Frozen Embryos, Unwanted Pregnancies, and Artificial Wombs: Which Options Are Morally Licit?

In a previous article, I defended why embryo adoption is illicit. More precisely, it is the act of arti;cially impregnating a woman that is contrary to the natural moral order and renders the practice an illicit one, and not the “praiseworthy” intention to save a human life. While I do not intend to repeat that argument in detail here, in sum, my reasoning proceeds from ;rst re-examining the underlying rationale that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) applies in its 2008 Dignitatis Personae and its 1987 Donum Vitae for other arti;cial reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), arti;cial insemination, surrogacy, and the transfer of embryos for infertile couples (an embryo adoption of some kind), all of which were condemned in these two documents as either formally “illicit” or “not ethically acceptable.” When moral theologians listen with care and renewed attention to the underlying rationale in these documents, a single common thread emerges: the reality of what I call “conjugal agency,” namely, that licit actions in reproductive bioethics must respect the role of the spouses in being agent causes of procreation and pregnancy and that this agency must be exercised through conjugal union. ?e determining criteria for what constitutes a licit clinical procedure versus an illicit one emerges very clearly in these documents once theologians grasp this logic at its root. When this logic is then applied to the question of embryo adoption, it becomes clear that it is illicit for an agent other than the spouse to impregnate his wife and that, in addition, it is illicit for such impregnation to take place outside of conjugal