it is so wrong to implant frozen embryos into a woman’s womb and give them a possibility in the world?

It is “so wrong” because it is intrinsically wrong to engage in surrogate motherhood.

Surrogate motherhood * represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal fidelity and of responsible motherhood; it offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents; it sets up, to the detriment of families, a division between the physical, psychological and moral elements which constitute those families. – INSTRUCTION ON RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE IN ITS ORIGIN AND ON THE DIGNITY OF PROCREATION REPLIES TO CERTAIN QUESTIONS OF THE DAY, Given at Rome, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, February 22, 1987, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, the Apostle. JOSEPH Card. RATZINGER

[*definition includes when “the woman who carries in pregnancy an embryo implanted in her uterus and who is genetically a stranger to the embryo because it has been obtained through the union of the gametes of ‘donors’.”]

Surrogate motherhood of abandoned embryoes is not like adoption. It is more analogous to engaging in a polyamorous marriage between a man and two women because neither of the two women were fully capable of all the duties of married life in their own right. After all, if a man were abandoned by his wife and needed a mother for his children, another woman could not come in and be a “substitute” in the true wife’s place. That would be an objectively immoral solution to the real plight of the husband and the children, even though of course someone might ask if the solution is “so wrong” for an unjustly abandoned wife and an unjustly abandoned husband to act as husband and wife in order to give a stable home to their children. People cannot always substitute for each other and illicit actions cannot be made the substitutes for licit ones, even when the intention is meant well.

 

[Anicette]

You already had the Church’s stance on this with Dignitas personae.

It is immoral to create a child outside of sexual intercourse.
So as a consequence it is immoral to froze embryos to later have them implant, or more likely die, or given them to medical research.

The frozen embryos are in a dramatic situation, but you cannot resolve their situation by doing an immoral action.

And more, to give an embryo to another woman separate gentical parents (unkown) than the surrogate mother and the parents who would raise the child. It is an unatural and incoherent filiation that can confuse the child.

embryo adoption is not the same as the adoption of a child.

 

[mythbuster1]

I am of the opinion that artificial wombs are the solution to this, as we already recognize that it is licit, even morally imperative, to use artificial incubation to treat a child born prematurely. At present, the technology required to incubate an embryo to full term is undergoing animal trials and has not yet been approved for human trials. Furthermore, such technology would be easy to abuse; it must be strictly regulated so that it is reserved only for rescuing embryos and young fetuses who are already in grave danger, and not to support IVF or as an alternative to carrying the child in the womb until born naturally.

As for embryo adoption, the Jewish teaching on preservation of life, while differing somewhat from Christian doctrine, could be illuminative here: While Rabbinic teaching holds that it is licit to break most commandments in order to save a life in immediate danger, it holds as prohibited even to save a life: killing an innocent person, committing idolatry or blasphemy, engaging in sexual immorality, and transgressing the Law to satisfy a persecutor. I say it differs somewhat from Christian doctrine because this Jewish teaching does not confess, “Greater love hath no man than this: to lay down his life for his friends,” neither do modern Jews hold the unborn child as having equal value to the mother. Nevertheless, it is a position that Christ used as justification for healing on the Sabbath, and is certainly intelligible to Christian moral theologians.

 

[angell1]

I personally think that society should have never have gond down that road in the first place, but I guess that’s a bit of amoot point now

 

[Sirach2]

It is immoral to create a child outside of sexual intercourse.

I am still upset with a niece who implanted an unknown embryo (invitro fertilization) and delivered a healthy boy. The couple are lesbians and couldn’t naturally conceive a child, so they paid a lot of money to have this procedure done so they could raise a baby. Who is this unfortunate child going to call “dada?” What kind of life will it have in this unnatural environment that should be a normal family unit?

I could not bring myself to send a card of congratulations, and I’m very glad they live thousands of miles from me so I don’t have to visit.

 

[anneramones]

Artificial wombs look best in my opinion… but I agree they should be used for embryos and babies born too soon ONLY. Sadly I feel it could totally happen that tey will be used as a new trend for moms to have children without having wombs and therefore looking fat or gaining weight during pregnancy.

 

[mythbuster1]

There is one more instance: if the life of mother or child is in immediate danger, it is justified to deliver the child early deliberately, either by inducing labor or performing a Cesarean section.

 

[Beryllos]

I am still upset with a niece who implanted an unknown embryo (invitro fertilization) and delivered a healthy boy. The couple are lesbians…

Cheer up! The fact that a child was born is reason to rejoice. It may also happen that raising the child will lead to spiritual growth of the “parents.” Therefore let us pray…

Amen!

 

[Anicette]

I am so sorry that you experienced that.

Praying for all the people directly involved by this choice seems the only think that you can do.

 

[Greenfields]

Frozen embryo have souls ? A guardian angel?
It is a weird kind of manmade limbo for them

 

[anneramones]

If they are considered to be living humans like me and you than yes, I would say they have a soul and a guardian angel… but yes they are in a limbo. This is so bad…

 

[FossilResin]

I think the couple was definitely trying to do the right thing by adopting these embryos. I acknowledge their great intentions. Yes, surrogate motherhood is still problematic, but so is adopting a fully developed baby; life is just problematic. Life is full of suffering and beauty together.

The best thing really would be for IVF and everything involving sperm donation and frozen embryos and narcissistic forty-year-old careerist power moms to just stop. If that happened, maybe only then could we collectively get behind the effort to get these thousands of abandoned embryos born to willing adoptive families.

I fantasize that the children of these frozen embryos would all become Catholic, hence creating an army for God that would turn against the evil machine. LOL. We can pray.

Lastly, we need to always remember: God has a plan for these childrens’ lives, every single one of them, without question. What humans intend for their own selfish gain, what Satan intends for evil, God will turn into good. There is no way that God doesn’t already have a solution for all this being worked out in His perfect will. He is, after all, the One knitting these children together in their adopted mothers’ wombs. His will be done.

 

[Rau]

but why it is so wrong to implant frozen embryos into a woman’s womb and give them a possibility in the world? Couldn’t it being seen like adoption when the “womb” mother and her husband are not biologically related to embryo ?

If the pool of frozen embryos is taken as a given, I don’t find anything directly wrong in implanting them. I think the problem is indirect - by establishing a process to implant existing embryos we create a demand for the processes that create them - processes that the Church deems immoral.