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This paper offers a Protestant perspective on Roman Catholic debates regarding the moral permissibility of transferring and adopting genetically unrelated embryos that have been abandoned or designated for donation. The relative silence in Protestant bioethics on these issues stands in contrast to the vigor of Catholic discussions. This neglect is striking in light of both the significant role of mainline Protestants in supporting the practice of in vitro fertilization (IVF) which gave rise to such novel possibilities and the growing support of embryo adoption by evangelical Protestants (Berkman, 2002; Cooperman, 2005; Ennis, 2005; Saake, 2005). The essay affirms the inherent morality of both the transfer and adoption of abandoned embryos. But, it also expresses reservations about the current practice. For reasons, it encourages a critical attitude toward potentially vicious reasons for which it is promoted in our cultural context.

The use of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) has proliferated rapidly since the birth of Louise Brown in England in 1978 via in vitro fertilization with embryo transfer (IVF–ET, or more commonly, IVF). The ability to cryopreserve embryos followed shortly thereafter, increasing the potential success rates while decreasing the costs, thereby becoming a standard practice among ART clinics. Unfortunately, the proliferation of these technologies led to an unanticipated problem, i.e., the prolonged storage of large numbers of frozen embryos.

The National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) was founded to address this dilemma. The idea of a national center that provided comprehensive embryo adoption and donation services was originally the idea of Dr. David Stevens, who serves as CEO of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations (CMDA). Dr. Stevens presented me with this idea in late 2002. We agreed that the large, and increasing, number of frozen embryos was of concern from medical, legal, and ethical perspectives. We saw the potential to assist both couples who have remaining frozen embryos, as well as infertile couples who desire to experience the joy of pregnancy and childbirth. We believed that the most life-honoring option for unused embryos was to give them the chance to develop into their fully human potential. After a number of discussions, we agreed that the idea of establishing a national center for embryo donation and adoption was viable and worth pursuing.

I was asked to contribute to this volume my perspective as the father of a child who was born from an embryo adoption (EA). I was asked to respond specifically to the issues of fatherhood and the marriage bond, and how they are supposedly violated by embryo adoption. I hope to also offer the additional perspective of a father who also has adopted traditionally, as well as my thoughts on EA as a layperson with training in philosophy, theology, and bioethics. I will focus my remarks on three topics: The status of the embryo as a full human person, the status and dignity of adoptive fatherhood, and the issues raised by those in opposition to embryo adoption regarding sex and marriage. Through my remarks I hope it will become apparent that Suzanne’s and my support of embryo adoption is a result of our study, prayer, and experience.

The debate over embryo adoption is personal to my husband and me. On July 25, 2006, I gave birth to our son, Steven, 9 months after we adopted him. His conception had been orchestrated by his genetic parents through (IVF) some time earlier, but his life, previously in stasis, was entrusted to us by way of a closed adoption some 9 months before his birth. Steven is the only child to us from embryo adoption, however, my husband and I consider that we are the parents of ten children. This is because prior to Steven’s birth, we adopted a number of embryos but unfortunately pregnancies did not ensue. I would like to tell the story of how we decided to adopt and what it actually was like for us.

At present, there is to our knowledge no Catholic institution engaged in overseeing the practice of embryo adoption (EA), nor any institution that currently oversees the practice explicitly claiming to do so in accord with Catholic ethical and religious principles. On the one hand, this is understandable, since the Catholic Church has yet to rule on the moral permissibility of the practice. On the other hand, this is somewhat surprising, since the Catholic tradition is arguably the most vociferous advocate of the dignity and rights of cryopreserved embryos. For many cryopreserved embryos, adoption represents their sole opportunity for continuing the human life cycle to which they are by nature ordered. Thus, one might expect some Catholic institution to inaugurate a program to aid such embryos, assuming EA does not come to be seen as incompatible with Catholic morality. In this essay, our goal is to provide a vision and a framework for the institutional oversight of the practice of EA done in accord with Catholic teaching.

Towards this goal of providing direction for an EA agency guided by a Catholic Christian view of the human good and the common good of society, the essay proceeds in four parts. It begins with a brief background on the recent moral debate over EA among Catholic theologians, noting both the strengths and limitations of the debate as it has proceeded to date. This section also notes how EA has recently stumbled into the cultural limelight, having a prominent place in the recent “culture wars.” The essay continues with a presentation of the specifics of the practice of EA as it presently practiced in the USA, at least by those agencies which make their practices public. The third section presents a vision for a virtuous institutional practice of EA, seeking to move beyond a moral analysis that concludes that EA is merely “morally acceptable in certain circumstances” to one in which the practice can be seen as exhibiting the virtues of solidarity and charity, providing the gift of continued life to many embryos and expressing a will for a more just social order. In the final section, we offer numerous practical suggestions for guiding the practice of an EA agency which seeks to fully honor the dignity of every human embryo, to efficiently and compassionately aid couples and individuals who wish to adopt an embryo, and to serve the common good by both constructively addressing the moral perplexity of the situation and advocating a morally upright amelioration to the social injustice embodied in the suspended existence of hundreds of thousands of human embryos.

The adoption of frozen embryos is an international practice that has proved challenging from a legal perspective. More and more couples and individuals are procreating through assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), which entails the creation and early development of a number of embryos outside the womb. Many of these couples end up with surplus IVF embryos after they consider their families complete, and donation of these surplus embryos by the IVF patients to other infertile couples is one among several embryo disposition options that the law permits. However, judges and legislators in many nations have found regulation of embryo donation to be anything but simple.

In this chapter, I aim to show that embryo adoption may be carried out whether embryos are treated (1) as constitutional persons who cannot be owned and who are entitled to the same legal protections as born children, or (2) as property which lacks legal rights of its own and can be disposed of according to the wishes of its owners. In short, under embryo-as-person treatment, IVF practice would be limited to creating only the number of embryos in a cycle that could and would safely be transferred to the maternal womb during that cycle. The constitutionally protected right to life would dictate that currently frozen embryos be either cryopreserved indefinitely or transferred to maternal wombs to continue their natural development which was artificially interrupted. In fact, Germany and Italy, both of which treat the embryo as a legal person, have already legislated to this effect. In embryo-as-person systems, frozen embryos would be adopted as any other child with some legal variations reflecting the different timing and technology involved. Abandoned frozen embryos might even fall under abandonment statutes, which provide that children whose genetic parents neglect to care for them come into the care of the state, and then the state places them in adoptive families.1 Courts would be involved every step of the way, from safeguarding embryos’ constitutional right to life to overseeing their placement with those who offer them gestation, a family and a home.

In this essay, I will offer a tentative assessment of the ethics of both embryo adoption (Heterologous Embryo Transfer-HET) and the use of an artificial uterus on the basis of currently articulated Catholic teaching. While embryo adoption is already a present reality, a discussion of an artificial uterus may seem utterly unrelated to any real possibility, akin to an ethical evaluation of using a Star Trek transporter. However, such a judgment must also reckon with contemporary developments. In 1973, viability was considered to begin at around 28 weeks gestation and neonates under 1,000 g were allowed to die, but by the year 2000 premature infants of only 18 weeks and 470 g are reported to have survived (Singer & Wells, 1984, p.131; Oderberg, 2000, p. 5). Since then, efforts by scientists to lower the threshold of viability have continued, in particular at Temple University,1 Cornell University,2 and Juntendo University in Japan.3 Given the technological progress that has already taken place in pushing back the limits of gestation, and given the teams of researchers working to move the threshold back even further, the advent of artificial wombs seems less science fiction and more science future.