New embryo disposal rituals speak to value of embryonic life

Audra Murray of Newton has two children under 2 years old and two frozen embryos and says she’s struggling to decide what to do with her spares, a difficulty she hadn’t anticipated during her treatment. “When pregnancy test after pregnancy test has failed, you don’t feel like you can get pregnant and you’re trying to, and watching your bank account draining, you’re not concerned about the embryos.

“But then you have kids,” she says, “and the embryos seem like kids.”

Oh the truth is so pesky.  And here is Linda, who calls herself "Catholic, but pro-choice," on her "left-overs":

“I had friends and family tell me, ‘Oh, throw them away,’ ” Linda recalls. “I couldn’t. Our children were in the same batch. I’d look at them and think, ‘Wow, if someone had grabbed a different straw, our children would still be sitting there.’ ”

What is so astonishing is the new ways in which parents are now dealing with this very difficult moral dilemma.  Traditionally, there have been three options for parents: 1. Donate the embryos to research, 2. Donate embryos to another infertile couple to adopt, or 3. throw them in the biohazard waste.

Apparently none of these choices suits parents who instinctively know these are their children.  They do not like the idea of offering them up to science, nor the thought of them being thrown out with the trash.  They like the idea of another couple raising their children even less.  So some parents are requesting "disposal ceremonies" or what this article calls "compassionate transfers":

While the nature of embryos remains a source of political controversy, some patients seek resolution to their dilemma in a way that suggests they see embryos neither as life nor as not-life. Lyerly’s 2007 survey discovered that patients were eager for a disposal ceremony, something akin to a funeral for their thawed cells. The survey also indicated significant interest in what Resolve has begun to call “compassionate transfer” -- embryo transfer procedures that would not result in pregnancy. This can take several forms. Boston IVF reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Alison Zimon says she hasn’t performed the procedure, but she has heard of patients asking to have extra thawed embryos placed in the vagina, where it is impossible for them to implant and grow, instead of in the uterus. Dr. Joseph Hill, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Fertility Centers of New England, estimates that of all the patients who come back after a successful first pregnancy to use their frozen embryos, a tiny minority aren’t really trying to get pregnant again. Sometimes they will wait until near menopause before they return for the transfer; some refuse the hormones that are typically used to help the embryo implant.

So some parents want something akin to a funeral for their embryos or they wait till they know it is unlikely that they can get pregnant again and have the embryos implanted.  Or they refuse the hormones that would make the implantation successful.

These requests are a symptom of what parents know to be the truth.  That IVF embryos are not just human life, but they are life that has value.

I do not know what the Catholic Church would say to these practices since they have yet to rule on the whether embryo adoption is moral.  Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, suggests that aside from parents taking responsibility and implanting all their embryos with the intent of getting pregnant, the only moral thing to do with "left-over" IVF embryos is nothing.  Fr. Tad states:

In my opinion, parents have an obligation to care for their children in this way [paying for them to be kept frozen in their storage tanks] until some other option becomes available in the future (maybe a sophisticated "embryo incubator" or "artificial womb" of some kind), or until there is a reasonable certainty that they have died on their own from decay or "freezer burn," which may occur whenever frozen embryos are stored for extended periods.

I do know the Catholic Church would remind these couples that this is a choice that never should have to be made.  These embryos should never have been mass produced in a laboratory in the first place. 

What is most obvious is that infertile couples are not thinking about the consequences of producing extra embryos with IVF.  They are then left with a moral dilemma no parent should have to face.  It is critical that Catholics, religious and lay alike, remind infertile couples of this impending dilemma BEFORE they get swept up in the IVF machine.  It is not politically correct, and they may never speak to you again, but it is so very necessary.

I am reminded of the time I was approached by a woman after a talk I gave about stem cell research and cloning where I exposed this dark-side of IVF.  This woman was hopping mad.  She said that IVF "was the ONLY way her son could have a child!"  She asked what business the Church had telling her that she cannot have grandchildren.  My response must have come straight from God, because I had no idea it was about to come out of my mouth.  I said, "How do you feel about having grandchildren on ice?" 

At that moment she understood.