Cooperation in Evil

1. Cooperation in Evil Embryo Adoption?

2. Cooperation in Evil ? ? May a person do an act which in itself is not wrong but which is used by others for an evil purpose? ?

3. FormalCooperation: working together with another whileagreeingwith the other in the act he is doing MaterialCooperation: working together with another althoughnotagreeingwith the other in the act he is doing Never morally permitted Can be morally permitted under certain conditions

4. Good and evil effects must be proportionate: a) The amount of evil my cooperation will enable others to do. b) The amount of evil I will suffer if I refuse to cooperate.

5. c) The proximity of my cooperation to the evil act itself. The closer a person’s cooperation is to the evil act, the greater the reason one needs to be able to cooperate in it.

6. Embryo Adoption? “Prenatal Adoption”

7. Church documents: • Donum Vitae (1987) Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and the Dignity of Procreation ~ Replies to Certain Questions of the Day • Dignitas Personae (2008) Instruction Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions

8. Arguments pro … • Embryo’s right to life • Not surrogacy: “She [the surrogate] carries the pregnancy with a pledge to surrender the baby once it is born to the party who commissioned or made the agreement for the pregnancy.” (DV) • Analogy: Married woman conceives naturally but then is diagnosed with a condition of the womb such that she can’t carry the child….

9. Arguments con … • Embryo adoption is intrinsically evil. DV: “the exclusive right [of a husband and wife] to become father and mother solely through each other.” -- Depersonalizes and dehumanizes impregnation (apart from conjugal union) • It is surrogacy: The woman gestates a baby that is genetically not her own. DV • Analogous to Artificial Insemination: Needs a conjugal act.

10. Dignitas Personae, #19: • Frozen embryos: • Wrong to throw them away • Wrong to use them for research or treatment of disease • Wrong to thaw them without reactivating and use them for research as if cadavers • Wrong to use them as treatment for infertility • Same reasons as artificial heterologous procreation and any form of surrogate motherhood • Leads to other problems: medical, psychological, and legal

11. Dignitas Personae, #19: • Prenatal adoption: • Praiseworthy intention of respecting and defending human life. • Presents various problems similar to those mentioned above. problems

12. Dignitas Personae, #19: • Frozen embryos: • Wrong to throw them away • Wrong to use them for research or treatment of disease • Wrong to thaw them without reactivating and use them for research as if cadavers • Wrong to use them as treatment for infertility • Same reasons as artificial heterologous procreation and any form of surrogate motherhood • Leads to other problems: medical, psychological, and legal Intrinsically Evil Circumstantial

13. U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops: • “The document raises cautions or problems about these new issues but does not formally make a definitive judgment against them.” • The CDF neither endorses nor condemns embryo adoption.

14. Dignitas Personae, #19: “All things considered, it needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved. Therefore John Paul II made an “appeal to the conscience of the world’s scientific authorities and in particular to doctors, that the production of human embryos be halted, taking into account that there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons.”