(LifeSiteNews) — Joining me on this episode of The John Henry Westen Show from the Bringing America Back to Life Convention is Catholic bioethicist Dr. Elizabeth Rex. We discussed the controversial issue of IVF, whether Catholics should adopt frozen embryos, and more.
After briefly discussing Rex’s background, I noted how the Catholic Church has consistently taught that in vitro fertilization (IVF) and similar techniques are “morally unacceptable.” Still, there is debate in the Church over whether adopting the frozen embryos from IVF can be morally permissible.
We watched a clip from Raymond Arroyo’s recent interview with Father Tad Pacholczyk, a bioethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC), in which the host asked Fr. Tad specifically about whether Catholics could adopt these frozen embryos.
“We’ve heard of adopting these embryos that are frozen, where women come in and say, ‘I’m going to adopt this frozen embryo.’ And she has it implanted in her womb,” Arroyo said in the clip. “And now does that suddenly make it moral? Is it now a moral good?”
“First of all, the Church in its most recent document on the question of embryo adoption was very clear that there are significant concerns around this,” Fr. Tad said. “And in some cases, it pointed out that it’s not allowed at all.”
I noted how interesting Fr. Tad’s answer is here since he says the Church has concerns over adopting these embryos, but by saying “in some cases it’s not allowed at all,” he’s also indicating that there are cases when this is allowed.
I asked Rex under what circumstances embryo adoption would and would not be allowed according to Catholic teaching.
She disagreed with Fr. Tad’s assessment, emphasizing that the Church has never condemned embryo adoption. Citing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) documents Donum Vitae and Dignitas Personae, Rex stressed that while conceiving children through IVF is immoral, it is also immoral to then freeze those embryos through cryopreservation.
“Donum Vitae in 1987 had one paragraph that condemned [the] freezing of embryos. And it says [cryopreservation] harms them, it kills them, it presupposes their conception using IVF, and it deprives them of maternal shelter and gestation,” she said.
“This is what the Catholic Church said: You cannot deprive an embryo from maternal shelter, reception, and gestation. Dignitas Personae says [embryos] cannot be deprived of maternal reception and gestation,” she added.
“So once you’ve got these little embryos, you should put them in the mother and gestate them until birth if they will implant.”
Then Rex highlighted how the Church condemns the freezing of embryos as intrinsically evil because of how vulnerable the embryos become.
“[Frozen embryos] can be thawed and killed and discarded as medical waste. They can be ‘donated’ to research labs for experimentation and killed,” she said. “So the Church condemns all of these further violations that can happen once a child has been frozen.”
To hear more from Dr. Elizabeth Rex, watch or listen to this episode of The John-Henry Westen Show.
The John-Henry Westen Show is available by video on the show’s YouTube channel and right here on my LifeSite blog.
It is also available in audio format on platforms such as Spotify, Soundcloud, and Acast. We are awaiting approval for iTunes and Google Play as well. To subscribe to the audio version on various channels, visit the Acast webpage here.
We’ve created a special email list for the show so that we can notify you every week when we post a new episode. Please sign up now by clicking here. You can also subscribe to the YouTube channel, and you’ll be notified by YouTube when there is new content.
You can send me feedback, or ideas for show topics by emailing [email protected].
RELATED
Jewelry company dehumanizes babies by turning unused human embryos into pendants
‘Embryo adoption’ is a false solution to the mass destruction of children through IVF
Bishop Strickland, pro-life leaders criticize Trump’s ‘tragic’ IVF executive order
