The moral CRISIS of IVF： Can Catholics Adopt Frozen Embryos？
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Summary
In the pro-life world, there is when children are abandoned or mothers want to go for an abortion, they are offered adoption as an alternative. Well, guess what? For all those frozen babies, the possibility of adoption has also been offered. But it s fraught with some kind of worry about whether it s moral or not, and many people are debating that very question.
Transcript
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The church has not condemned embryo adoption at all, so I disagree with Father Tad.
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Hey my friends, it's an amazing thing that the issue of IVF has been raised because
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that enables us to talk about it. It's been raised because Trump talked about it and all of a sudden
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there's a new interest in it and a look at it that enables people to realize the absent destruction
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that it causes the embryo. All sorts of pro-life leaders have now spoken out on it, especially
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Bishop Joseph Strickland, who came out right away when the Republicans started talking about this
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and said how it is immoral. Inside that debate, however, there is another problem. Because IVF
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creates these thousands and thousands and thousands, in fact millions, of human embryos who are then
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frozen and they're sitting there in suspended sort of animation waiting to be implanted by their
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mothers. What does that do? What does that do? Are all those babies then doomed to die? Because
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oh yes, they are babies. Yes, they're tiny, but they are babies. In the pro-life world, there is when
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children are abandoned or mothers want to go for an abortion, they're offered adoption as an
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alternative. Well, guess what? For all those frozen babies, the possibility of adoption has also been
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offered. But it's fraught with some kind of worry about if it's moral or not. And many people are
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debating that very question. In fact, if you saw an interview on Raymond Arroyo's recent program
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with Father Tad, I'll get his last name later, he seemed to indicate that it was all negative,
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that you could never do it. He didn't quite say that. In fact, he said in some cases, it is
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totally impermissible, which leaves open the door. But you wouldn't have heard the other side because
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he didn't say it. Most would have walked away thinking, oh, well, that's off the table.
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But I'm here to tell you, it's not. We've got with us an expert in the issue. My friends,
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we're here with Dr. Elizabeth Rex. So good to be with you. Thank you so much. You are a,
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not only a doctor, you're a bioethicist as well. Is that right? Yes, I am a Catholic bioethicist.
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I taught Catholic bioethics at Holy Apostles College and Seminary for many years. I have my
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doctorate in Thomistic ethics from the University of Navarre. I was in Rome for three years.
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And I'm fascinated by bioethics, especially beginning of life bioethics, and especially
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the fate of these frozen embryos. And being an adoptive mother, my husband and I have two,
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we suffered infertility. We looked into all medical reasons. And then we even looked into
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not IVF, but using hyper ovulation, which is permissible. And I was an older mother. We got
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married when I was 40 and he was 40. And how old were your kids when they were adopted?
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My son was born when I was 45. And we were looking into adoption. That's when I got pregnant.
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So we looked at each other and we said, wow, adoption really works. So why don't we try that
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again? And then we adopted our son. And when we were 50, we adopted our daughter.
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Oh, it was newborns. So Christopher Slattery, who was expecting mother care, a couple walked in,
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they were not married. It was an impossible situation. And fortunately, they thought they
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walked into Planned Parenthood, but they walked into a pregnancy care center. And he asked them,
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would you think about adoption? And they weren't so sure. They said they would think about it. And
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then they came back. And so Chris called us and we said, bring them to our home. Let's meet them.
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And the rest is history. Our daughter's now 26. We're so proud of her. She has met her biological
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parents to thank them for choosing life and choosing adoption.
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Absolutely beautiful. In a way, I'm really grateful to President Trump for raising the
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issue of adoption because it brings back the idea of it. And people are thinking about it again. In
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fact, there's more discussion now about IVF probably than there has been in the last 20 years
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because of the focus on it. And it's enabled pro-lifers who are also very strong in the administration
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to say, whoa, let's wait a minute. Let's talk about this. And in talking about this,
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we got that interview with Raymond Arroyo. I want to play part of it because Raymond asks
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Father Tad, what's his last name? I pronounce it Paholchik. I think that's who Rick.
