In April of last year, family law attorney Carrie Patterson told a court, "As embryos have a potential for human life, they are given special respect." Ten months later, Fairfax Circuit Court judge Dontae L. Bugg wrote in an opinion letter, "It is obvious that these two human embryos, if implanted and carried to term, would not result in the same two people. . . . In fact, the embryos are as unique as any two people that may be selected from the population, including siblings with the same biological parents."
Embryos are not potential human life. They are human life. And every single human embryo from her first cell onward is an unrepeatable human being. Having understood this for many years, we wonder how it can possibly be that people still reject this truth. Do they forget that if each of them had not been a human embryo first, they would not be talking today about the reasons why they detest this fact?
The heart of our struggle has not changed over the years. Denial of the personhood of the preborn baby is and continues to be more than an enigma; it is evil personified.
A very recent example of this comes from the mouth of former abortionist Dr. Catherine Wheeler, who rues the times she practiced abortion. She explains:
But though I stopped performing abortions, it took decades for me to fully confront my pro-choice views. During this time, God pursued me even as I evaded Him. He loved me through marriages and heartbreaks, births and miscarriages, until I finally repented of my sins and invited Christ to reign supremely in my life.
In those few words we find the undeniable fact that when a human being does not recognize the power of God, rack and ruin are sure to pursue him. We found this to be equally true of a recent discussion about human embryo adoption.
Professor Janet Smith was recently cited about this matter. The National Catholic Bioethics Center explains that she favors embryo rescue and adoption. The article states that "it is somewhat unsettling that the Catholic Church has yet to decide definitively the question of the morality of embryo adoptions several decades after the practice began and in the face of a vigorous Catholic debate going back just as long. There is an urgency to this question as stated in the introduction [to the article]. 'Though the Church thinks in centuries, the problem of IVF and embryo freezing demands action today.'"
But looking back to the original Catholic teaching on the fate of human embryos following the illicit practice of in vitro fertilization, we are reminded of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's insight stated in the 1987 document Donum Vitae (Respect for Human Life):
Human embryos obtained in vitro are human beings and subjects with rights: their dignity and right to life must be respected from the first moment of their existence. It is immoral to produce human embryos destined to be exploited as disposable "biological material". In the usual practice of in vitro fertilization, not all of the embryos are transferred to the woman's body; some are destroyed. Just as the Church condemns induced abortion, so she also forbids acts against the life of these human beings.
This fact as set forth doctrinally does not change over time. For as we know, truth cannot be modified to sate those who wish to avoid it. Moral acts are not measured with a slide rule. Thus, we continue our quest to defend and protect every human person from the beginning of her life onward. No debate will change the moral truth.
That is a matter of fact.