Long on Embryonic Rescue

From Steven Long, "An Argument for the Embryonic Intactness of Marriage," The Thomist 70 (April 2006), 267-88.

8. It is surely true that it is more natural for an embryonic child to be carried by a woman in her womb than by a machine such as an artificial womb, and also that it is more natural for the embryonic child to develop and live rather than to die. But the conclusions drawn from this are erroneous. For while it is generically speaking more natural for the child to be carried in a woman's womb than in a machine or artificial womb, the accruing of an additional form may make such carrying of the child to be unnatural. Similarly, it is generically better not to kill human beings than to kill them, but subsequent upon a certain form of justice, it may be better to kill--say, in just war, in defense, or in the case of the death penalty. Likewise, generically it is more natural for the embryonic child to be carried in the womb of a woman. But when one considers the added formality that the woman in question is not the mother of the child, so that such carrying constitutes either a sin against marital intimacy, against the chastity of the unwed, or against the vow of religious chastity, it is clear that by this form it is contrary to natural order for such a woman to carry the child of other parents. Indeed, it is the sin of surrogacy which the Church has proscribed. It is clear that it is then more natural for the child to be saved in an artificial womb than that anyone contrary to moral precept materially violate marital intimacy, or unwed chastity, or religious chastity. With respect to it being more natural for the child to live than to die, this is generically true; but, consequent upon the form that for the child to live someone must do moral evil, one sees that in this case, even were death the only remaining likelihood for the child, it would be better that no morally evil act be done. For one may not do evil that good may come.

With respect to the claim that it is simply natural for women to carry children (to gestate) and therefore it is natural for a woman to gestate another's child, one must say: this is overly generic, too general. Generically speaking, yes, it is natural for

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women to carry children, to gestate; and generically speaking, one might also say it is natural to human beings to gestate; or indeed, one might say it is natural for human beings to engage in sexual activity, or for human beings to marry. But what is generically true requires specification. It is natural to the mother to carry the child she conceives, but not for the woman to go to a clinic and carry a child she never conceived. It is natural to man and wife within the bounds of matrimony to procreate children, but it assuredly is not a perfection of normative natural teleology for all human persons of whatsoever age and sex, and apart from matrimony, to engage in sexual activity. It is natural to those fit for and desiring marriage to marry, but it is not natural to one who is called by God to religious life or the priesthood to deny the divine call, or alternatively and by way of defect for one who cannot engage in the procreative act to marry. It is natural for the prison guard to hold prisoners in jail, but it is not natural for the prison guard to hold someone in jail who is known by all to be innocent or if such holding is clearly contrary to law, justice, and charity. From such a generic proposition as "it is natural for women to carry children" one does not sufficiently fathom normative natural teleology, for the children carried do not naturally fall out of the air, but are conceived by man and wife. It is natural for a wife to conceive a child and then to carry the child in her womb, but the normative teleology is not for a woman to have an embryonic child whom she never conceived implanted in her womb by a clinic.

It remains true that one may not do evil that good may come--one may not violate marital intimacy, the chastity of the unwed, or religious chastity, for the end of saving the lives of embryonic children wrongfully alienated from their mothers' wombs and in danger of death. Yet there is in fact hope that these children may be rescued through the development of an artificial environment that can medicinally provide some minimal degree of what the mother should have provided her child in her womb.

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9. It is true that many acts that are not otherwise permissible may become permissible on the supposition of some prior evil, danger, or grave situation. Nonetheless no such act is permissible if it involves the objective transgression of negative precept, that is, if its moral species is one of wrongdoing. One may not do evil that good may come. Hence the reason why the apostate priest may not habitually dispense the sacrament is that his state of unbelief would render this sacrilegious given his public unbelief, and that he lacks the habitual grace minimally proportionate to such habitual sacaramental action, and that this might even in the external forum be an occasion for the ridiculing of the sacrament. But just as in the case of a penitent in extremis there is an extreme need, so the apostate priest may in such a state, mindful of that dignity to which he had been called, receive from God the graced motion of will whereby he wills in this extreme case to provide the sacrament. One notes that the giving of the sacrament is an end that is good in itself. Likewise, for the child's mother to bear her child is good in itself; but for one who is not the mother to carry the child is not good in itself because contrary, as has been said above, either to marital intimacy, the chastity of the unwed, or religious chastity. And so there is no moral parity here between an apostate priest hearing confession of a penitent in extremis and the case of the woman who chooses to carry a child she has not conceived with her husband in a specific act of conjugal unity: for the former is (or at least may be) good, while the latter is, simply speaking, not good, because it is surrogacy.

Yet the gravity of the case of the embryonic human persons needs to be addressed. How shall it be addressed? It has been seen above that whereas it is generically better for a woman to carry the child, consequent upon a certain form it is seen that to carry a child not her own is wrongful because materially violative of marital intimacy, the chastity of the unwed, or religious chastity. Likewise, as already seen it is generically inferior for an embryonic human being to be placed in a machine rather than in the womb of a woman. But given the realization that this child cannot be placed in the maternal womb as ought to be the case,

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and that this child can be placed in the womb only of a woman for whom this act will be violative of marital intimacy, unwed chastity, or religious chastity, clearly it is better for the child not to be placed in such a woman's womb, and to be placed in an artificial womb. For this offers both to supply medicinally at least some minimal degree of that of which the child has been deprived by its mother, and also it does this without any violation of the moral law. It is, accordingly, the only moral option for attempted rescue of frozen embryonic human beings. But if there is no such artificial womb that is workable, or if any attempt at thawing in the current state of technology should prove to be lethal, may these embryonic children be kept in their unnatural and frozen state in the hope that a technical means may be found to enable at least some of them to survive and live normal human lives?

Although this is not formally part of the question at hand, it seems fitting to conclude by noting that this is indeed one of the circumstances in which, supposing the prior evil, and supposing that there is real hope of normal life for these beings, we may do what elsewise we would not, namely, retain them in their frozen state. Although this is unnatural, and it was wrong initially for them to be alienated from their mothers, yet to unfreeze them is lethal and arguably thus to do them even worse injury; and by unfreezing them it seems that we deliberately choose to take responsibility for their deaths. Hence insofar as there is a realistic prospect of providing a means for at least some of these children to live, it seems not unreasonable to retain them in this unnatural condition in the hope, finally, of freeing them not merely from this affliction by thawing them unto their deaths, but of freeing them from this unnatural state for the sake of living a normal human existence.

In the absence of any such realistic prospect, however--if it is correctly judged that this is now, and for the foreseeable future will remain, impossible--then to unfreeze them, baptize them, and permit them to perish free of their unnatural and unnaturally imposed state, is permissible under the principle of double effect, inasmuch as the circumstances pertinent to their unnatural

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condition rather than the effort to free them therefrom exerts the decisively baneful influence. For to keep innocent human persons trapped in unnatural rigidity indefinitely, in quasiperpetuity and with no practical plan to free them, is unjust. Further, in such circumstances the caretaker's principal responsibility is to baptize them--which means also letting them thaw and die, since there is more probability that they will be alive to be baptized earlier rather than later. To insist upon keeping them in their frozen state without any practical hope of normal life is to perpetuate the wrongful act of those who initially separated them from their mothers and froze them. Only a reasonably practical hope of enabling normal life for these embryonic persons could justify failing to baptize them and keeping them for some slight increment longer in their present unnatural frozen state.