Problem:
Are there any of the objections to the teaching of the Catholic Church that Austriaco describes and rebuts on pp. 108-113? If so, how could one respond to his rebuttal? If not, how can his rebuttals be improved?
Austriaco, Nicanor Pier Giorgio. Biomedicine
A Disputed Question: The Adoption of Abandoned Human Embryos According to one study performed by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART), there are nearly four hundred thousand (396,526) frozen human embryos in over four hundred assisted reproductive technology (ART) facilities in the United States.108 Sadly, some of these embryo's parents, conclude that they have no more need for them. In response to this tragedy, several pro-life groups have suggested that these abandoned embryos should be rescued and implanted into the wombs of wives who are willing to "adopt" them, bring them to term, and raise them as one of their children. Recently, an Evangelical Christian organization founded an embryo adoption agency called the Snowflakes Program.109 Not surprisingly, this proposal to rescue frozen embryos has raised many ethical questions. It has also sparked a heated debate among Catholic moralists: are there any circumstances in which it would be morally admirable for a woman to seek to have an orphaned embryo implanted in her womb?
Proponents claim that embryo rescue is morally acceptable because both the end-saving the baby-and the means-transferring an embryo from a freezer to a womb-are good. For example, William E. May argues that a married couple may adopt a frozen embryo, which then commits them to further actions, of which the basic one is to give their adopted child a home.110 This they do, first when the wife chooses to have the frozen embryo transferred into her womb. They would then continue to do this by giving their adopted child, once born, the home provided by both husband and wife. May concludes that embryo rescue is simply a more sophisticated kind of adoption. Thus, embryo rescue is good.
In contrast, opponents-and I am one of them-claim that embryo rescue is morally unacceptable because it violates the marital covenant.111 In other words, because of their marriage vows, a husband is given the exclusive right to make his wife pregnant through their marital acts. Becoming pregnant is something a couple does with each other and only with each other. Embryo rescue, however, would rob the husband of the unique and privileged role he should play in establishing a pregnancy in his wife. Instead, his wife would become pregnant through the actions of a third individual, usually the physician, who inserts the embryo into her womb. This undermines the exclusivity of marriage and is therefore unjust. Thus, embryo rescue is not good.
Given the ongoing debate among faithful Catholic moral theologians and until the Church teaches otherwise,112 individual Catholics may choose to rescue abandoned embryos according to the dictates of a rightly formed conscience that has examined the arguments for and against the morality of such an act. What then should we do about these frozen human embryos, especially those embryos who have been abandoned by their parents? As I have explained in more detail elsewhere, adoptive parents, instead of implanting their adopted embryo into his adopted mother's womb, could pay to maintain the cryopreservation necessary for the survival of their child until incubators capable of bringing him to term are invented.113 This would preserve the life of the child without undermining his parents' marital covenant.
Austriaco, Nicanor Pier Giorgio. Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics (pp. 109-110). Catholic University of America Press. Kindle Edition.