If life begins at conception, then ... (frozen embryo question)

In My Humble Opinion
1

First, a plea.

If you don’t meet the below criteria, then the following question is not directed towards you and I would appreciate not having the thread hijacked. There are plenty of other abortion debate threads on these boards and I’m wanting to get the opinions of a specific set of people, k? (That’s why I put this in IMHO, because it’s a poll.) Please don’t jump in here and start in about how there’s no such thing as a soul, abortion should be legal, life begins at some other time, etc. Please?
Ok, so if you:

  1. Believe life begins at conception,
  2. Believe in the existence of a ‘soul’,
  3. Believe the soul goes to some kind of afterlife after death,

Chew on this:

The fertility doctor mixes the sperm and eggs in the petri dish and voila, eggs are fertilized. The cells begin to divide, etc. As far as we’re concerned, life began the second sperm met egg. New human being, yada yada.

But with in vitro fertilization, the divison is stopped at about the 4 or 8 cell stage so the embryo can be frozen for future use (assuming Mom doesn’t want to get pregnant immediately).

Assuming a human gets their soul at conception (a big assumption I know, but hang with me here), what happens to the soul when the embryo is put into the freezer?

Are they dead? Alive but in suspended animation? Is their soul still in the body or has it gone to (insert name of after-death destination here)?

2

I don’t fit any of your three criteria but want to chime in and say I don’t see how it would be any different from suspended animation, cryogenic freezing, and other similar methods except that, in the case of frozen embryos, they’re actually proven to be able to live afterwards whereas in the case of fully grown adult humans, cryogenics is still unproven.

3

Just yesterday, I was talking with an old friend about embryos and souls. He’s a Catholic and a grandfather. He had some ideas I hadn’t heard before. Like many Catholics, he approves of birth control. He’s strongly against abortion, though. He says, “When God puts in a soul, and he gets it back before the child is born, he’s liable to doubt himself, and you don’t want that to happen.” On the question of the morning-after pill, he’s for it, for a surprising reason. “I figure there’s no soul aboard until about the fifth day after conception.” I asked him why five days. “Well, God’s got a lotta souls to keep track of. He could lose track of a soul for four or five days, or He could get behind.”

I’m not a Catholic, and I don’t pretend to understand its details. However, something tells me that’s not the standard, brass-bound Vatican policy. :dubious: I don’t agree with him, either. I present it to you simply because I thought you’d find it interesting.

4

If you subscribe to all of the OP’s assumptions, wouldn’t identical twins share a single soul between them?

5

As an aspiring Catholic, I’d say it’s there. As I understand it (a better-informed Catholic can chime in. Paging tomndebb. Soul and body are not separable except by death. “Alive but unconcious” or “Unconcious and not yet self-aware” would be my vote.

But I don’t know if the Magisterium has pronounced on this issue exactly, so don’t take me too seriously.

6

I know I’m not supposed to answer because I don’t fit the criteria, but I used to and I found myself thinking on this puzzle quite a bit. It was very difficult set of questions to answer to my own satisfaction. Some of the possibilities you’ve already mentioned. Others:

If getting the soul in there is an act of God (meaning that God actually does it rather than it spontaneously appearing), God could simply not put one in there under certain circumstances.

If God knew (and he would) they weren’t going to be, er, reanimated at any time, the soul could be separated back out.

Both of these ideas lead to theological difficulties, but I think every answer to the question really does.

7

There are medieval illuminations showing the insertion of the soul into a fetus by angels (the fetus is not actually shown, you only see the mother’s belly, the fetus is assumed) at the time of ‘quickening’. Quickening is the point at which movement can be felt and generally occurs at about 3 months.

Also, what about mosaic people? Mosaics happen when two embryos merge and form a single person. There are a few discovered accidentally every year. They have two entirely separate sets of DNA, with some organs or sections of organs having one set and some the other.

I guess the three month rule, or any delay rule, would take care of that.

8

If your assumption is correct, that the soul inhabits the embryo at conception, then wouldn’t it be unethical/immoral/cruel to freeze it and place it in a state of suspended animation? You’re basically imprisoning that soul indefinetly, depriving its chance to fulfill its potential.

And, there’s the issue of what to do with leftover embryos? With in-vitro, many embryos are made, like 8 or 10 or more. Surely, not all of those will be used. Wouldn’t creating these embryos be unethical if you didn’t intend on using all of them?
Disclaimer, FTR, I don’t believe in any of the criteria, but I find it to be an interesting philosophical question.

9

Yep, and this is exactly why those of us who believe the soul begins at conception are so against in-vitro fertilization.

My position on the issue is that we will very likely never know the precise moment when the soul enters, and besides that, there is no one “moment of conception”. Therefore, from the point where there is the slightest chance that conception has happened, i.e. from the point where we can no longer say with absolute certainty that the sperm and egg have not joined together, we should treat the zygote as if he or she does have a soul, and is fully as human as the rest of us. Far better to err on the side of caution, than to kill a human individual.

