Contrary to the claims of many Catholic ethicists that the teaching of Dignitas personae leaves the question of human embryo rescue completely open and unresolved, this article argues that the only natural and reasonable reading of what is plainly taught in that document compels one to the conclusion that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has implicitly and de facto committed itself to the rejection of heterologous embryo rescue. In other words, if one accepts the moral premises which the text clearly lays down, sound practical reasoning leaves one no alternative but to conclude that heterologous embryo transfer rescue is ethically unacceptable. Accordingly, if the CDF were now subsequently to say that embryo rescue is morally licit, it would have to reverse itself on certain moral claims that it committed itself to in Dignitas personae.
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References
1.
Unless otherwise noted, my use of the word “intention,” following the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), signifies the remote end chosen by the acting subject, as opposed to the proximate end which is the object specifying the act. Cf. CCC, n. 1750, “The morality of human acts depends on: - the object chosen; - the end in view or the intention; - the circumstances of the action. The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the ‘sources,’ or constitutive elements, of the morality of human acts.”
2.
CDF, Dignitas personae, n. 19, original emphasis.
3.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will refer to the version of HET condemned by the CDF here as “illicit HET adoption.” Thus, I employ this latter term as a synonym for HET as a remedy for infertility. My use of the term “HET rescue” refers to an act of HET whose principal intention is the rescue of a frozen human embryo.
4.
Christian BruggerE.“A Defense by Analogy of Heterologous Embryo Transfer,”Human Embryo Adoption: Biotechnology, Marriage, and the Right to Life, eds. ThomasV., BergL.C., and FurtonEdward J. (Philadelphia, PA and Thornwood, NY: The National Catholic Bioethics Center and the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, 2006), 200–201.
5.
Fr. Thomas Williams has similarly reasoned, “Adoptive motherhood, be it gestational or social, will never make a woman the mother of the child in a strict sense, since she did not beget the child but rather assumes responsibility for and nourishes a preexisting human being…. All of this leads me to the necessary conclusion that a woman who chooses to welcome an embryo into her womb provides safe harbor and nutrition for the child but does not become the child's mother. Therefore, Donum vitae's teaching (II.A.2) that the bond existing between husband and wife accords the spouses the exclusive right to become mother and father solely through each other is fully respected in the case of embryo adoption.” Thomas D. Williams, “Heterologous Embryo Transfer and the Meaning of ‘Becoming a Mother,”’ in Berg and Furton, Human Embryo Adoption, 247-248.
6.
Surrogate motherhood is not explicitly treated in Dignitas personae. For the two senses of surrogacy as understood by the CDF, one must turn to Donum vitae: “By ‘surrogate mother’ the Instruction means: a) 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.’ She 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. b) the woman who carries in pregnancy an embryo to whose procreation she has contributed the donation of her own ovum, fertilized through insemination with the sperm of a man other than her husband. She carries the pregnancy with a pledge to surrender the child once it is born to the party who commissioned or made the agreement for the pregnancy.” CDF, Donum vitae, II.A.3. While it would be fruitful to examine the ways in which surrogate motherhood violates the unitive and procreative goods of marriage, we will confine our discussion to heterologous IVF.
7.
CDF, Dignitas personae, n. 12, original emphasis, quoting idem, Donum vitae, II.B.4.
8.
At first glance it might not seem that HET as a remedy for infertility bears any relevance to the first good adduced by Dignitas personae, namely, the right to life and to physical integrity of every human being from conception to natural death. The reason for this is that one is already dealing with existing embryos, which is to say, with life that has already been created and which one is now trying to nurture by placing it in a woman's womb. However, further reflection on the procedures almost certainly to be involved in HET suggests that a utilitarian and dehumanizing logic would still be at work. For instance, because many embryos are damaged in the freezing and thawing process, it would be tempting to thaw more than one is planning on adopting to insure that one had a healthy, intact embryo to transfer. Either refreezing or discarding these spare embryos would involve one in the same evils one sees in IVF. Even if one thawed only a single frozen embryo out of a desire to avoid this problem, it is not unlikely that that embryo will have been damaged by the freezing or thawing process but not destroyed. In such a situation, the overwhelmingly strong temptation would be to not implant it, for it would almost certainly not make it, or develop in a severely defective manner. However, if one does not follow through with the transfer, how can the conclusion be avoided that one has subjected human life to a utilitarian or pernicious “quality of life” logic and become complicit in the destruction of a human embryo?
9.
CDF, Dignitas personae, n. 19.
10.
CDF, Dignitas personae, n. 19, emphasis added.
11.
MayWilliam E.“The Object of the Acting Woman in Embryo Rescue,” in Berg, and Furton, Human Embryo Adoption, 143–144, original emphasis.
12.
CDF, Dignitas personae, n. 13, original emphasis.
13.
CDF, Dignitas personae, n. 19.
14.
For an articulation and defense of this approach, see OlesonChristopher, “The Nuptial Womb: On the Moral Significance of Being ‘With Child,”’ in Berg and Furton, Human Embryo Adoption, 165–195. See also the following in the same volume: Nicholas Tonti-Filippini, “The Embryo Rescue Debate: Impregnating Women, Ectogenesis, and Restoration from Suspended Animation,” 69-114; Mary Geach, “The Female Act of Allowing an Intromission of Impregnating Kind,” 251-271; and Tad Pacholczyk, “Some Moral contraindications to Embryo Adoption,” 37-53.
15.
CDF, Dignitas personae, n. 19, quoting John Paul II, Address to the participants in the Symposium on “Evangelium vitae and Law” and the Eleventh International Colloquium on Roman and Canon Law (May 24, 1996), 6 (AAS 88 [1996]: 943-944).
16.
CDF, Donum vitae, I.5.
17.
SmithWilliam B.“Rescue the Frozen?”Homiletic and Pastoral Review96.1 (October 1995): 72–74.
18.
MayWilliam for example, writes, “The final paragraph of no. 19 declares: '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.’ This is definitely true. Someone, however, might argue that this sentence implies that embryo adoption is morally wrong and for that reason its practice cannot resolve the injustice that has been done to abandoned embryos. That argument would be fallacious. Even if the practice of embryo adoption were so widely accepted by upright people that no abandoned embryo was left to die, all of those embryos would have suffered an injustice not rectified by the upright people who came to their rescue, just as injustices to other victims of wrongdoing are not rectified by the efforts of upright third parties to prevent or mitigate the injuries done by wrongdoers.” William E. May, “Summary and Reflections on Dignitas Personae” (2009), original emphasis, http://culture-of-life.org/content/view/536/1/.
19.
PaulJohnII Address to the participants in the Symposium on “Evangelium vitae and Law”: “there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos.”
