From CT: What to do with frozen embryos?

Jim and Susanne are not alone. More than 400,000 frozen embryos are stored in clinics across the United States. No one knows how long frozen embryos retain their viability, but children have been born from embryos stored five to ten years.

And then, from a letter from a reader:

They were one of the many couples I encountered during my frequent visits to
the OB/GYN prior to my surgery. Here I was, facing the premature end of my reproductive years, spending many hours in the waiting room with couples trying to kick-start theirs. The irony was not lost on any of us. Normally, we would not have mingled but my doctor’s desire to see me early in the morning brought us together.

The lack of moral underpinning and conscious faith in these young people’s lives contributes greatly to their willingness to undergo these “purely scientific, medical” procedures. Only when they get in the middle of
it,faced with in-vitro embryos whose destiny they must determine, do they come
face-to-face with the moral implications of their deeds. At a visceral level, they encounter a multiplicity of crises of faith and morals with little foundation upon which to wrestle.

The journey of infertility was no picnic before and our technology has made it worse, not better for too many individuals.

Twenty-two years ago, an OB/GYN slammed my medical record shut and pronounced us unable to conceive. In some respects, what appeared to be a cruel sentence turned out to be a gift, his lousy bedside mannernotwithstanding. I did not seek out more answers, a new technology, in
large part due to the state of infertility treatments as well as enough self-researched catechesis and common sense to know what was licit and what not. Rather, we turned our efforts to consider adoption — and prayed for the grace to be the best aunt and uncle we could possibly be.

As you well know, about a year later I found myself pregnant — and today,
they number four. And yes, we are aunt and uncle to five more.

Our desire to regulate and initiate procreation has removed humanity from
the equation — both the prospective parent’s as well as the child’s.
Children have now become products of a process subject to societal
regulation and proclivities rather than viewed as a gift of mystery from
God. What was once a beautiful mystery is now viewed as mere biologicalmechanics.

In our erasure of human dignity, we have also blinded ourselves to the
Divine present at procreation.

And we call this progress?