10

OK. Would you have a funeral when a miscarriage happens? What happens to the soul of a miscarried embryo/fetus? Also, what exactly is a soul? I’m not being obtuse, I am really interested in how one who believe in this would define it. Where does a soul come from? Are they recycled? Is there a limited number of souls, or will the world ever run out of souls as the population grows larger?

11

Havign dealt with Infertilioty issues ove rthe last two years, and having read a lot of books I can tell you that there are a lot of religions that look down upon many methods of dealing with infertility.

Some of them for the very reason you post here. Not only because of the embryos in stasis, but what if they don’t need the extras, disposing of them would be murder. Also because of the issue of selective reduction. If you are truely doing In-virto, you are nor using a single fertilized egg. You typically will insert 3-5 eggs hoping at least one implants. In this case you could have multiple fertilized eggs not make it. And if they all do, as Isaid, some people go with selective reducttion for health reasons, which is another issue all-together.

As a side note there are some religions completely opposed to many types of fertility therapy because the man mus extract his seed mano-a-mano so to speak.

12

I have met people who did insist on rights for miscarried babies. So, it’s not as outre as you seem to think.

13

My church (the Eastern Orthodox) does have services for a miscarried child, although it is not the same as the service for when a child or adult dies. There are specific prayers appointed in the euchologion, or book of needs, i.e. for services that are one-offs. And, of course, if the embryo can be recovered, it should be buried in a place not likely to be desecrated.

Being innocent of any sin, it would go to wherever the souls of the righteous are, to wait for the general resurrection and the world to come.

The soul is the noncorporeal part of a person; even though it is not made of matter as we think of it, it does exist as a rarefied substance that is limited by time and space, and is very likely undetectable by physical instruments. This does mean that its existence is scientifically unfalsifiable; this does not mean that it doesn’t exist. The Church fathers have found it useful to distinguish between different aspects of the soul (“organs”, if you will): the nous, or the highest, most spiritual part of the soul that is capable of seeing the divine energies; the seat of emotion; the seat of reason, and so on. Whatever happens to the body affects the soul, and vice-versa; they are two parts of the same being. Death is an unnatural and never-intended tearing of the soul from the body, that will ultimately be rectified in the general resurrection.

A soul is created when a new person comes into being, which happens sometime between when the sperm and egg first meet up and when the zygote starts to divide. Souls are not recycled, and since new ones are created for every individual, there will never be a shortage of souls. As for what happens in cases like an embryo splitting, or two embryos fusing, I’ve no information; at least, I don’t believe the Church has made any pronouncements on it, other than the fact that every individual has one unique soul and that souls are not destroyed.

14

Technically, I shouldn’t respond because I disagree with your point #1: I think life begins before conception, otherwise you’re dealing with dead sperm & eggs.

However, I have no more issue with the idea of a soul in a cryogenically-suspended embryo than I do with one in a comatose patient, or, in the not-too-distant future, probably in cryogenically-suspended post-birth people.

Which is to say, no problem at all.

15

I’m fine with in vitro conception, but not okay with just throwing away embryos when the parents decide they’re done having kids. There’s a lot of emotion involved in adoption, but I think it would be better to donate one’s leftover embryos rather than let them just sit there, doing nothing. I think I would have an easier time knowing that I gave all of my children a chance at being born, even if someone else is raising them, rather than knowing that some of them will never have a chance because they’re in a lab somewhere. Disclaimer: I have never been infertile so I am speculating as to what I’d do. Nobody knows until they’ve been in that situation.

Before I go on, I realize that a lot of times conception doesn’t even happen in the dish. You may have 10 eggs and only, say, 4 become fertilized. In that case since those other 6 were never fertilized, I’ve got no problem with throwing them away.

The chances of 1 embryo working in IVF is slim so I can see why they implant several at a time. That’s fine, but killing off some of them later on because all of them happened to work? No. You implant X number of embryos, you should accept the risk that you may have X number of kids at once. I can’t see intentionally creating, say, 7 children and then making 4 of them become sacrificial lambs for the sake of saving the other 3 just because doctors and parents refuse to show a little restraint. Then again, if you don’t abort you’re running the chance of all of them being born so early that they’re all disabled, which is terrible too. I still can’t see killing some of them for a “what if,” though.

Europe doesn’t have this problem because most countries there won’t allow an excessive number of embryos to be implanted into a woman all at once. It probably increases the number of attempts that have to be made before a couple ends up with a kid, but to me it’s better than creating, say, 20 embryos, implanting 10, Mom gets pregnant with 5 so they go in and kill 2 of them, meanwhile the other 10 are in the deep freezer, forever forgotten.

OTOH, these same countries have socialized medicine and thus there are no private insurance companies limiting couples to just one or two tries with IVF (correct me if I’m wrong, Eurodopers). Some couples here probably are forced to implant an excessive number all at once because they know this will be their only shot. :frowning:

As far as the soul question, I just don’t know. I do believe we get a soul at conception, but as far as what happens when an embryo is frozen, I don’t know. I don’t believe souls are recycled, so if an embryo is frozen and God knows that that embryo will never be implanted, I imagine the soul would just go on to heaven. If God knows that the embryo will be implanted, maybe He works it a bit differently.