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Okay. So Father Tad, a part of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, very prominent theologian.
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And he's asked by Raymond about IVF, but then he gets into, as Raymond asks him,
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as we'll see now, about embryo adoption. Watch.
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We've heard of adopting these embryos that are frozen, where women come in and say, you know,
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I'm going to adopt this frozen embryo. And she has it implanted in her womb. And now, you know,
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does that suddenly make it moral? Is it now a moral good?
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Well, I think that, first of all, the church in its most recent document on the question of
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embryo adoption was very clear that there are significant concerns around this. And in some
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cases, it pointed out that it's not allowed at all. Before I continue, are you enjoying this video?
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freedom is worth fighting for. So that's interesting because he's talking about embryo adoption.
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And then he says that, you know, the church has concerns about this. And then he says, in some
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cases, it is not allowed at all. Which actually indicates, at least according to Father Tad,
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in some cases, it is allowed. Because he said, in some cases, it's not allowed at all. So in some
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cases, I guess that means would be there are other cases that it is allowed. So that's interesting.
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But in this interview, he comes away, you only get a negative perception. In other words, it seems
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like it's never allowed at all. That's not exactly what he said. But when you put it only in the
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negative, that's what you'd walk away with. Dr. Rex, I'd like to hear from you where it is allowed
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and where it is not allowed. There are concerns around embryo adoption. What are those? And where
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is it morally permissible? The church, the Vatican, and the USCCB have both stated the day that
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Dignitas Personae was released. What is Dignitas Personae? Dignitas Personae is the instruction that was
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promulgated by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith regarding certain bioethical issues. It was
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an update to important issues following the instruction in Dona Vitae in 1987. So 1987 to 2008,
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there were a lot of issues. And one of the major issues was what to do with all of the frozen
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embryos. So now we're under the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. Right. And you were saying the USCCB
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and the Vatican both said something. Yes. The big question was prenatal adoption. And at that point
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in 2008, the world's first adopted frozen embryo, Hannah Strege, was born on December 31st, 1998. So now
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it's been 10 years and a lot of frozen embryos are being adopted. So President Bush actually promoted
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embryo adoption. He banned embryonic stem cell research and he said they're children. He actually
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invited all of the snowflake children to the Oval Office when he vetoed. His first veto was to veto the,
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I believe it was the Senate's bill that had authorized taxpayer money to experiment on frozen embryos.
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And these are the snowflake children. I want people to see these snowflake children were
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children frozen as embryos, then adopted and implanted into wombs of their adopted mothers
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and then born and alive. And now here's, as you'll see the background surrounding the president,
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President Bush. Yes. And he is holding up one of these cute little babies, boys and others are
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running around the Oval Office. And he said, they're children. These are not body parts to be
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experimenting on. And he actually authorized embryo adoption awareness. I think it was a million or $2
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million a year. And Snowflake's embryo adoption program grabbed those funds and started promoting
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embryo adoption. And as of right now, there are probably about 3,000 children that would have
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been adopted as frozen embryos. Hannah was one of 20. Her parents gave birth to her, gestated her and
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gave birth to her. And now she's 26 years old. She's beautiful. I know the whole family. And they
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are strong supporters. 19 of her siblings did not survive the freezing and the thawing or the
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transfer. But she did. She was in the last transfer of three. There's a picture of her as a little
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embryo before she was transferred to her mother's womb. And she managed to survive. We don't know which
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of the three she is, but there she is. And she uses that. I was viable at conception. Here's a picture
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of me. And I was frozen for two years. And so she actually filed an amicus brief in the Dobbs decision
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saying viability is at conception. I am living proof. Here I am. So anyway, it's been a very important
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instruction, dignitas personae. And the problem was that there were hundreds of thousands of frozen
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embryos just here in the United States. For years, there were 400,000. And I was
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probably a million and a half. And still the question is what to do with them. So I, as a
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Catholic bioethicist and studying Dr. William Mays, I really recommend this book to all of your
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listeners. It's called Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life. And he's a strong supporter of
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embryo adoption. And the church has not condemned embryo adoption at all. So I disagree with Father
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Ted. And I wrote an article for the National Catholic Bioethics quarterly. And there was some
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debate whether we could just discuss it, but not do it. And my position was, of course, we can discuss
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it. We need to discuss it. But the church has not prohibited the practice of embryo adoption. And
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actually, Monsignor Reno Fisichella, who was president of the Pontifical Academy for Life,
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on the day that dignitas personae was released to the world, said the practice was not prohibited.
