I have been pro-life ever since, in my childhood, I first heard of abortion.  Killing a developing baby in his mother’s womb is clearly an act of killing an innocent person.  It is one issue on which science and morality agree.

Technology has, however, intruded into the domain of what is and is not moral.  Surrogate motherhood has, for many people, solved the heartbreak of childlessness.  A woman who is incapable of carrying a child to term may have one (or usually more) of her eggs fertilized with her husband’s sperm, and then have a resulting embryo transplanted, so to speak, into the uterus of a woman, a surrogate mother, who can “take it from there,” gestating the child to full term.  After nine months, the husband and wife happily welcome their newborn offspring into their home, and thereafter parent the child to adulthood.

What could go wrong?

One thing that sometimes does go wrong is that the surrogate mother, having internally nurtured a baby for thirty-six weeks, and then given birth, develops a strong emotional bond with the child.  Having then to surrender that child to another woman, albeit the genetic mother, can be emotionally painful, even devastating.

Lawyers get involved.  Contract law is applied.  Courts make decisions.  Legislatures attempt to remedy perceived injustices.  Simply put, there is no “simply put.”

The first recorded surrogate mother was a woman named Hagar, concubine of Abraham.  According to Genesis, chapter 16, Abraham’s wife Sarai had not conceived, not even into old age, and so she and her husband decided that Abraham should impregnate Hagar, with the hope of giving Abraham a son.  What could go wrong?  Much did, including personal conflict between the two women.  Hagar gave birth to Ishmael, ancestor of the Arab race.  Both Hagar and Ishmael were eventually expelled from Abraham’s and Sarai’s presence, and history has been dramatically affected ever since.

Human nature has not changed, and despite the most careful arrangements beforehand, unforeseen difficulties can and do arise.

The advent of cryogenic technology seemed to hold the promise of solving the problem, but in fact, it has created even worse problems.  Several news items illustrate some of them.  Embryos can be frozen, and placed “on hold,” for future implantation into a woman’s uterus — almost any woman — who can then become a surrogate mother, even virginally.  Most recently, the state supreme court of Alabama has declared that these frozen embryos are persons and therefore are entitled to all the rights of personhood, including the right to life.  (Disclaimer: I am not an attorney.  My personal interpretations of the ruling are subject to error.)

The deliberate thawing out of these frozen embryos, leaving them to die, is therefore, according to my interpretation of the Alabama law, an act of killing them. Murder?

When I first heard of abortion, my gut instinct, perhaps a spiritual one, told me right away that it was immoral.  I still firmly believe that it is.  This time, that same instinct tells me that a frozen embryo is not a person.  The circumstance of destroying a frozen embryo is not clear from a moral perspective, but I do not believe that it is the same as in utero abortion and is not an act of murder.

Traditional pro-lifers, such as me, have long held that life (and therefore personhood) begins at conception, the time at which the sperm cell has infused its genetic material into the egg cell.  This makes biological sense.  Does it make moral sense, in every case?

The first step in the moral analysis is to ask whether the act of uniting a sperm cell with an egg cell, outside the mother’s body, is itself immoral.  Does the resulting fetus have moral status that makes it sacred?  I think it does.  Creating it, and destroying it, are both acts of desecration — in particular since its creation necessitates, as a practical matter, the inevitable destruction of at least some of the resulting embryos, probably the vast majority of them. 

Creating such a circumstance cannot be moral.  A practically unlimited number of embryos can be initiated by in vitro fertilization, not only for the purpose of surrogate motherhood, but also for research purposes, the moral legitimacy of which is questionable at best.  To create and keep vast numbers of embryos alive (if that word applies in a moral sense in this case), indefinitely, without hope that they will eventually come to term, is futile, and a waste of resources that could be put to better use.

At best, this is a morally murky area that invites future abuses of technology that we can barely imagine.  It leads us closer to the dark pit of human-animal hybrids and unspeakable abominations.

What, then, is the solution to the heartbreak of childlessness?  Adoption is one, but for some people, this does not satisfy the inherent craving to have genetic progeny.

As with all human tragedy, emotions interpose, and judgment can become convoluted.  I do not pretend to have an answer.

Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.