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Keywords

Ethics, in vitro fertilization, IVF, human embryos, embryo adoption, adoption, Christian

Abstract

In vitro fertilization (IVF) has become the most common assisted reproductive technique in the United States, accounting for 48,000 births in one recent year alone. This has also given birth to a silent generation of over 500,000 human embryos, waiting in cryopreservation for their chance at birth (Grabill, 2006). For the Christian who believes that conception marks the beginning of human life, the fact of half a million frozen persons creates an ethical challenge of enormous proportion. Besides the obvious solution of not contributing to the problem (by freezing or discarding one’s own embryos), embryo adoption is often presented as the only life- affirming option left available (Sullivan, 2007). This paper will defend an additional approach that seems absent from the Church’s pro-life strategy.

DOI

10.15385/jce.2007.7.1.3

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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