Brave New Frozen World (Part 1 of 4)

Brave New Frozen World (Part 1 of 4)
Friday, November 1, 2024 by Christine

Where human life exists the spirit coexists. But what about the estimated one million souls in limbo? They’re locked in frozen embryos kept alive by the fridged nitrogen abyss within cryopreservation tanks.

Curiously, each frozen embryo possesses all of the genetic material necessary to become an artist or athlete, doctor or writer, politician or evangelist. And yet, they are none of the above because they are indefinitely suspended in a kind of eerie aluminum world where their future demise may be determined by personal choice, a court’s decision, or a power failure. Some might be artificially supported into the future, born as siblings to the elderly.

The one in six infertile couples in the U.S. have a daunting task in attempting to understand all of the legal and ethical issues surrounding frozen embryos. As it now stands, medical and legal experts are grappling with them regularly, rapidly, and on a case by case basis, as one unforeseen consequence after another arises.

To date, the fate of tens of thousands that exist in this nation, hangs in the balance. Recent states’ decisions continue to reflect a societal reverence of individual adult rights, while rejecting not only God’s Word regarding the origin of life but that of scientific evidence as well.

Our reproductive technologies continue to win at their exuberant game of leap frog with an overburdened court system. This area of medico-technology has progressed with one thrilling jump after another in a wide-open field free of legislation or even of standardized consent forms at the clinics where astonishing things are happening. The ever-broadening definition of family combined with biological barrier-breaking techniques within a cultural framework of tolerance are providing equal opportunity parental status to those heretofore excluded. Through the ability to freeze an embryo, parental rights are open to all of us in a diverse and non-discriminating culture: the single, same-sex partners, women well beyond menopause, the fifty percent of us that will divorce, the murderer, the dead, and even a combination thereof. To realize a dream of parenthood is to potentially experience the demise of multiple embryos, which are simply put, premature infants. This is yesterday’s news in reproductive success.

In an information age in which today’s news passes through our already overloaded psyches at a dizzying speed, important bits of our news-byte diets sometimes don’t get properly digested. Individuals contemplating these technologies don’t always have the opportunity to assimilate the old news: God-given scientific intellect has already concluded that frozen embryos are completely established in genotype or genetic makeup. And in this genotype, writes author and bioethicist Gilbert Meilaender, “lies the uniqueness, the novelty of the individual, and we can think of the rest of life as working out and developing what has been established in conception.

Best-selling author Og Mandino paints a compelling picture of what doctors and researchers at fertility clinics might see, if only with spiritual eyes, at the moment of conception in his book, The Greatest Miracle in the World. Upon fertilization of an egg by a sperm, says Mandino, all of the genetic material necessary to determine which person, out of some three hundred billion humans possible, has already been determined. When these two cells unite, each contains twenty-three chromosomes which each possess hundreds of genes, already governing every characteristic of this one human being’s eye color, manner, height and the rest of his or her traits. Of all the vast possibilities, God brings forth this one. “One of a kind. Rarest of the rare. A priceless treasure, possessed of qualities in mind…and actions as no other who has ever lived, lives or shall live.” And so it is that “men are without excuse” for their lack of understanding because even though God in His totality is incomprehensible to man, His invisible qualities-His eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen by what has been made.” (Romans 1:20)

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