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Let's take a look at that article. This was from an article from Cindy Wooden in 2008,
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interviewing the archbishop. And what are the quotes exactly there?
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She quotes Monsignor Reno Fisichella. And what he said, as president of the Pontifical Academy for
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Life, was reiterated by the USCCB, who did their own official announcement and basically repeated
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what the Vatican was saying. And so it has not been prohibited. And so in my article, I said,
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if the Catholic, we can be certain that the church has not prohibited embryo adoption. They said so.
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And to be clear, the church totally forbids IVF in the first quarter.
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So the creation of these things, the problem is this. There are all sorts of really good treatments
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for infertility that are actually more successful than IVF. Napro technology, explain that really in a
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This is very important. There's Napro technology, there's reproduction medicine. And this is the
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first, if a couple is infertile, check yourselves out. Go to a doctor. And there are clinics that
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specialize in helping infertile couples. And it's about 50-50. You'd be surprised. Infertility in women
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and sterility in men is about 50-50. So you both need to check yourselves out, as we did. My husband
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and I did that. I had fibroids. I had to have surgery to remove the fibroids. And then I was older.
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So again, they recommended something that Catholics could do. I would not recommend it.
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But there's something called hyperovulation, which is you just, you give the woman, the older woman,
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the hormones she needs. You shut down the ovaries for a period of time, and then you jumpstart them,
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and you've got more eggs. So you've got a better chance of natural intercourse marital
00:14:10.980
relations to conceive a child. Well, we did that twice, and it didn't work.
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Yeah. And that's really key. God ordained that life should come into the world from the sexual
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And this is God's means method. This is God's ordination for how children are to come into the
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world. In fact, the Vatican, well, they had a whole bunch of documents that I summarized into one
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sentence. The child has the right to be conceived in a loving union of a husband and wife.
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And so it is God's plan and the right of the child. We have no right to go against it.
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So all these interventions that are allowed are ones that work with the bodies that are either on
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the man's side or the woman's side that are somehow defective and medically or however, to assist that
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natural act of procreation to be successful in achieving a child. And so that's licit. IVF procedure
00:15:10.260
is something totally different. Described probably crudely in layman's terms is it's they stimulate
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the ovaries like that. But then the extract the eggs from the woman. Oh, I know, but but everybody
00:15:22.720
thinks of it as and then they get the man to masturbate, which is totally forbidden all by
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itself. And those collect the semen and then combine them in like a Petri dish sort of thing.
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And then you get all sorts of embryos, all sorts of living human beings created. Yes, God is still
00:15:39.260
involved in their creation, but they're not done. It's not happening in the way it's meant to. And so
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that's a horror all by itself. Then take it from there. They then freeze these embryos. Tell us about
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that because it's a it's a horror from the start, the way these poor children were brought into this
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world. But even beyond that, then they do something that the Vatican's really condemned.
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Cryopreservation. Both Don and Vitae in 1987 had one paragraph that condemned freezing of embryos.
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And it says it harms them. It kills them. It presupposes their conception in vitro using IPF.
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And it deprives them of maternal shelter and gestation. This is what the Catholic Church said.
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You cannot deprive an embryo from maternal shelter or reception and gestation. Dignitas Personae says
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cannot be deprived of maternal reception and gestation. So once you've got these little embryos,
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you should put them in the mother and gestate them until birth if they will implant. That's a big gift.
