The March-April 2026 edition of DEFEND LIFE included an article by Dr. Elizabeth Rex wherein she plugged her book, THE ZYGOTE OF CHRIST. She argues that “prenatal adoption is a moral option.” However, this is neither the view of the late Pope John Paul II nor the official stance of the Catholic faith.
Dr. Rex argues that prenatal adoption of frozen embryos is a moral option. While elements of this sentiment were shared by my late teacher, Dr. William May, the intervention remains highly problematic. We know that the Church condemns both IVF and the freezing of embryos as contrary to human dignity and the sanctity of human life. The question might change with the development of artificial wombs, especially in cases of premature deliveries. However, we are not there yet. The practice of inseminating multiple eggs from women, implanting a couple and freezing the rest is a heinous practice. Many of the embryos will never survive freezing, and others are outrightly discarded. I can appreciate the pro-life sentiments and compassion that would lead women to adopt these embryos, but the practice still has the same ethical hurdles as posed to the immediate agents of the process. While advocates for embryonic adoption may be moved by mercy and a desire for pro-life rescue, it is still surrogate motherhood. Ethicists will argue that the intent is different, one wrongly to manufacture a child and the other rightly to save a child from death. However, can such motivations or intentions be so clearly defined? The surrogate mother of a rescued embryo still benefits from having a baby. Further, just as the freezing process is problematical, so is the thawing. Many will be lost in this process. Defenders will argue that this is the unborn child’s only chance, but the ends never justify the means.
This “radical act of hospitality” is so much more than a corporal work of mercy. Motherhood brings about a change in the woman’s body. God has deigned that women become mothers through the marital act (vaginal intercourse) between a loving husband and wife. Catholic moralists have long argued that a third party cannot be introduced into this intimate act of human procreation. Embryonic adoption takes this to the fourth quadrant of intervention: (1) the biological father, (2) the biological mother, (3) the medical technician, and (4) the surrogate.
Surrogacy or even just artificial insemination violates the marital bond. Indeed, it can be an act of adultery if the semen used is not from the spouse. (It is argued that the donation of unfertilized eggs for placement in the womb might constitute appropriation and thus avoid the charge of adultery.) In any case, do we really want to violate marriages with such surrogacy? Do we want a new class of unwed mothers? I have even heard it suggested that virginal pro-life nuns should donate their wombs to such rescues. Ridiculous! It would be a violation of their state of life. Motherhood is more than an activity. It touches a woman’s identity on a very basic level.
My position is simple, while we can agree that the creation of embryos outside the marital act and the nuptial covenant is sinful, I would disagree with the article’s positive stance, contending that any form of surrogacy is immoral, even prenatal adoption. The conjugal act is not merely another means of accomplishing what the technician does in the laboratory. It is the sole means fashioned by God. Every human being has the right to come into existence through an act of loving self-donation between spouses. Technology dehumanizes what should be sacred. The unborn child is reduced from a person with value to a commodity.
If the use of semen from a man other than one’s husband is adultery, then what about the product of such semen and another woman’s egg? Wombs are not intended for rental despite the current lucrative industry that prostitutes women. Similarly, they cannot be violated for charity purposes.
Dignitas Personae (2008) states: “The proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which make artificial heterologous procreation illicit as well as any form of surrogate motherhood; this practice would also lead to other problems of a medical, psychological and legal nature. / It has also been proposed, solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are otherwise condemned to destruction, that there could be a form of ‘prenatal adoption.’ This proposal, praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life, presents however various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above. / 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. Therefore John Paul II made an ‘appeal to the conscience of the world’s scientific authorities and in particular to doctors, that the production of human embryos be halted, taking into account that there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons’” (#18).
Ultimately the most we may be able to do for these frozen embryos is to allow them a natural death and thus avoid exploiting them in any immoral technological procedure. As believers, we might also memorialize them in prayer.
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