God may or may not have created limbo so man, always eager to improve on God’s work, created it. Due to the widespread use of In Vitro Fertilization of which the Church does not approve, hundreds of thousands of “spare” or “extra” embryos now exist in a man-made refrigerated limbo.
This is nothing short of a horror. And of course, the natural question that comes to mind is: Can they be rescued? While our instincts to preserve life might make the answer seem easy, it isn’t. According to Church teaching keeping the embryos frozen, implanting them in a woman’s womb, and destroying them are all immoral responses to a terrible situation…
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March 4, 2010 at 11:33 pm
Google 'snowflake babies', for the many frozen embryos that were 'adopted', and successfully implanted, and born, Thank God. I understand the 'limbo' dilemma, but surely, 'adopting' the embryo, and bringing the baby into the world is better than limbo, or destruction.It's the best of the 3 options, given that 'conception', however unnatural, has occurred.
March 6, 2010 at 2:51 am
I heard Fr Tad,a Catholic bioethicist, say that the embryos seem to develop a kind of frost bite which leads to their death and that the biological parents are obliged to maintain the embryos till natural death. I believe he also said that any surrogacy is proscribed by Church teaching.