by Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY
No fully moral solution exists for dealing with frozen embryos, not even the idea of adopting or "rescuing" abandoned embryos to bring them to full development and birth, Vatican officials said. "It is worse than a dead end, which has only one way out; this has none," said Bishop Elio Sgreccia, former president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, who helped prepare the Vatican's new bioethics document.
After years of study and debate over the morality of adopting frozen embryos, the Vatican did not rule out the practice, but the document released Dec. 12 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said the idea raises serious ethical concerns. "It needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved," said the document, "Dignitas Personae" ("The Dignity of a Person"). The only completely moral way of acting is to stop creating and freezing embryos, which have the dignity of human beings, said the document.
