The question of so-called "prenatal adoption" or "embryo rescue" divides people of good faith committed to protecting human life. It seems that moral intuitions on this question differ and some careful reflection is required.
Part of the confusion is the effect of separating the procreative from the unitive dimensions of marriage. The whole context of frozen embryos is so divorced from the ordinary, from the understandable, that ordinary moral intuitions are no real guide. Clearly the problem should not be created in the first place. The technology of separating the procreative from the unitive imperils nascent human life and is contrary to the dignity of the embryo, of man and of woman, and their union, through its dominance over the generative process and the new life. The context of reproductive technology lacks the sacredness that is a feature of marital love of two becoming one flesh (Genesis 2:24) open to the Creator's will.
But people will do wrong, and embryos are being created in laboratories and in large numbers, many with no prospect of ever being removed from storage and returned to a state and an environment in which dynamism is restored and they can develop.1 May they be rescued? How may they be rescued?
Standing in one of the Melbourne clinics before the freezer unit where frozen embryos were stored, these questions struck me with some force. There was a sense in which they cried out:
The Lord said to Cain: "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground" (Gn 4:10). The voice of the blood shed by men continues to cry out, from generation to generation, in ever new and different ways.2
Cryopreservation of embryos raises some profound questions. Are these embryos living? Are they in a state of suspended animation?3 Is this different in kind from a person who is rendered unconscious by a general anesthetic or by hypothermia? Is the desire to transfer and implant these deserted, imperiled human beings legitimate, and if so by transfer to:
Prima facie the most plausible case4 would seem to be that of an infertile married couple who have tried to have their own children but cannot. Prenatally adopting would not in any sense displace having children of their own. As married people they can offer both father and mother to the child and the security of their union. Prenatal adoption would address in part the tragedy of infertility.5
Although in Donum vitae the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) rejects heterologous artificial fertilization,6 the rescue proposal is not to bring about fertilization, but, the evil having been done, to seek to remedy the plight of the embryo created in circumstances in which he or she is frozen and dried and placed in storage indefinitely without prospect of ever being transferred to his or her mother's uterus where development could continue. The rejection of heterologous in vitro fertilization would seem not to apply directly to this question. In this case fertilization has taken place, there are embryos left over in storage, and these have been abandoned. What is proposed is heterologous embryo transfer (MET) only, and not heterologous fertilization.
In its rejection of heterologous in vitro fertilization, the Congregation states some principles that have a bearing on this matter. The Congregation asserts the rights of the child, but those rights have already been violated in the case of abandonment. What is being sought is the best solution available to that desperate plight, not the creation of that plight.
Consideration of the rights of the child "to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world, and brought up by his own parents"7 cannot be achieved for an abandoned embryo. The nearest approximation that can be achieved would seem to be for him or her to be "prenatally adopted." In this case a couple replace his or her genetic parents by becoming the gestational parents and then, as parents, assume all the other parental rights and responsibilities. For some, this "rescue" is arguably the right solution in accordance with respect for the human dignity of the embryo, a solution to be preferred over indefinite cryopreservation in a laboratory freezer, or being left to die after being removed from storage.8
However, the rights of the child are not the only intrinsic issue. The question of the unity of marriage, the dignity of the spouses, and their fidelity to each other are also at issue.9 The CDF states:
Coningum autem fidelitas, in unitate matrimonii, secumfert mutuam observantiam erga ius utriuslibet, ad hoc ut alter pater aut mater fiat solummodo per alterum.10 (The fidelity of the spouses in the unity of marriage involves reciprocal respect of their right to become a father and a mother only through each other.)
In regard to a married woman, this question of fidelity seems the most troubling concerning her becoming a mother through an intervention in which an embryo (of other parents) is transferred to her uterus (and her husband, presumably, becoming a father).
As it stands, this statement by the CDF was meant to apply to heterologous fertilization. The phrases "becoming a mother" and "becoming a father" are ambiguous in the case of heterologous embryo transfer: though they have two elements of parenthood, gestational and nurturing (or social), they lack the third element of being the genetic parents. Hence it is not clear what application the Congregation's principle would have to heterologous embryo transfer. This matter does warrant further investigation of its context; the marriage of the couple who desire to rescue the embryo through heterologous embryo transfer.
