There is a mystery, present from conception, namely, how the human person, who transcends the individual elements of sperm and ovum, can nevertheless come to exist at the first instant of the sperm’s interaction with the ovum, an event marked by the formation of an “embryonic skin,” or wall. In this essay, the author holds that the full complexity of the human person implies such a profound unity-in-diversity of human being that we must, in the end, let the dialogue between (...) reason and revelation lead us to conclude that the first instant of embryonic life is the first instant that the person comes to exist: that the first sign of embryonic life is a “natural sacrament” of the internal act of God which brings the person to exist, one in soul and body. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 12.3 (Autumn 2012): 421–430. (shrink)

The ethical limbo in which frozen human embryos exist is, tragically, a real limbo, and in their untouchability lies an apparent contradiction: that God cannot rescue a person whom man, in his pride, has co-created outside the truly necessary incorporation within a family. The author explores the possibility that ethical objections to embryo adoption are based on a flawed conflation of two problems: the immorality, injustice, and harm of the procedure that supplants the marriage act; and the rights of the (...) child conceived outside the welcoming nature of the marriage act—the primary rights of every conceived person to completing, wholesome, and relational nurture. The author argues for the humanitarian right to embryo adoption, within marriage, from the point of view of the rights of the person conceived. (shrink)