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But long story short, when they're frozen, they can also be destroyed. They can be thawed and
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killed and discarded as medical waste. They can be donated, quote unquote, to research labs for
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experimentation and killed. So the Church condemns all of these further violations that can happen once
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a child has been frozen. It's susceptible. So freezing is absolutely condemned as intrinsically evil.
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It's funny because a lot of the moral theologians arguing this point, I think Father Tad does this
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well, not in this interview, but in other places, suggest that the moral way forward, because embryo
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adoption is so controversial and morally uncertain, is to keep them frozen. But the Vatican's on and on
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about condemning freezing. So that's really weird to say keep them frozen, then aren't you sort of
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keeping doing what the Vatican said not to do in the first place?
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And that's why Bishop Strickland actually said, read Donum Vitae, read Dignitas Personae, Catholics who
00:18:00.460
are suffering from infertility. And everybody wants a child when you're married and you think it'd be so
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easy, but it's not sometimes. And so read what the Church has to say. And I might give a little plug to
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my book here. I have just published with Charles Robertson, Dr. Charles Robertson. It's a handbook
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on the moral arguments in the embryo adoption debate. There are two sides to the debate. We
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actually debated each other and we found that we were getting closer and closer to finding common
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ground. And one of the common grounds is you condemn freezing. And if you read it carefully,
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every word is very important. It even condemns freezing temporarily. Because sometimes you have
00:18:42.660
to, if you're testing them, and that is eugenics. Father Tad was very right in saying that. It's
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a testing, prenatal testing, prenatal genetic diagnosis, PGD, is eugenics. This is what the racial,
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you know, no, no problems or I'm not going to transfer you. So while the tests come back,
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they have to freeze them. Because the little embryo, there are four stages of human development
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that happen in a week. Implantation happens at stage five. So for the testing to come back,
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where you can determine sex, male, female, if there's Down syndrome, any number of problems,
00:19:27.680
then you have to freeze them until the test results come back. So if it's, oh, I wanted a girl,
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not a boy, or, you know, oh, it's got Down syndrome, I'm not, I'm not going to do that.
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Cryopreservation should be banned universally as a crime against humanity. I mean, Nazis were
00:19:45.560
experimenting with freezing human beings. That is absolutely, adults, it's against the law,
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you cannot freeze yourself, let alone a child who's innocent, voiceless, defenseless.
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So this is really, and it's because even temporarily, and let alone indefinitely,
00:20:04.940
they said evil, well, you're preserving his life, but you're using something evil for a good
00:20:09.580
intention. It doesn't work that way. The end does not justify the means. And especially taking out
00:20:15.600
a trust and saving up money so that when you're dead, you can keep paying fertility clinics to keep
00:20:22.680
your children frozen. Doesn't make sense. No. And those have been some of the suggestions because
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the moral situation being sort of uncertain, some have suggested going down this road, except that
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the cryopreservation, the freezing of them is right away condemned. So can't do that. So let's,
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I want to play the second part of what Father Tad said to Raymond Arroyo, because that created extra
00:20:49.460
confusion, at least for me. If it's done as a treatment for infertility, it is not allowed at
00:20:57.300
all. So you ask yourself, all right, if the church is saying there are some circumstances in which
00:21:01.720
embryo adoption is simply forbidden, then, you know, what's behind that? There's a lot of concerns.
00:21:08.400
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bless you. He said for infertile couples, in some cases it's absolutely forbidden. What is he meaning
00:21:47.600
there? And does that mean that couples who are infertile, who have tried, let's say, everything else,
00:21:53.880
they shouldn't go for embryo adoption or what? That's Father Tad's position. And he's been defending
00:22:02.560
it for a long time. And I'm on the other side. Okay. And I've been defending embryo adoption for
00:22:09.400
a long time. So we have exchanged emails, we've spoken briefly. But I am convinced that the solution
00:22:19.900
is in the teachings of the Catholic Church, in the documents themselves, and that we have to look at
00:22:24.900
them and discuss these things together, as Charles Robertson and I have done in this book, and find
00:22:31.460
that in this case, this is a very confusing sentence. And what the Catholic Church, and I can read it if
00:22:39.480
you don't mind. Yeah, please. In Dignitas Personae number 19, it says, the proposal that these embryos
00:22:47.300
could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility, and it's italicized,
00:22:57.460
is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which make artificial, heterologous, which means
00:23:07.040
donor sperm, donor eggs, a donor, procreation illicit, as well as any form of surrogate motherhood.