A further element in the teaching contained in Donum vitae is the statement that "in consequence of the fact that they have been produced in vitro, those embryos which are not transferred into the body of the mother and are called 'spare' are exposed to an absurd fate, with no possibility of their being offered safe means of survival which can be licitly pursued."11 This would seem to imply that attempts at ectogenesis and heterologous embryo transfer of"spare" embryos cannot licitly be pursued.
William B. Smith argues on the basis of this statement by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that embryo rescue or heterologous embryo transfer, as I shall call it, cannot licitly be pursued.12 Germain Grisez disagrees, arguing that the section that Smith relies upon ends a section concerned with using embryos produced in vitro for research and is immediately preceded by a condemnation of deliberately exposing such embryos to death. This judgment, he argues, is on the actions of the researcher, not on a rescuer entering into the situation after the evil has been done. Geoffrey Surtees similarly argues that Smith takes the passage out of context.
To my knowledge Grisez, May, Smith, Surtees, Faggioni, Watt, and Mary Geach13 have not addressed the questions for HET raised by the assertion by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith referred to above, "The fidelity of the spouses in the unity of marriage involves reciprocal respect for the right to become a father and a mother only through each other."14 Geach and May discuss the question of whether there is a parallel between a procedure that makes a woman pregnant and marital intercourse. In this I tend to agree with Grisez and May that HET cannot be compared with surrogate motherhood in that HET does not involve fertilization but is a rescue after the event.15 However, it is not my argument that HET is surrogacy, which is the proposition argued by Geach.
The question of a woman becoming a mother, other than through her spouse, does raise a range of questions about motherhood and fatherhood and the significance of a medical procedure that makes a woman pregnant and in that sense makes her a mother. More than that, this becoming pregnant through HET is from outside of the context of her marriage, and is an event from which her husband is, in effect, excluded. In this essay, I explore these questions further in the light of the Catholic moral tradition and in relation to the theology of the body, language of the body, the nuptial significance of the body, the communion of persons formed by the marriage union and the nature of that covenant.16 I focus particularly on the contemporary elucidation of these concepts in the writing of Pope John Paul II.
Notwithstanding, and in no way disregarding, the desperate plight of the embryos, whether heterologous embryo transfer (MET) to the uterus of a married woman is consistent with respect for her dignity, the dignity of the couple's marriage, and fidelity to their marriage must be addressed. The question is relevant to whether heterologous embryo transfer by which a woman is impregnated with an abandoned embryo is an act that conflicts with the exclusive gift a woman makes of herself in marriage and hence ought not be condoned as a means of a married woman becoming a gestational and nurturing parent even for the purpose of rescuing frozen embryos abandoned by their genetic parents. In this there is a further question that would apply to single as well as to married women, and that is whether the capacity to receive a child into her womb is part of a woman's generative faculty. In the Catholic moral tradition the voluntary activation or use of the latter is reserved exclusively for marriage.
A further matter to be addressed is whether it would be permissible to maintain embryos in a state of frozen and anhydrous storage in order that they might subsequently be transferred to the uterus of a woman. Is there an obligation to immediately withdraw them from a state of suspended animation and restore them to a warm, hydrated state in which dynamism and development can continue? This has relevance to the matter of HET because completing arrangements and waiting until a woman is in a stage of her cycle in which her uterus would sustain implantation of an embryo, and monitoring her to that end, would involve maintaining the embryo in the frozen, anhydrous state. My argument goes to the nature of chemically anhydrating embryos, replacing the water with a cryoprotectant such as glycol, and super freezing at temperatures at which no life has been known to survive. This is a state in which the parts of the embryo are no longer in an integrated relationship: all biological activity is interrupted and the parts are separated by the chemical solution.
I do not hold, with Surtees, that embryos not rescued may be left in frozen and anhydrous storage indefinitely or be left to die. Frozen and anhydrous storage is a state of suspended animation, of life, as it were, arrested. It is my view, as I argue in Section 5, that holding them in a state of suspended animation is a great evil, a continuing offense against life, and one that ought not be maintained. The immediate obligation is to restore dynamism and development by returning the embryo to a warm, rehydrated state. That is normally done prior to embryo transfer and is a complicated procedure in which the chemicals used to maintain anhydration are removed and replaced with water, and the embryo is, within the process, restored from extreme sub-zero temperatures to normal temperature within a culture medium.17 The process of embryo restoration is not just thawing. The issue of an immediate obligation to restore the embryo from its desiccated, super-frozen state also seems to me to have been ignored by the authors mentioned. (This also is discussed in Section 5.)
