MG writes: “Is it true that some people are using their embryos left over from IVF treatments as jewelry? Isn’t this kind of evil against Church teaching?”The answer to your question is “yes, and yes.” People are really making jewelry out of their “leftover” embryos, and it is most certainly against Church teaching to turn a human being into a keepsake, whether that be with their ashes or as an embryo.
Live Action News is reporting on a UK-based jewelry company named Blossom Keepsake that is engaged in the macabre practice of fashioning jewelry designed to hold the embryos of parents who decided to let their children die rather than continue to keep them frozen.
Listen to how artfully the Blossom Keepsake website explains this gruesome practice : “When storage is ending and donation does not feel right, there is a gentler way to honor what you created. We craft modern heirloom jewelry that quietly holds your embryo within a beautiful, discreet setting. Each piece is made to order in precious metals and handled with care at every step. . . only the wearer will know the secret your jewelry contains. The embryo will not be obviously visible, but we do use a marker to show where the embryo is within the stone.”
The company employs a very detailed process for obtaining the embryo. First, parents are asked to pick out the setting for the ring, bracelet, pendant, or charm they would like. Next, they are to give the company 4-6 weeks to create the setting. When this stage is complete, parents are asked to arrange for the “collection” of the embryo from the clinic. Once the “collection” has been arranged, the embryo is left to die as it’s packed up and shipped to the jeweler.
Calling this ghoulish idea the “ultimate commodification,” Live Action’s Cassie Cooke isn’t fooled by the heartstring-tugging descriptions on the site. What the company refers to as “storage ending” and donation that “doesn’t feel right,” is just a nice way of saying the parents don’t want to continue keeping their babies in cold storage, or allow anyone else to have them, and have instead chosen to let them die.
“Apparently, they felt just fine with the idea of creating far more children than they knew they would ever want,” Cooke writes, “and they think it is ‘gentler’ to end those lives and wear them every day as an accessory than to allow them the chance at life with another family.”
Even referring to the idea of embryo jewelry as honoring “what” you created rather than “who” you created reflects a view of this embryo as property rather than as a human being.
Cooke goes on to cite the alarming statistics associated with IVF technology which estimates as many as 13 million children born through IVF around the world since 1978. With over 2.5 million IVF cycles performed annually, and only 500,000 babies who are actually born, that means two million, or 80 percent, of IVF cycles fail.
Now let’s do the math.
It’s important to know that each IVF cycle aims to create an average of five embryos per cycle, which means that these 2.5 million annual cycles actually result in 12.5 million embryos. These embryos are then subjected to a grading system to determine which embryos are best for implantation. The leftovers are either used in future implantation attempts, frozen, or destroyed. In other words, of the 500,000 live births, an estimated 12 million embryos are lost. Annually.
This is just one of the reasons why the Catholic Church considers IVF to be morally illicit. Not only does it separate procreation from the marital act and violate the dignity of the child but it also treats the human embryo as “mere laboratory material” that violates the dignity that “belongs equally to every single human being, irrespective of his parents’ desires, his social condition, educational formation, or level of physical development.”
Pope John Paul II appealed to the consciences of the world’s scientific authorities in 1996, calling upon doctors in particular to halt the production of human embryos, “taking into account that there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons.”
Sadly, his cries were ignored and since that time, the fertility industry has come up with all kinds of creative ways to degrade the dignity of these innocent children.
“Turning ‘leftover’ children into jewelry is just one example of how the fertility industry dehumanizes children,” Cooke writes. “Embryos have been fought over and abandoned in divorce or custody agreements; other parents have engaged in embryo trades so they can get children with the exact characteristics they want. This makes sense, considering they only treat them as human beings once they are successfully implanted or born.”
The bottom line?
Cooke writes: “Embryo jewelry is thriving because embryos created through reproductive technologies are not treated with the dignity they deserve as human beings.”
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