00:23:15.820
The proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a treatment
00:23:21.480
for infertility is not ethically acceptable. What are they saying there?
00:23:28.320
My interpretation of this, and I have discussed it with others, is that this is referring to an
00:23:34.220
infertility treatment that is well known as the three-parent embryos.
00:23:41.400
Yeah, it says specifically that the proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal
00:23:48.060
of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility is not ethically acceptable. And then it goes on to
00:23:55.100
say, for the same reasons which make artificial heterologous procreation illicit. Go ahead.
00:24:03.140
Which is this treatment for infertile couples that they use embryos for?
00:24:06.760
The woman can have a mitochondrial defect, genetic problem in her cytoplasm of the egg. And so
00:24:21.100
And it has a diseased mitochondria around the pronucleus.
00:24:26.140
And so they take a donor embryo from another couple, and it's an embryo. So it's been fertilized. It's
00:24:32.920
a child. And that donor embryo can be used as a treatment for their own embryo.
00:24:42.080
And in the process, the donor embryo is destroyed.
00:24:46.300
They can transfer either the cytoplasm. They can transfer their own nucleus into the healthy
00:24:54.980
And there's also a spindle transfer. I mean, they can...
00:24:58.580
Well, I mean, just to simplify things, it's very much like... Because the children we're
00:25:03.700
talking about are live. So it'd be like taking lungs or a heart out of a live person to give
00:25:10.360
to another live person with a bad heart so that they could live.
00:25:13.000
That's a good example. And so the church condemns that, rightly so. An infertility treatment
00:25:19.500
for a couple like IVF or insemination or a surrogacy cannot use donor embryos for their
00:25:29.100
own embryo. So they're killing an embryo to save their own embryo.
00:25:33.820
That is what... That infertility treatment using embryos is what is specifically forbidden.
00:25:40.780
And where does the document say that it seems that there might... That there still is this
00:25:52.780
In the next paragraph, so it's separate, and it actually says, it has also been proposed
00:25:59.200
solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are otherwise condemned to destruction,
00:26:04.540
that there could be a form of prenatal adoption. Dignitas personae calls these hundreds of thousands,
00:26:12.960
now millions of frozen embryos, orphans. It actually baboons the fact and says their parents
00:26:20.160
don't come back for them. In fact, all trace of the parents has been lost. So could, you know,
00:26:27.040
prenatal adoption be an option? And basically, you would say the Pope is hoping that yes, that they
00:26:34.260
could be saved, that these orphans could be lovingly adopted by another family and gestated and born and
00:26:43.820
raised in the family. I'm an adoptive mother, and there's only one mother. In order for embryo adoption,
00:26:49.880
which is completely different as an infertility treatment, it has to be legal. So parental rights are
00:26:58.660
terminated from the biological or the genetic parents and established. This is what should happen. And Georgia
00:27:06.500
does have an embryo adoption law. It's the first state to pass an embryo adoption law. And you can find an embryo
00:27:12.780
adoption model law on the website of Americans United for Life. They've created a model bill that
00:27:20.440
could be passed. And for the purpose of adoption, you don't adopt property. The embryo is labeled like
00:27:27.380
in Louisiana as a juridical person. So you're adopting a child. It's really an adoption, a legal
00:27:35.700
adoption like any other adoption, whether, you know, a newborn or an older child. This is an orphan
00:27:45.320
that can and should be adopted. If the parents, for whatever reason, cannot or will not raise their
00:27:54.040
own child, then the only two options are either raise the child yourself, or place the child for
00:28:00.440
adoption. It's for an unplanned pregnancy. Those are the two choices that are moral. And plan, you know,
00:28:08.100
to raise your own children. Look at, Hannah was one of 20. Somebody might have 20 embryos that are
00:28:14.780
frozen or more. They're not all going to survive, even with the best of care. But try to, if you have
00:28:22.720
two or three at home, or maybe five or six or seven or eight. There are larger families. I knew a family
00:28:27.480
had 21 kids in Chicago a long time ago. And so large families are blessed by the Catholic Church.