Finally, there is an issue of cooperation, or at least association, with the evils of reproductive technology programs that create excess embryos and freeze and dehydrate them through a chemical anhydration process, and test, select, and destroy them on eugenic or quality control grounds. It would be naive to imagine that the embryo transfer process could happen, in practice, without the heroism of the women extending to their being admitted into the program and expected to conform to the program's protocols for embryo transfer, including quality control standards, and at least becoming associated with the manifest evils of such a program.18
The process needed is a very careful process of thawing and rehydration in culture. The original process of producing an anhydrous embryo is a chemical process and is reversed in a process that must displace the chemical and rehydrate the embryo in a culture medium as well as restore the embryo to normal temperature. It must be kept in mind that this process and the IVF process itself are highly unsuccessful in terms of each embryo's survival rate. The actual overall survival rate of embryos produced in IVF is less than two percent. The survival rate of those that are eventually transferred to a woman's uterus is less than four percent.19
In relation to each embryo we are debating whether a woman should become involved with such a program in order to achieve a very small chance of saving the life of the embryo.
It is also a reality that the directors of such programs refuse, on eugenic grounds (and possibly in relation to maintaining their "success rates" and to keep abnormality rates low), to transfer embryos that they consider to be developing subnormally or who are known to have chromosomal irregularities. They hold, with support from geneticists, that it would be "unethical" to transfer embryos that carry or may be likely to carry a disability.
Further, a woman receiving embryos from such a program would need to make arrangements with the program to time the transfer to coincide with her cycle being at a stage when the implantation could be sustained. Thus she would be closely involved with the program. Additionally, the finding of this solution to abandoned embryos may provide something of a public justification for the profligate way in which the lives of human embryos are treated in being overproduced on IVF programs, and the offenses against human dignity inherent to their being produced outside of the sacred context of the marital act and outside the woman's body.
Note that the above is a practical objection. It may be that an arrangement could be entered into that somehow avoided the association and the need to conform to the protocols, in which case this objection would no longer apply.20
Some have argued that the statement by the CDF that the fidelity of the spouses in the unity of marriage involves reciprocal respect for the right to become a father and a mother only through each other (referred to above), is shown to be false by the acceptability of adoption.
That is a little hasty. Much depends on what the terms mean and the nature of the relationship characterized. In what sense do adopting parents become mother and father, and is it to be compared to the sense in which a woman who becomes pregnant, carries the pregnancy, and gives birth is the child's mother, and the sense in which a genetic mother (or father) is a parent?
As a legal term, adoption is something of a legal fiction. That is to say, it is like the application of the word "person" in law to include not only actual persons but corporations. Legal adoption declares that for the purposes of the law, the adopting parents are held to be the parents. This is done when it is considered necessary in the interests of the child to have someone take on the role and responsibilities of being the child's parents.
An adoptive parent is not a parent in the same sense that a child's natural parents are parents. An adoptive mother is not the actual mother, but the woman who acts in place of the natural mother, albeit on a permanent basis, with legal recognition, and so often so very well. When a child's natural parents are living, it is necessary for the courts to establish that the parents have relinquished their relationship before adoption can be permitted. They are the presumed parents of the child until that happens. But though they can relinquish the role that would normally be expected, given their natural relationship, they cannot actually relinquish the truth that they are the natural parents, that the mother did in fact become pregnant and in that way formed a unique and intimate union of gestational motherhood with the child.
What is the nature of that union and its significance? Perhaps the Congregation's statement means that husband and wife may rightly become genetic parents only through each other, i.e., only through each other can they freely choose to form a new human life. Perhaps it does not apply to gestational motherhood as distinct from genetic motherhood. However, as I shall argue, gestational motherhood results from impregnation, either sexually or by embryo transfer. It is my argument that impregnation has a particular significance and that the Congregation's statement would rightfully apply to achieving motherhood by impregnation outside of the conjugal relationship.
The use of the phrase "prenatal adoption" is a mistake precisely because it blurs the distinction between natural and adoptive motherhood. Adoption is a familiar concept and the use of the term tends to obscure the reality of what would occur. It gives a sense of ordinariness to what is most extraordinary. It is one thing for a couple (and their existing family, if any) to welcome into their home an abandoned, orphaned, or neglected child; it is quite another matter for a woman to be made pregnant, by a medical procedure, with a child not of her marriage. To equate the latter with adoption ignores her psychosomatic unity and the unity "in one flesh" of her marriage and hence her personal integrity and the integrity of the couple's marriage.
