Abortion and Frozen Fertilized Human

Abortion and Frozen Fertilized Human Eggs

Fertilized human eggs, such as those which are frozen and stored in fertility clinics, are believed by some people to already be a human child in essence. To many religious groups that oppose abortion and claim to be "pro-life," these zygotes should have the same rights as a human infant brought to term. According to these religious groups, God grants the child an immortal soul at the time of conception, not at the time of birth. This is actually a belief that has been held by many cultures throughout history, and some Asian cultures actually celebrate the conception day rather than the birth day of the child to mark age. These religious groups do not believe it is moral to dispose of fertilized human eggs, even when they are only comprised of a few cells. The question for many people is whether these zygotes are "morally protectable entities, or are they more like other disposable tissues cleaned from the human body?" (Green)

It would seem that the moral obligation, then, of religious people who believe that a fertilized human egg cell has the same right to life as an infant child, would be to rescue fertilized egg cells that in danger. There are "spare' embryos created during invitro fertilization procedures." (Richards) Most in vitro fertilization clinics assist women in getting pregnant by taking eight egg cells from the mother, fertilizing all eight, then implanting half of the fertilized cells into the mother. The other four zygotes are usually frozen and put into storage for future use if the initial procedure fails. This leads to tens of thousands of zygotes being put into storage. Eventually, the zygotes will deteriorate, or "die" if left in storage for a prolonged period of time. These institutions may also dispose of these zygotes eventually. Therefore, to those who believe a zygote has a soul and the same moral rights as a child, there are tens of thousands of human lives in danger. One analogy that can be used is that of finding a child drowning. A person who believes that life is sacred would be morally obligated to rescue the child rather than to let him drown. The same is true for the frozen zygotes; there is a moral obligation to rescue them from the clinics. The only way to rescue these zygotes is to have them implanted into a woman and brought to term.

It is hard to say whether or not it would be inconsistent for a female religious "pro-lifer" to refuse to have fertilized eggs implanted into her uterus. There are many differences between rescuing a drowning child and becoming impregnated with an unborn child. First, a drowning child will only inconvenience the rescuer for a short period of time, while becoming pregnant will last for nine months. Additionally, rescuing a drowning child does not usually obligate the rescuer to care for the child or take financial responsibility for the child after the incident, while becoming pregnant with a child will obligate a person to this. Also, it is not necessarily the moral obligation of a person to join the coast guard so that he or she will spend all of his or her time searching the waters for children that might be drowning, only to save the child if it is found by chance. It might be argued that the woman has no obligation to go looking for frozen zygotes that are in storage and are in need of rescue. In that case it would only be the woman's obligation to rescue the zygotes if they happen to come across her path. In the case that the frozen zygote was directly presented to her, it would be more likely to be against her moral beliefs to refuse implantation.