00:28:34.780
And that would be the first is open your heart, open your home, bring your children home. And,
00:28:40.120
but if not, adoption is a good choice. It's always been praised by the Catholic Church.
00:28:45.320
Widows and orphans, back to the Old Testament. Yeah.
00:28:47.700
So, they're orphans. And they're our neighbors. The last paragraph in Dona Vitae, and it's,
00:28:55.760
they are the least of our brethren. These are works of mercy to welcome the stranger,
00:29:01.820
to shelter the homeless, to feed and to clothe. Adoption means love. It is a loving choice by the
00:29:12.180
replacing family that doesn't want to destroy them, wants them to be. And it can be an open
00:29:17.160
adoption. You can choose a family and have an open adoption that the siblings would get to know each
00:29:24.000
other, and they would realize what happened. Maybe, you know, it's a lesson learned that
00:29:28.180
you really shouldn't have done IVF. And the neighbors and the family are all going to find out. And some
00:29:34.060
people don't want anyone to know, but let's save what the children who are innocent and who need
00:29:41.300
loving families. And if you really think you cannot raise your frozen embryos, there is a good
00:29:46.900
choice. It is adoption. So, there's the Snowflake Embryo Adoption Program in California. It's online.
00:29:53.100
And then there's the National Embryo Donation Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. I recommend both of them.
00:30:00.380
But, you know, do your homework, and they'll help you. There's no cost to the placing family.
00:30:06.440
You know, they'll take your embryos. The National Embryo Donation Center,
00:30:10.080
you won't have to pay the fertility clinics anymore. Yeah. So, bring them. They'll keep
00:30:15.860
them safe. Their criers stored until they're adopted. They'll find you can work with them to
00:30:21.560
find a family, a faithful Catholic family who's going to bring them up and baptize them and all,
00:30:27.840
you know, that great education and support that they need all throughout until they die. Yeah.
00:30:33.520
Because that's what adoption is. Adoption is forever. It's a forever family.
00:30:38.300
So, I think there are many reasons that we should, we in the pro-life movement should be promoting
00:30:44.400
reading the documents yourself. Buy my book. You can hear both sides. And we really came together.
00:30:50.460
I think a lot of the confusion is when does pregnancy begin? Is it at fertilization or
00:30:59.260
implantation? And as we know, it's fertilization. And implantation is a week later. But Guttmacher
00:31:09.880
Institute and Planned Parents said, oh no, you know, it's not a child until it implants. It goes as far
00:31:15.960
as to say, conception and pregnancy begin at implantation. Well, that's false. Scientifically,
00:31:22.960
morally, it begins at fertilization, which is when God provides the soul created by God. Mother and
00:31:31.640
father provide the body, but the mystery of man is at the moment of conception when we become a child
00:31:39.560
of God as well as a child of the parents. Beautiful. Dr. Elizabeth Rex, thank you so very much for joining us
00:31:45.560
for explaining this to us. We're going to have many of your articles on LifeSite News so that people can go and
00:31:51.340
read more about it. They should get your book. And especially for those pro-life families that are
00:31:56.400
looking to adopt, this is one option. And as Dr. Rex said, read the documentation, discern in prayer
00:32:07.360
what you should do. But thank you so very much. Thank you. God bless you. Thank you. And God bless all of you.
00:32:18.860
Hi, everyone. This is Fr. James Altman for LifeSite News. We hope you enjoyed this video. For more content
00:32:26.020
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