Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

THE MORALITY OF ADOPTING FROZEN EMBRYOS 129
concerned specifically with conception (the proper way in which
one may bring into being a new human life) along with the nurture
necessary to bring the child to birth. The latter is not concerned
with conception, but only with a particular form of nurturing
an existing life up until birth. Thus, some argue that the
latter kind of act – i.e. the act by which a woman accepts an
existing embryo into her womb – is not a kind of marriage act
(which requires it to be like the kind of act which normally leads
to a conception of a new human life), but a particular, and a particularly
significant, kind of maternal nurturing. 29
Formulating an accurate description of a decision by a
woman to have an orphaned embryo implanted in her womb is
thus of utmost importance. The most adequate description is not
that she is participating in a perversion of the marriage act (i.e.
not that she is participating in an act which is per se open to the
conception of new life in the wrong kind of way). Rather, the
most adequate description of what she is doing (in having an
orphaned embryo implanted in her womb with the commitment
to raise the child if it survives to birth) is consenting to become
a mother through adoption. In adopting the orphan embryo she
is offering a uniquely important, intimate, and necessary form of
nurturing. Furthermore, it can be argued that the consent
involved in the woman’s choosing to adopt a frozen embryo and
gestating it up to birth makes her the mother of the child in a
more profound way than she would be if she adopted the child at
“The moral relevance of the link between the meanings of the conjugal act
and between the goods of marriage, as well as the unity of the human being
and the dignity of his origin, demand that the procreation of a human person
be brought about as the fruit of the conjugal act specific to the love
between spouses.” (DV, II, B, 4)
29 This view is argued by Watt (1999). While a conjugal act is the kind
of act by which, under certain circumstances, a woman may become pregnant,
it is not, per se, an impregnating act. Granted, as Geach notes, it is the
kind of act that requires no additional human acts for pregnancy to occur.
But it is not the kind of act that necessarily leads to pregnancy. Impregnation
is an event that follows in some cases from a conjugal act. On the other hand,
embryo transfer is an act by which a woman is made pregnant simpliciter
(at the very least for a short period of time).