Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

136 JOHN BERKMAN
conditional abandonment. However, many others simply fail to
consider the implications of what they are doing in commissioning
the creation of embryos in vitro. Finally, others may fully
intend to implant all of their embryos, but through illness,
death, or other misfortune simply become unable to fulfill the
responsibilities they undertook.
One can imagine untimely circumstances leading to a decision
to give up one’s embryo for adoption similar to those that
could be expected to lead to a regular adoption. In certain circumstances
the decision by a biological parent to offer embryos
up for adoption would not necessarily be any more an act of illicit
abandonment than that of a birth mother who for a variety of
reasons decides to give up her child for adoption. While in certain
instances one would act in a gravely wrong manner to hand
over one’s frozen embryos (or one’s birth child) to another couple
for adoption, the wrongfulness does not lie in an “in-principle”
requirement upon all those who procreate children to raise
them.
Finally, there is also the question of the woman who finds
out after conception that her endometrium is unfit for implantation.
If she flushed out her pre-implanted embryo, froze it, and
looked for someone to gestate it, would that be acceptable?
Mary Geach presents this case as something which would be
wrong to do. 38 However, she assumes that the woman who
would gestate the baby would pledge to return the child to the
genetic mother at birth. Of course, that would be surrogacy.
However, this is not the last word with this case. For
instance, what if the woman engages in embryo flushing and
freezes the embryo, not so that someone can gestate the embryo
for her, but so that she can give it up for adoption? What if, like
the mother of Moses, she will go to extraordinary means to give
37 DV, II, A, 3. This line is repeated almost verbatim at DV III.
38 This case can be found in Geach (1999), 341. Another analogous case
is that of the rape victim, who, while recognizing the humanity of the
embryo inside her, does not want to gestate and raise the child. Is it morally
wrong for her, not wanting to abort the embryo, to have an embryo flush and
cryopreservation done, and seek a person willing to adopt the child? Issues
of self-defense complicate this example.