I’m not Catholic but I do agree with yBeayf’s statement that we should err on the side of caution.

To answer nyctea scandiaca’s (very good) question, sometimes people miscarry and never even know it. In very early miscarriages, I imagine there wouldn’t really be anything to, well, bury. In a later miscarriage, though, I don’t think I could see myself holding a full-fledged funeral, but yes, I would have the baby buried in a cemetery.

If it were a really, really late miscarriage or stillbirth, then yeah, funeral too, a small one.

As far as why a funeral in some instances and not others, I can’t answer it because I don’t know.

16

I am firmly politically pro-choice, so perhaps I don’t belong in this thread, but it’s a fascinating question. To clarify, I believe abortion is morally wrong, but there are times when the alternatives might be worse. It’s also not my place to make my moral beliefs law, therefore I believe abortion should be legal. Like Abbie Carmichael, I’m not thrilled about people having several embryos implanted and then seeing what happens, and I really don’t like the idea of aborting some that others might live or carrying them all to term with severe handicaps. I have no idea how fertile I am. Since I’m not interested in babies or good with them, and I’ve never wanted kids, I’ve never had an incentive to find out. I am, however, grateful I’m not hyper-fertile.

I was raised by a somewhat harsh ethic which says one should accept what one has, within reason, and try to make the best of it. There are some good things which happen to other people which simply don’t happen to us. A year ago, I would have said falling in love and getting married was one of those things which wasn’t going to happen to me. Certainly, even if it does, it won’t happen the same way it did to my best friend who’s happily married to her college sweetheart. I won’t have the security of working for two companies throughout my adult life like my father and brother did. Oh well. Neither of them lived in Hawaii. Hell, the dead plants on my balcony tell me I’m never going to be a great gardener.

If I did want kids, have a man around who was willing to help produce and raist them, and found myself infertile, I’d hope that I would adjust my dreams and find a different way, maybe by adopting. On the other hand, I’ve read from people in that situation that it isn’t that simple. Would I be tempted to do something I consider morally wrong? I hope not. On the other hand, I would have an abortion if I had to. Personally, I’d argue that the two are not equivalent because the former involves expending time, money, and effort which will result in me taking an action which I know is wrong, the latter does not unless I deliberately get pregnant for the express purpose of having an abortion, in which case, I’d need good psychological treatment as soon as possible because I’d be deranged.

Fertilized eggs do not always implant successfully in the womb and, as has already been noted, even when they do, changes can happen. Therefore, I’m pretty sure the soul doesn’t enter the body at conception or fertilization. My WAG is it happens around the time of quickening, when a child becomes viable. On the other hand, I don’t know how that affects miscarriages or still births. My bottom line is I don’t know, and I doubt I ever will while I’m on the face of the earth. I assume in heaven, all things are known.

I hope I’ve said something useful or interesting in this ramble, and I hope I haven’t offended. If I have, please believe me, that was not my intent. As I said, it’s a fascinating question. Thank you for asking it. Threads like this are one of the reasons I joined this place.

Respectfully,
CJ

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No offense taken, Siege. I just added that request because you know how crazy abortion debates can get, and I wanted to avoid a knock down drag out.

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Other things I’m wondering:

If you’re conceived the natural way, how many cells are you by the time you get ready to implant into the uterine wall? Embryos from the freezer are at 4 or 8 cells. Seems to me that if you weren’t conceived in vitro, you’d be at WAY more than just 8 cells by the time you landed in the uterus.

IANAD, but maybe one of the reasons in vitro is so unsuccessful is because the embryos they make need to be allowed to get bigger? I mean, if naturally a human is, say, 100 cells “big” by the time they get to the uterus (nice round number), and fertility doctors are putting in tiny 4-8 cell embryos, it’s not working as well because they’re not replicating natural conception enough? Maybe they can’t let them get bigger, I don’t know.

Another thing I’m curious about: let’s say they get some embryos out of the freezer because Mom is ready to get pregnant again.

It’s not like the doctor can look in the petri dish and SEE the embryos, right? So how exactly does the doctor get these tiny invisible things into Mom, and into the right position? They don’t, like, use a microscope and use some kind of high-tech tweezers to pick them up and then use something else to put them into the womb, do they?

Can it, like, cause damage to the baby to be in the freezer for so long? I just think of those cold temperatures and let’s face it, that can’t be without some risk, right, since we were never meant to be exposed to temperatures like that after conception?

I keep thinking about how weird it would feel to find out that I was an IVF baby (I wasn’t, of course). It wouldn’t bother me, I think I would be more like “I was in a freezer? Cool, wow, I wish I could remember it” or something.

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:smack: :smack: :smack:

No pun intended :eek:

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[regression therapy]
“It was dark… and cold… and there were… tater tots…”
[/regression therapy]