In Arizona Custody of Frozen Embryos Shift to Parent Who Wants To Bring The Child to Birth

Oh what a tangled web we weave. Frozen embryos…who do they belong to? Are they just marital property subject to division? Based on what exactly? Since a frozen embryo is no longer in a woman’s body, can a woman who does not want the embryo argue under Roe that the embryo should be killed? Is so, then Roe essentially gives a woman a right to a dead child under any circumstance.

This article is a good read on the subject.

From a Catholic perspective, Arizona’s new law also poses moral problems. Because Catholic moral theology and theological anthropology do not want to slice and dice parenthood into genetic, gestational and social components, the Church recognizes that the idea of “embryo adoption” – another person “adopting” an abandoned embryo by bringing him/her to birth, “presents various problems.” Recognizing that there may be anywhere from half a million to a million such beings worldwide, the Church finds that “abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved” (Dignitatis personae, No. 19).

While there is a certain American pragmatism that wants “a practical solution,” the problem here is that there appears to be currently no moral solution to resolve the humanitarian crisis bequeathed by the technological imperative. Rather than having recourse to some technological “solution” (which would, in fact, probably never be able to address the sheer magnitude of the frozen embryo problem as well as possibly perpetuate the issue by appearing to offer some fix to the dilemma of abandoned embryos) we should in fact recognize that technology allowed us to play God with neither His omniscience nor omnipotence – and, like Humpty Dumpty, not every fertilized egg can seemingly always be made whole again.