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Evangelicals and embryo adoption
September 6, 2006
Evangelicals and the Brave New World: Why Natural Law Can
No Longer Be Ignored
by Stephen J. Grabill, Ph.D., Research Scholar in Theology
and Executive Editor, Journal of Markets & Morality
Infertile couples desperate to conceive children are turning
increasingly to fertility specialists for help. Yet, widespread
use of assisted reproductive technology (ART) has led to a
completely unforeseen consequence: the creation of the world's
largest population of frozen human embryos. That reality has
ignited a vigorous moral debate among scientists, politicians,
theologians, and parents about what should be done with the
surplus store of nascent human life.
The challenge for pro-life evangelicals is to develop systematic
moral reasoning that can be applied to a range of issues including
embryo adoption, human embryonic stem cell research, ART,
"therapeutic cloning," genetic engineering, and
birth control. Evangelicals tend to be pragmatic, wedding
political activism with biblical appeals, but this has resulted
in moral reflection operating on a mostly private and intuitive
plane. The tragic pitfall with this style of ethical decision-making
is that adverse spiritual and moral consequences often go
undetected. When faced with new advances in reproductive technology,
this inability to approach new developments within a consistent
moral framework can prove to be a dangerous weakness.
Currently, in the United States alone, nearly 500,000 human
embryos are being cryopreserved at some 430 fertility clinics.
A staggering 88 percent of these embryos, which are only a
few days old and much smaller than the dot on this i, were
created by doctors for use in some form of assisted reproduction.
The most common ART technique is in vitro fertilization with
embryo transfer (IVF-ET), in which a woman is induced to produce
multiple eggs where four to six of the most viable are retrieved
and then fertilized in the laboratory, with the resulting
embryos transferred to the woman's uterus. At the best clinics,
the success rate for each in vitro attempt is between 25 and
50 percent.
Each in vitro attempt can cost anywhere from $4,000 to $18,000
(or more) for doctor's fees, plus thousands more for drugs
to stimulate ovulation. To decrease the probability of complications
associated with higher order multiple pregnancies only two
to three embryos are usually transferred to the uterus in
each in vitro attempt.
ART doctors typically respond by producing more embryos than
are feasible to implant in utero at a single time. This overproduction
of embryos requires the surplus to be stored for later possible
use.
With the routine overproduction of embryos in IVF-ET questions
arise that science alone cannot answer. Technology, it seems,
has outpaced our understanding of the fundamental legal, political,
theological, and moral issues in the creation and management
of human embryos.
Christians and defenders of human dignity who acknowledge
embryos to be preborn persons have a dual responsibility to
protect the innocent and also to do no harm. The stakes are
high because, as Ron Stoddart founder of Nightlight Christian
Adoptions stresses, "An embryo is not a potential human
life-it is human life with potential."
Four U.S. embryo adoption programs facilitate embryo adoption:
Nightlight Christian Adoptions, Center for Human Reproduction,
Bethany Christian Services, and the National Embryo Donation
Center. The goal of each is to transfer frozen donor embryos
to infertile recipients who intend to use them to procreate.
At first glance, embryo adoption appears to be a life-affirming
response to the vast number of frozen embryos being stored
at fertility clinics. And it certainly is compared to the
100 percent mortality rate for human embryos used in stem
cell research. Yet, it is not without problems. In embryo
adoption, as in IVF-ET, it often takes repeated attempts before
a successful pregnancy is achieved with frozen donor embryos.
At this point, what is the relevant moral difference between
IVF-ET and embryo adoption? Have the embryos lost in unsuccessful
thawing and transfer attempts been treated properly as individually
unique and personal beings created in God's image? Can any
form of technology that instrumentalizes life, regardless
of the ultimate use to which it is put, be morally satisfying?
These questions point to a moral Catch-22 for Christians who
support IVF-ET and embryo adoption. Embryo adoption is, at
best, a response to the embryo surplus created by IVF-ET,
which itself raises fundamental moral questions that Protestant
ethicists have not yet probed in sufficient depth.
