In our modern world we are confronted with defining when a life begins and when it ends. The beginning and end are bookends for human existence.
Ancient civilizations recognized the beginning of life was somehow connected to pregnancy. They also practiced ending life prematurely through wars and executions; abortions were done for a variety of cultural and economic reasons.
The early Christian church debated when a fetus achieved a rational soul, considered to be the start of a human life. In the 13th century Thomas Aquinas believed the rational soul was infused into a fetal body only after it had developed into a recognizable human form (about 40 days after conception). Today, many Christians consider life to begin at conception.
Until the 16th century, Christians condemned abortions done after the rational soul entered the fetal body; the procedure was associated with sexual sins (e.g., fornication or adultery). Early termination of pregnancy (before the rational soul united with the body) was not considered murder. In 1588 the Catholic church declared all abortions were murder, but three years later a new pope again allowed early abortions. This rule persisted until Pope Pius IX in 1869 again declared all abortions as murder; a ruling still in effect today.
Fast forward to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that granted legal access to abortion, and the 2022 ruling which overturned the 1973 decision. For 50 years we have been so caught up in the abortion argument that we were barely aware of another issue. Frozen embryos1. An embryo is defined from the time the egg is fertilized until the seventh week of development, where definite organ systems can be identified.
In vitro fertilization is the process where a woman donates eggs which, in a laboratory, are fertilized by male sperm, becoming an embryo. The embryo develops the specialized cell lines and then is frozen. At a later time, the embryo is thawed and implanted in the woman’s uterus, with the hopes of developing into a full-term baby. The success rate is low.
Today, there are an estimated 1.5 million frozen embryos in the U.S. Each year, 30,000-100,000 embryos are frozen in other countries. Not all frozen embryos are used. Thousands belong to parents who have gone beyond child-rearing years. Numerous embryos have been abandoned by their donor.
A few evangelical programs try to have the embryos adopted, but they barely make a dent in the surplus held in frozen storage. Therein lies the moral dilemma. If you consider them to be a human life, and we do know they can become a newborn baby, then it would violate the sixth commandment to toss the embryos in the trash (Exodus 20:13 you shall not murder). Given what we know about embryology, we can’t go back to the rational soul argument of Thomas Aquinas. Nor can we interpret Genesis 2:7 where “man became a living being” when God breathed into his nostrils to mean life begins when we take our first breath. To assign the frozen embryos a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order is hardly ethical or moral. If we developed technology to incubate the embryos until they developed into newborns, we would be faced with a new dilemma: what to do with millions of orphaned children?
I have no solution for these cold babies. However, many places of worship observe the Sanctity of Life each January 22nd. The observance was driven by the abortion issue. Perhaps we ought to expand it to include frozen embryos. Or maybe, every once in a while, you might include them in your prayers.
Nomads2 