Cooperation in Evil

Embryo Adoption?

Cooperation in Evil

Good and evil effects must be proportionate:

c) The proximity of my cooperation to the evil act itself.

“Prenatal Adoption”

Embryo Adoption?

Church documents:

Donum Vitae (1987)

Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin

and the Dignity of Procreation

~ Replies to Certain Questions of the Day

Dignitas Personae (2008)

Instruction Dignitas Personae on

Certain Bioethical Questions

Arguments pro …

Embryo’s right to life

Not surrogacy: “She [the surrogate] carries the pregnancy with a pledge to surrender the baby once it is born to the party who commissioned or made the agreement for the pregnancy.” (DV)

Analogy: Married woman conceives naturally but then is diagnosed with a condition of the womb such that she can’t carry the child….

Arguments con …

Embryo adoption is intrinsically evil.

DV: “the exclusive right [of a husband and wife] to become father and mother solely through each other.”

-- Depersonalizes and dehumanizes impregnation (apart from conjugal union)

It is surrogacy: The woman gestates a baby that is genetically not her own. DV

Analogous to Artificial Insemination: Needs a conjugal act.

Dignitas Personae, #19: Frozen embryos:

– Wrong to throw them away

– Wrong to use them for research or treatment of disease

– Wrong to thaw them without reactivating and use them for research as if cadavers

– Wrong to use them as treatment for infertility• Same reasons as artificial heterologous procreation and any

form of surrogate motherhood

• Leads to other problems: medical, psychological, and legal

Dignitas Personae, #19:

Prenatal adoption:

– Praiseworthy intention of respecting and defending human life.

– Presents various problems similar to those mentioned above.

problems

Dignitas Personae, #19: Frozen embryos:

– Wrong to throw them away

– Wrong to use them for research or treatment of disease

– Wrong to thaw them without reactivating and use them for research as if cadavers

– Wrong to use them as treatment for infertility• Same reasons as artificial heterologous procreation and any

form of surrogate motherhood

• Leads to other problems: medical, psychological, and legalCircumstantial

Intrinsically Evil

U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops:

“The document raises cautions or problems about these new issues but does not formally make a definitive judgment against them.”

The CDF neither endorses nor condemns embryo adoption.

Dignitas Personae, #19:

“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.”