The phrase "prenatal adoption" ought to be rejected because it is implicitly dualistic in its oversimplification.21 It is dualistic because it implies an equivalence between the impregnation of a woman's body and her admitting a child into her home to be cared for as her child; and between the physically and spiritually intimate role of carrying a pregnancy and giving birth and caring for a child as a member of the household. There is a vast difference between pregnancy and childbirth, on the one hand, and assuming a parental relationship to a child in place of his or her natural parents, on the other. Hopefully, the validity of this claim will become clearer in Section 3.
Some ask, how does impregnation differ from a woman wet-nursing a child not her own, even a child she has adopted as an infant? Are they not both similar uses of the woman's body? The answer lies in the nature of pregnancy itself. Pregnancy is, in itself, a union between mother and child. The child is essentially of her; not only located within her, but bound essentially, vitally to her. She is literally home to the child, but not home in the sense of merely housing, but home in the sense of a dynamic dependency and interrelationship in which they share an intimate biological and spiritual connectedness. (For instance, the embryo actually assumes some control of her endocrine system, which, with the neural system, is at least partly responsible for physiologically integrating the parts of her body.) Wet-nursing is intimate but not so connected. The woman who carried me in her womb and gave birth to me is my mother, not just because she is genetically related, but because of the unique intimacy and connectedness of her self-sacrificing gift of herself physically, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually. A wet-nurse is not so related. She does not, by wet-nursing alone, have any status as a mother or any claim to motherhood.
Establishing that heterologous embryo transfer is not equivalent to adoption does not make it wrong, but it does indicate that there are significant differences, and those differences need to be explored.
Reproductive technology not only separates the unitive from the procreative, it also, as the need for heterologous embryo transfer exemplifies, brings about the dislocation of the generative continuum from fertilization and embryo formation to implantation to embryonic and then fetal development. Is it true to say that, within the Catholic moral tradition, when we speak of the transmission of life, of our generative faculties, that this can be treated in a reductionist way to refer only to the marital act and fertilization? Pope Paul VI writes:
In fact, just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, with particular reason, he has no dominion over his generative faculties as such, because of their intrinsic ordination towards raising up life, of which God is the principle.22
The intimate relationship between mother and child during pregnancy has no parallel. She and the child instantiate a unique union. Within marriage, that union is not separate from but rather an extension and embodiment of the union between the woman and her husband. The child arises through the creating hand of God as a gift called forth by their union and has the significance of not displacing, but rather enriching their union. The child is a living symbol of their union in the actuality of them both contributing through their loving act to the transmission of the new life and to the child's genetic constitution. The child is equally of both parents and expressive of their union:
In its most profound reality, love is essentially a gift; and conjugal love, while leading the spouses to the reciprocal "knowledge" which makes them "one flesh"[see Gn 2:24], does not end with the couple, because it makes them capable of the greatest possible gift, the gift by which they become cooperators with God for giving life to a new human person. Thus the couple, while giving themselves to one another, give not just themselves but also the reality of children, who are a living reflection of their love, a permanent sign of conjugal unity and a living and inseparable synthesis of their being a father and a mother.23
Though it is the woman who carries the pregnancy and thus is intimately related to the child in a way in which her husband cannot be except through her, nevertheless the child is the fruit and thus the sign and symbol of the union between this man and this woman. Far from being excluded, the husband stands bound ever more strongly to his wife through the coming into being of their child, the living consequence of their love.
By contrast, in heterologous embryo transfer the husband is isolated from this process by which his wife becomes with child. Her bodywhich she gave to him in love in the sacrament of marriage, a gift which they renew in the conjugal actfor a time, becomes the home of a child that bears no relationship to him, that is from outside their union. It is in this sense that heterologous embryo transfer may be an infidelity to the marriage. The pregnancy is in fact achieved outside the marital relationship.24 A crucial question is whether it is achieved using a capacity whose voluntary exercise has been given exclusively by God to the marital relationship. Is the capacity to become impregnated and to carry pregnancy and give birth a capacity that belongs only to marriage?
