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With one piece of bad news rapidly following another on the technological reproduction front—the latest being that aging rock star David Crosby donated his seed for lesbian rocker Melissa Etheridge's children—one desperately hopes for any sign of good news. It is not so surprising, then, that embryo adoption has initially been greeted with open arms.

Most embryos created by in vitro fertilization (IVF)—fertilizing a woman's eggs in the laboratory with her partner's sperm—are not introduced into a mother's body. Thus most embryos (human beings at the first stage of life) are destined for destruction. In light of this, embryo adoption (implanting an embryo created by another couple into an adoptive mother's womb) seems to be a compassionate act.

I am convinced, however, that the appearance of moral goodness in this case is deceptive. Christians should have significant misgivings about embryo adoption.

To express misgivings about embryo adoption is not to call it morally wrong. Those who participate in embryo adoption, at least with Christian Adoption and Family Services (CAFS) of Brea, California, agree not to dispose of any embryos transferred to them and to carry to term all the embryos that attach following implantation. They intend no harm to the embryos; rather, they offer safe haven and a rescue of abandoned embryos from an "absurd fate."

In the practice of CAFS, adoptive parents are married couples, selected or approved by the genetic parents of the embryos to receive and carry their offspring and, God willing, to give birth to and raise their children.

I still have reservations, though, and this is the most important: the practice of embryo adoption will make irresponsible in vitro activity more likely.

I do not find IVF in itself morally objectionable, assuming no third parties are in volved in the procedure (i.e., the egg and the sperm should be collected from the would-be parents). But I believe the current practice of in vitro fertilization is deeply problematic. The pressures of cost and efficiency inevitably lead to collecting and fertilizing more eggs than will be implanted and, therefore, to the absurd fate of "spare" embryos.

Each "harvest" and implantation of eggs costs thousands of dollars. Knowing that it may take four or five tries before an embryo can be implanted successfully in the womb, it is more cost effective to prepare 10 embryos during each reproductive cycle, to increase the odds that one will implant. Few couples have sufficient courage, knowledge, or money to say to a reproductive specialist, "Here are my conditions for this operation: you collect, fertilize, and implant only three eggs each cycle."

The imperatives of contemporary technological reproductive practice win the day; thus the proliferation of "spare" embryos and their eventual death. Many couples, aware of the current practice, decide against IVF for precisely this reason.

But what would be the effect of well-publicized opportunities to adopt embryos? In vitro fertilization becomes much more thinkable for couples who believe their surplus embryos will not be destroyed but may be adopted by other good and loving parents. Consider Barbara Olson, who donated her embryo to an adoptive couple through CAFS. "I was distressed over the fact that our embryos were just in storage, and I felt convicted that they deserved a chance to be born," she said in a Christianity Today news story.

Ms. Olson's distress is appropriate, but it is more appropriately felt before in vitro fertilization. Chances are slim that people will feel the appropriate moral distress, given the assurance that their embryos may be adopted.

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September 4 2000, Vol. 44, No. 10