Among Protestants in general, there is an absence of critical
moral discernment on bioethical issues outside the scope of
abortion debate. This stems, in part, from Protestant skepticism
toward natural law (God's will as expressed in creation, imprinted
on the conscience, and known through reason) and from an underdeveloped
role for the legal, as opposed to the teaching, aspect of
ethics. Informing people what principles ought to guide their
conduct and what actions are morally illicit is the teaching
aspect of ethics, whereas developing theological and philosophical
criteria to adjudicate the morality and severity of illicit
human acts is the legal aspect.
The now-neglected legal aspect of Protestant ethics was once
a vital part of Anglican and Puritan moral theology. Older
Protestant luminaries developed texts on "cases of conscience,"
which attempted to discern whether a specific behavior was
right or wrong and to evaluate the moral gravity of wrong
behavior. They were assisted in this project by their appropriation
of Christian Aristotelian philosophy and the natural-law tradition.
Routine overproduction of embryos and high mortality rates
suggest that IVF-ET degrades and instrumentalizes the very
life it seeks to create. The fundamental purpose of every
embryo is to realize its own life: to fulfill its divine purpose
of achieving life as a rational, social, creative, spiritual,
and morally free and responsible person. In assisted reproduction
and cryopreservation-unlike in normal conception and gestation-the
natural progression of an embryo's life from potential to
actual can be temporarily interrupted, stalled for a time,
or worse, permanently thwarted from achieving its purpose.
So aside from the issue of what to do with surplus embryos,
the more fundamental question remains: How will pro-life Christian
supporters of IVF-ET and embryo adoption resolve the moral
Catch-22 brought to light by the vast stores of nascent human
life? Protestants need to think seriously about this moral
paradox and to retrieve older, more sophisticated traditions
in ethics-such as natural law-to provide assistance.
This commentary is adapted from a longer essay that first
appeared in the July/August edition of BreakPoint Worldview
magazine.
Stephen J. Grabill is executive editor of the Journal of
Markets & Morality, published by the Acton Institute.
Phil Tompkins: philtomp@cablespeed.com (2006-09-06
17:47:44)
In such discussions such as yours, it is useful to distinguish
two different meanings of the term "life": 1) biological
life and 2) what I will call personal life.Biological life
is the coordinated functioning body parts.Personal life is
the series of actions and experiences of the person whose
life it is.
Biological life is the medium (instrument) through which
personal life happens. Biological life is valuable not in
itself, but because it supports personal life.
Personal life arises with the formation of the brain and
the emergence of the mind. It is personal life that has value
and dignity, that we have a right to, that we share with a
loved one. It is what we fear losing and what we mourn the
taking of.
What do we mean by "person"? It's difficult to
come up with an abstract definition, but it's easy to give
examples. Sam Brownback is a person. If E.T. were real, he
would be a person.
There are grey areas. Is the Yeti or Koko the Gorilla (Koko
has learned to sign - see www.koko.org) or a 25 week-old fetus
a person? It's unclear.
But we are not in a grey area when we consider the 5 day
old blastocyst. A blastocyst is not a person, because it cannot
think or act or have experience. The life that begins at conception
is all biological.
If you believe that a 5 day old blastocyst is a person,
you commit what in ancient Greek philosophy is called the
fallacy of the heap. Starting with a heap of sand, if you
remove one grain at a time, you still are left with a heap.
Continue the process until the "heap" consists of
only a few grains.
At the 5-day stage of embryonic development when stem cells
are extracted there is no one whose rights are violated or
whose life is taken, because there is as yet no person, no
"who." That is why donation to medical research
of surplus embryos created in vitro is the moral equivalent
to organ donation, not human sacrifice.
Having made this distinction, we can say that an embryo is
both a potential (future) human life (personal) and a human
life (biological) with potential.
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Stephen
J. Grabill is executive editor of the 
