Artificial Reproduction a “Grave Moral Evil” Says Archbishop Burke

The problem for me with associating as soul at the moment of conception is several fold. For one thing about thirty percent of conceptions don't even make it to implantation, for natural reasons. Toss in the number of natural miscarriages and we're somewhere around fifty percent. So, if a soul is joined with body at conception, the natural result is -- leaving out intentional abortion and reincarnation (which Judaism doesn't rule out, but that's for another time) -- that half the souls that make it Earth don't make it out of the mother's body.

I don't see that that makes a difference. What happens here on earth is a blip in all of eternity and if this was all there was, I could see the point, but it isn't. Those souls make it to heaven and that's not a waste. God likes to do things in a big way and lots of it; sand on the seashore and stars in the sky kind of thing. So it's not too much of a stretch to me to figure: *So what if these souls/people/whatever, don't have a life here on earth*?; they have a life in heaven and will populate it and fulfill a purpose there for all time and eternity.

If this is the way God intended it, it would strike me as rather wasteful.

I don't think that's the way God intended at all. He created a perfect, uncorrupted world. If you recall, one of the results of the Fall was that Eve's conception and child birth was greatly increased. It doesn't sound like what God had planned originally was for that (miscarriages) to be happening. As a matter of fact, if they had not sinned and continued to be perfect, I wouldn't expect there to be any conception that didn't make it to full term. A perfect body would work perfectly.

I don't believe that God does anything without a reason so I don't think that He does anything that's wasteful. If all those pregnancies didn't make it here, they still have a purpose, somewhere, sometime.

I heard (years and years ago) that the statistics about the huge number of early, undetected miscarriages was at least questionable, since it was derived from the examination of uteri which had been surgically removed (hysterectomies.) Hence they were abnormal and/or diseased uteri to begin with, and you can't legitimately use this data to make an extrapolation concerning early embryos thriving or failing to thrive in normal, healthy uteri.

Does anybody know whether there has been more recent research on this?

In any case, this does not amount to proof that early embryos are soulless matter. In some very poor areas, the rate of childhood mortality is over 50%, but that doesn't prove that children under the age of five are soulless.

If it is a property of a normal healthy human zygote to grow itself a brain in 6 weeks, then every human zygote must be assumed to have a brain-growing nature. A human nature. And any living being that has a human nature, has a human soul. All the more reason why the paresnt of an embryonic child have the moral obligation to provide, to the best of their ability, the nurture necessary to their little one in its -- frankly splendid and wondrous --- developmental project.

One more point, on why theological speculation about spiritual personhood may not be totally germane to public policy:

Maybe you say that embryos acquire souls as they develop their brains, starting at 6 weeks.
Someone else may say you're not really a living soul in the full sense of the word until you are baptized;
Peter Singer says a child does not acquire personhood until he's 2 or 3 months old, or never, if the child is retarded.
A Muslim might say you're not fully alive spiritually until you recite the Shehadah;
some philosopher draws the line at the Age of Reason, and I heard that
Hans Kung apparently never attributed personhood to the unborn, or even to the undergraduate.
Public policy can't be based on any speculation that draws some arbitrary line between human life and personhood. The law has to regard them as being coterminous. Whether or not the living zygote is ensouled from the git-go, i.e. at fertilization, the law should presume that human rights begin where human life begins. And that would be, biologically speaking, at the formation of a totipotent cell, and continuously thereafter until the complete, irreversible cessation of total brain activity.
The law must refuse to separate "human life" from "personhood," because if it does, it has to create a legal class of human beings devoid of human rights.
To Fred Phelps, that would be homosexuals.
To Chief Justice Roger Taney, that would be slaves.
To Justice Harry Blackmun, that would be all human beings prior to birth.
To Pinellas probate Judge George Greer, that would be Michael Schiavo's wife.
To Roland Freisler of the Volksgerichtshof, that would be Jews.
I would never put that kind of power in the hands of the State.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.