Some argue that it does not. Several have used an argument along the following lines:
Consider the case of a married woman who becomes pregnant due to rape by some stranger. The child she is bearing is from her own ovum, and so more intimately united with her than a transferred embryo would be. The husband was excluded from her pregnancy by the rape which violated his marital rights. Yet the woman can and should intend to do everything she reasonably can to promote her generative capacity's functioning to bring this baby safely to birth, even if her husband refuses to cooperate and wants her to get an abortion. If your argument were right, she would have the obligation to have the embryo that resulted from the rape transferred out of her uterus\and allowed to die.
The example misses the nature of the act being considered. The issue here is not whether a woman who is pregnant should continue with the pregnancy, but rather whether it is appropriate within marriage for a woman who is not pregnant to be impregnated from outside of the marriage. A woman who is already pregnant as a result of rape, is already the mother of the child. She has already formed a union with the child. She is wronged. Her husband is wronged. The child is wronged. But the new union has been formed, and her motherhood cannot be undone. Abortion would not prevent the union, would not prevent her from being a mother to the child. She is the child's mother and as the child's mother now has the obligations that belong to her being the child's mother, albeit unwillingly and as the result of violence. Abortion would be killing. We are not discussing killing, but not intervening to save life. There is an obligation to save life, but not an obligation to save life by means that are themselves immoral. It is interesting to note in this respect that no one suggests that embryo rescue is an obligation for women. This is evidently seen by those who support impregnating as a form of rescue, as something at least beyond the call of duty. Being pregnant is not merely providing life support but something much more.
The difference between embryo rescue and what some refer to, very minimally, as cooperating in sustaining a pregnancy resulting from rape, is that in the latter case motherhood already is established. The raped woman already is the child's mother. It is dire, unjust, and wrongful in so many ways, but that is the fact. It is because that unique union is formed that we do not say that the "interloper" may be removed. The dependency on the physiological connection has been established, and she is the child's mother. She is in a new state of being -- she is with child. I would hold that to be the case also if the pregnancy results from a rape that took the form of forceful embryo transfer against her wishes. She would then have an obligation to not interfere by removing the pregnancy just as would a woman who was pregnant as a result of rape, in the normal sense of the word, where the fertilization takes place within her.
In embryo rescue, the woman who enters the scene as potential "rescuer" is not yet the child's mother. Impregnating her makes her the child's mother, it is the bringing about of a change to her being, by establishing the physiological union of her with the child in that unique way. Embryo rescue is not a matter of sustaining an established relationship, but bringing about an ontological change in which a new relationship is created, the relationship of motherhood.
This status of motherhood through impregnation, I would claim, is essential to the view that pregnancy as a result of rape may not be aborted. One may not remove the "interloper" even though the child has come to be there through violence and against the woman's will. That is because the woman is not just a life support, not just a means of sustenance. She has undergone an ontological change in which she is now mother to the child. Their lives are intertwined in the formation of this new union. Abortion is not just removing the life support and failing to find another means of life support. If it were, the latter might be claimed to be justified if pregnancy were particularly burdensome. It is the severance of a relationship that is not replaceable. It is a casting aside of the unique and intimate union that has formed between mother and child at a time when that union is one of essential dependency. The obligation to continue a pregnancy is founded upon the fact that a mother who is with child is in a different state of being which is inclusive of the child. The child is related to her and she to the child in a way that makes her non-substitutable during the nonviable phase of a child's existence.25 Because of that relationship, she then remains uniquely the child's natural mother throughout his life.
To conceive literally means to be "with child" or to "become pregnant." In IVF conception, the woman is not with child until transfer takes place. It is the laboratory that is with child. It is in that sense that the meaning of what was thought to be one event, and is, in normal conception, now becomes two events -- the conception by the laboratory of the child and the conception by the woman of the child at some later time. It is simply not true to say that a woman has conceived a child when she is not pregnant. It is also true to say that she has conceived, that is become with child, when the embryo is transferred to her body.26
I am not arguing that implantation in the lining of the uterus is the beginning of life. I am saying that life begins with the formation of the first cell, and I hold that when the Catholic moral tradition, informed as it is by modern embryological knowledge, speaks of conception it meant this and it meant that the woman is with child, because these events, fertilization and the child being in the woman's body, are normally simultaneous. Her motherhood began when the child was formed by fertilization within her body and she was thus with child.
