Some quick Catholic thoughts about the recent decision by the Alabama Supreme Court to recognize the legal personhood of frozen embryos.
1. Catholic teaching on in-vitro fertilization (IVF) is what it always was. The Church teaches unequivocally that in-vitro fertilization is always immoral. Its means of collecting human gametes is unchaste. Its separation of procreation from the marital act is contrary to God’s design. Its treatment of human embryos—bringing them to life via a technical process rather than an act of love, deep-freezing and storing them indefinitely, and transferring some of them in batches to the woman’s uterus where most will die—is contrary to justice and human dignity. And on the practical level, it facilitates further evils such as surrogacy, eugenics, and the getting of children by same-sex couples in perverse imitation of the natural family.
Since babies are a good thing, and infertility afflicts many good couples who want nothing more than to live out the procreative end of their marriage, the Church’s teaching here is one of its hardest, perhaps its very hardest. But though it may seem “pro-life” on the surface, and although couples dealing with infertility always deserve gentle compassion, in reality IVF is a mockery of the Christian pro-life ethic, which doesn’t claim authority over the creation of human life but submits to God’s authority.
2. The reportage on this story has been predictably terrible. The New York Times cited an “expert” who claimed with a straight face that despite the court’s ruling that frozen embryos should be legal treated as human beings, “science and common sense tell us they are not.” This is because, the Times adds helpfully, often in the natural world not every fertilization results in pregnancy.
Don’t hurt your head trying to figure out that non-sequitur. This tortured reasoning—artificially conceived embryos aren’t human beings because sometimes naturally conceived embryos don’t implant—is just another rotten fruit of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ redefinition of pregnancy in the 1960’s (around the time of the introduction of the Pill) as beginning with implantation rather than conception. You can see how this works: If you’re not even pregnant, how could the embryo be a human life?
Just as predictably, this is being played up as another lurch toward the Handmaid’s Tale-like theocratic future that the end of Roe v. Wade is imagined to have set in motion. I fear, though, that it’s going to be effective political propaganda, maybe the best the pro-abortion camp could dream up. Almost nobody likes abortion, but on the other hand, many Americans lack the basic metaphysical chops to see why these little bitty embryos need protection, too.
3. On balance, I think Catholics should view this decision as a good thing. It’s true that whereas Catholic teaching on the unborn’s right to life from the moment of conception is clear, some of the prudential questions on how to deal legally and practically with frozen embryos can be debated among faithful Catholics of good will. (For example: would it be morally right to implant them in host wombs, or hypothetical artificial wombs, so they can be born? If not, what do you do with them?)
That said, though, I would think that Catholics on all sides of these prudential questions can cheer, even if just on symbolic grounds, this court decision. It faithfully follows the pro-life logic of an unbroken chain of human identity and rights from the moment of conception, and it strikes a blow against the diabolical commodification of human persons that IVF exemplifies and enables.