Nine Embryos in Cryostorage
Anna and Pavel, married twelve years and both regular communicants, have no children. After four years of treatment they signed a contract with a private fertility clinic: eleven eggs were fertilized with Pavel's sperm and two embryos transferred; neither implanted; nine remain in cryostorage. The contract allows the clinic, after five years, to destroy the embryos or release them for research, and the storage fee falls due next month. Anna's mother has early Parkinson's disease, and a university trial of an embryonic stem-cell-based therapy is recruiting; the clinic offers the couple a large discount if they 'donate' the nine embryos to the trial. Pavel's younger brother and his wife, also childless, offer to pay for a surrogate in a country where commercial surrogacy is legal, using the same nine embryos. Anna asks Fr. Ioann simply: 'Will you bless whatever gets us a baby?'
1. Assess the moral status of the nine embryos and evaluate the three courses on offer.
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The principle. Orthodox teaching treats the human being as a person from conception; abortion is homicide in the canons (Canon 2 of St Basil; Canon 91 of Trullo, which applies the penalties for murder). The 2000 Social Concept of the Russian Church draws the consequences for reproductive technology: methods of in-vitro fertilization that presuppose the freezing and destruction of 'supernumerary' embryos are inadmissible; the use of embryonic tissue in research and therapy is inadmissible because it destroys them; surrogate motherhood is rejected as unnatural and morally unacceptable, turning the bearing of a child into a contract. The Church's objection is not to medicine as such, nor to a childless couple's grief, but to a technique that buys a child at the price of other children.
The three courses.
- Release for the trial, at a discount - no. The discount is the price of nine lives, and cooperation would be direct.
- Surrogacy using the same nine - no. It compounds the first act, and the brother's money would make the family, and eventually the parish, party to a commercial arrangement the Church rejects. Decline, and say why, without humiliating him.
- Transfer of the remaining embryos to Anna - the only course that does not involve their destruction, and the one the couple's own logic required from the beginning; but with no reduction, and on medical advice about multiple pregnancy.
What is genuinely open: the transfer of the nine to another couple ('embryo adoption') is debated among Orthodox bioethicists. The priest does not settle it. Refer it in writing to the bishop or the diocesan bioethics commission before the storage deadline.
2. What pastoral and penitential course do you take with the couple, given that the act has already been done?
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Order of operations. Do not begin with the sin. Begin with the grief: four years of treatment, two failed transfers, a mother dying, a brother's offer, a bill due. They are in a trap, and a priest who opens with 'you have murdered' will be heard as one more verdict on top of a failure, and will lose them.
Then name the acts clearly. The freezing was the wrong turn, and the Church does not pretend otherwise. But the sin is not the child they wanted; it is the accepted destruction of the children they did not carry. That distinction is what makes repentance possible instead of despair, and it is the difference between a confessor and a judge.
Penance as medicine. A discipline proportionate and therapeutic: a rule of prayer, almsgiving, the restoration of the marriage's integrity. Suspension from Communion is not the automatic answer and belongs to the bishop or to a confessor with clear authority; but with the couple's consent a definite rule should be set, so that repentance has a shape. If they accept the referral and keep the nine alive while the question is decided, the situation is being handled; if they will not even wait to know, that is a matter to name.
Offer alternatives: further transfer attempts; the adoption of a child, which the Social Concept commends; and the acceptance of childlessness as a vocation, which is not a defeat. Do not promise that the pain will lift, and do not make the blessing of the marriage conditional on a child.
3. What lies outside the priest's competence here, and what safeguards should he put in place?
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What the priest is not. He is not the author of the Church's bioethics, not the owner of the embryos, not the couple's medical adviser, and not the man who can promise the bishop's ruling. His competence is to teach, to counsel, to refuse a blessing to what the Church rejects, to hear confession, and to state the Church's documents accurately.
What must be referred, and in writing: (1) the question of transferring the nine to another couple; (2) any formal epitimia for a couple who have already undergone IVF - that belongs to the bishop; (3) the brother's surrogacy plan, if the family will approach the priest, so that the parish's response is consistent and does not depend on who is asked.
Confidentiality. The couple's medical history is theirs. Nothing from confession or counselling goes to the brother, the clinic, or the parish council, and the priest should say so at the outset - it is often the reason a couple can speak at all.
One practical safeguard. The storage deadline is a date on a contract. Ask for a copy of the clinic's terms so the couple decide on facts and not on the salesman's version, and put the priest's questions to the clinic in writing. That is not interference; it is the nearest thing an old-fashioned confessor has to a hospital visit.