Recent news announced of a baby’s birth from an embryo frozen 27 years earlier. It seems good in principle that the baby, whose life was stopped from normal development of 9 months, was given life by granting an adoption opportunity to a married couple. No one should underestimate the suffering of couples who are unable to have children and naturally, adoptive parents would wish their child to resemble their ethnical and physical characteristics as much as possible. In the long and arduous adoption process of born children, this would be possible within the limits of their own or of nearby countries. However, we are entering a way of adoption that in the long run would create a market demand for embryos to be adopted, enhance the number of frozen embryos and lead to more problems of medical, psychological and legal nature. Donation seems like a charitable option but for a couple involved in the decision, the current-self and future-self are never the same and the decision to freeze or donate ones own child with the uncertainty that this would become a reality can change in to a source of regret. There could be a mother spending her life looking for her child that she once donated as an embryo.
Frozen embryos is a complex challenge to human rights as John Paul II referred to in 2008 in Dignitatis Personae:
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.”
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55164607
More food for thought:
https://www.elle.com/culture/a12445676/the-leftover-embryo-crisis/
Vox ad Vitam 