The fact of fertilization occurring elsewhere and by someone else means that that motherhood relationship has not been established at the time of fertilization. The relationship is genetic, but as we see in heterologous IVF, the sperm and ova may already have been relinquished by the donors or vendors before fertilization. It would seem strange to say that a man or a woman whose gametes are being used to achieve fertilization become father and mother when they are not part of what
However, it does seem that when a woman is impregnated with an embryo (that is, the embryo is transferred to her body, even though it would not have implanted immediately), she is the mother of the embryo. That relationship is such that physiologically the embryo has already begun to exercise some control over her endocrine system which, with the neural system, is a major part of that which integrates the parts of her body. The choice to have that relationship is a choice to unite her body, to unite herself, with the child in that uniquely intimate and integrated way. The coming to be of that union, I think, best fits what we should call the beginning of motherhood. That is to say, I hold that motherhood is begun by impregnation, and normally that occurs at the instant of fertilization, but not so in IVF.
Further the formation of that union is an ontological change. Physiologically, and, I would argue, because physiologically, therefore in all other ways, given her psychosomatic unity, she and the child are so interrelated that this is a change to her being. In her being, she is a woman with child, and this is very different from the circumstance in which a woman merely holds a child in her arms or breastfeeds a child. A woman is not interrelated to a child, merely by breastfeeding, in the way in which a woman who is pregnant is with child is interrelated to the child. Breastfeeding is a motherly thing to do, but it is not constitutive of a motherhood relationship.
The matter of impregnating so that a woman becomes a mother and enters into that new union with a child,from outside her marriage, thus raises questions about the nature of the communion of persons that is marriage. We are given three divine models for this communion of persons: the relationship between the persons of the triune God27 (Jn 14:26, 15:26, 17:21), the relationship of Christ to the Church as bridegroom to bride28 (Eph 5:25 95), and the covenant with the Creator (Gn 3:10).29
It is my conclusion that having given herself, her psychosomatic unity, faithfully, exclusively, totally, and in a fully human way in marriage,30 a woman is not free to give herself to being impregnated with a child from outside of marriage in this way, however altruistic the purpose and however desperate the plight of those to whom she wishes to give herself. This is so because her generative capacity, which, I will argue, includes or is at least so linked to her capacity to become pregnant and to bear a child in her womb, and is not merely her capacity to produce ova and to express her love in the conjugal act, belongs to the marital union, and hence may not be given outside marriage.31 In these ways, but not with all its viciousness, heterologous embryo transfer may be akin to adultery. Heterologous embryo transfer may be at best a mistaken, misguided charity though an extraordinarily generous charity, but the mistake may be a very grave mistake, striking as it would seem to at the very dignity of the woman and of her marriage.
It is particularly significant to reflect here upon the role of the doctor or technician in embryo transfer, because it is by his or her act that the woman becomes pregnant. That this is so highlights the reality that the achievement of a pregnancy in this way is outside marriage and hence may be an infidelity to the marriage.
Surtees refers to HET as the woman making a "home" available and that making this "home" available is the object of the act.32 I agree with Grisez that this is incorrect.33 Grisez holds that the precise object of the act of a woman who attempts to rescue an abandoned frozen embryo is to have the embryo moved from the freezer into [her] womb and to nurture him or her there, as any pregnant woman nurtures her child. (Note that the procedure, as discussed above, is a little more complicated than mere transfer from freezer to womb and includes thawing and rehydration.)
Grisez's description does not fully capture what is involved. The actuality of being impregnated is the formation of a new and unique union with the child and, as such, an ontological change to the woman in which she becomes this child's mother. Throughout the lives of both of them thereafter, she is the child's natural mother and the child is her natural son or daughter.
Note that if, at the time of rescue, it is not the woman's object to initiate that union of mother to child and to continue to be the child's mother, then her object is to be a surrogate and that would answer the criticisms of Donum vitae in relation to surrogacy and the dignity of the child. She would be intentionally fragmenting parenthood, denying the child the right to be carried in the womb and brought up by his or her parents.34 It would also answer to criticisms of an offense against her own dignity in that she would be seeing the use of her own capacity to carry a pregnancy as merely instrumental, a means to an end, and not as what it is, the formation of a relationship involving her whole person in which she enters into a new and unique union with a child as his or her mother and at all levels of her being, physically, emotionally, spiritually, cognitively.35
Next Page:
The Role of the Clinician
1,
2,
3