CV NEWS FEED // A mother is advocating to change Missouri law about parental custody of frozen human embryos created during in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Both surrogacy and IVF are practices condemned by the Catholic Church, but a Catholic response to caring for the frozen human beings remains a highly-debated issue in Catholic bioethics.
Jalesia Kuenzel and her now ex-husband created four human embryos and using IVF had twin boys nearly 17 years ago. The other two human beings “remain frozen in a storage facility in Pennsylvania,” local news outlet The Missouri Independent reported this week.
Kuenzel has since fought for custody of the embryos, but the Independent reported that a Missouri court “ultimately decided in 2015 that under Missouri law, the embryos were marital property rather than children. Custody of the embryos was awarded jointly to Kuenzel and her ex-husband, meaning they could only be used if both agreed.”
Kuenzel is working with Missouri Rep. Adam Schwadron (R) to challenge these Missouri laws. Schwadron is currently running for Missouri Secretary of State.
Per the Missouri Independent:
Schwadron agreed to file a bill that would require embryo custody disputes to be decided by a court in favor of the person most likely to create a child from the embryos. Similar legislation has also been filed by state Sen. Karla Eslinger, a Republican from Wasola.
Both bills would mandate courts to presume the “best interests of the embryo” are to grant custody to the person who “intends to develop the embryo to birth.”
IVF and surrogacy are both condemned by the Catholic Church as gravely immoral. IVF practices have resulted in nearly a million frozen embryos in America alone.
Schwardon told the Independent, “I am pro-life and I see a frozen embryo can still become a life… If that life is wanted, it will be loved and it will be nurtured.”
According to the Independent, University of Missouri law professor Mary Beck opposes the law change, arguing, “I see children coming into being without being wanted by one of their genetic forebearers… Surely no one thinks that’s a good thing.”
While states debate legislation about frozen embryo custody, Pope Francis recently called on global leaders to ban surrogacy because it exploits women and children.
“A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract,” Francis said in January.
The Catholic Church teaches that children have specific rights that protect them from being treated as commodities or scientific projects. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) recalls papal document Donum vitae, which states that children have a right “to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents,” and “the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception,” (CCC. 2378).
As such, the Church teaches that IVF is a grave evil that cannot be accepted or practiced.
Yet, with now over a million embryos frozen in the United States alone, some theologians and pro-life advocates have called for embryo adoption via IVF and surrogacy, a practice referred to as “embryo rescue.” The Church has not approved of embryo rescue via IVF or surrogacy, although it remains a time-sensitive debate among Catholic bioethicists.
A detailed Catholic Answers article articulates the issue at hand:
The Catholic Church teaches that life begins at conception. The embryo is therefore a person, and there are thousands of them in fertilization clinics all over the world. Can their lives be saved when we know that the only way to do so is by implanting them in a woman’s womb, an act condemned as immoral by the Catholic Church?
Catholic Answers recalled the words of the late then-Bishop Elio Sgreccia and president emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life, who said, “The idea of a systematic organization of prenatal adoption of frozen embryos would, in fact, end up by legitimizing the practice which is substantially at the root of the whole problem”.
