It’s little wonder Tertullian wasn’t interested in Athens.
Aristotle once (now infamously) said, “Let there be a law that no deformed child shall be reared” (Politics 7.14.10). Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle believed the state had a duty to limit the number (and kind) of children born to a family. If the state’s imposed limits were transgressed, the necessary consequence was abortion—or, if that failed, infanticide.
The Romans are even more infamous for their practice of infant exposure. Archeology occasionally confirms the grotesque practice, and as early as the 2nd century Christians repudiated it. Christians were not the only ones to denounce the barbarism, but as far as we can tell they were the first group to universally and unequivocally do so. In a gut-wrenching scene, Tertullian charges “the heathens”: “you expose them to the cold and hunger, and to wild beasts, or else you get rid of them by the slower death of drowning” (Ad Nationes 1.15).
The Biblical scholar Rikk Watts details a relatively recent discovery that found the ancient Roman sewage system clogged with the remains of day-old infants. He comments only, “Now, if that disgusts you, it’s because of the cross of Christ.”
Though any infant was at risk of exposure based on the whims of the parent, the weakest of them were the most vulnerable to the practice. While Christians are constantly scolded for the shameful acts of our ancestors, I cannot help but be proud of our heritage that the Christian catacombs are full of tiny graves that read “the adoptive son of…” or “the adoptive daughter of…” Resurrected from the ashes of the local dung heap, Christians would take in the least-of-these as their own and treat them with the dignity due their kind, for however long they lived.
The Christians of this day saw what can only be described as a wicked and unjust system. Their answer to this demonic problem was what could be called an almost reckless concern for human life. There was no grand moral calculus; they saw a life they could save and they instinctively saved it. In their writings and in their actions, they denounced this system and practice and, in its place, offered a radically countercultural ethic and response.
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I am no Christian ethicist. But I have more than a passing interest in contemporary ethical debates about abortion, IVF, and other reproductive technologies. As an outside observer of Christian ethics, I see the nature of the human person as the next frontier. “What is a human person?” is the question that will (and should) dominate the future landscape of Christian reflection, especially because of issues related to technology and sexuality. Abortion and IVF, for example, are contemporary hot button issues, and good, Christian reasoning on these issues is essential.
But I must also confess that I have a personal stake in some of these conversations. As I narrate at greater length elsewhere, my wife and I adopted embryos. My almost-three-year-old son Lewis and nine-month-old daughter Iona were frozen as embryos for several years before we adopted them and transferred them to my wife (as you would in a typical IVF cycle), who then gestated and birthed them (as in a typical pregnancy).
Before our adoption, we faced the question of reproductive technologies head-on during a long stretch of infertility. We decided against more invasive measures like IUI or IVF because of their ethical implications. Both of us have deeply pro-life convictions. Knowing the sting of infertility ourselves, we, of course, sympathize with couples who turn to technologies like IVF out of their desire to conceive. But as currently practiced, our primary concern with IVF is the excess of embryos—that is, human persons—instrumentalized, ignored, then (usually) “discarded” or “donated for testing.”
Out of a conviction that human persons should not be instrumentalized, ignored, then destroyed, many pro-life Christians see IVF as an unjust system. Plainly, an excess of embryos is an unacceptable practice.
The ethics of embryo adoption are still embryonic. In "Dignitas Personae", for example, the Roman Catholic Church—typically ahead of the Protestant curve in reflecting on contemporary moral issues—reflects on the practice of “prenatal adoption” and says only that though it is “praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life, presents however various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned [previously in the document].”
It is beyond the scope of this article to respond to every moral or ethical concern about embryo adoption. Christians can, and should, carefully think through many relevant issues. But in this article, I want to respond to one worry or concern I’ve heard about embryo adoption: a worry about complicity in a wider system.
The worry is put well by Christian ethicist Matthew Lee Anderson. After being quoted in a Christianity Today article about embryo adoption, he followed up with a short blog post briefly addressing the matter. He says he plans to take up the ethics of embryo adoption at some point but says he’s yet to do so. However, he does admit, “some instinctive ambivalence about the practice, for reasons that have to do with our potential complicity in a broader framework of thought that has separated conception from sex.”
I must confess I find this concern perplexing. First, it is difficult to see how embryo adoption separates conception from sex since in any embryo adoption conception has already happened—and in most cases, has happened several years prior to the adoption. Embryo adoption separates gestation from sex. But like any adoption, in embryo adoption a human child already exists. Like all other adoptions, embryo adoption aims to provide a family for that child, even if it is (as with all adoptions) in less-than-ideal circumstances. Indeed, embryo adoption is explicitly a response to that broader framework of thought.
But granted: embryo adoption (unlike other forms of adoption) does sometimes involve a context related to that “broader framework for thought”—for example, they typically involve fertility centers, the mechanics of the transfer are similar to an IVF transfer, and adopted embryos are products of IVF. Perhaps this gets to the heart of Anderson’s concern: Embryo adoption is mired in a wider web of otherwise troubling technologies. As I have already suggested, I share Anderson’s general concern about this “broader framework.”
But is embryo adoption somehow “complicit” in this system?
Of course, individuals who adopt embryos may be complicit in this system, given a certain set of otherwise morally wrong beliefs or motivations for their behavior. But, given the context, I take Anderson’s worry to be about the Christian response of embryo adoption to the unjust production of human embryos. In other words, is embryo adoption somehow complicit in the system even when Christians otherwise denounce the production of human beings in this manner?
It is difficult to see how. I can think of a few possible concerns. First, similar technologies are employed in IVF and embryo adoption transfers. Second, that embryo adoption is seen as tacit support for or participation in an unjust system. Or third, that embryo adoption allows a kind of “out” for families who choose IVF, allowing them to justify their decision. I will respond to each of these three.
First, similar technologies are employed in IVF and embryo adoption transfers. I struggle to see this as a real concern, since the adoption only mirrors the embryo transfer of the embryo to a mother and not the production of embryos. The production is the moral mistake in IVF; the resulting transfer in an IVF process borders on moral duty. Even if the IVF transfer were a moral problem, surely just because a technology can be used for unjust ends in one situation does not mean it cannot be used for just ends in another.
Second, that embryo adoption is seen as tacit support for an unjust system. But, in the case I am imagining, individual Christians have condemned the unjust system. Unless the concern here is about money going to the fertility clinics (which should be dampened by the realization that some fertility clinics are pro-life or non-profit), the only way I can see anything resembling “support” is in the third concern: that embryo adoption allows a kind of “out” for families who choose IVF, allowing them to justify their decision. But would this kind of moral reasoning hold in other cases?
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Take the Christian response to the Roman practice of infant exposure, for example. It is indeed difficult to imagine the Christians deliberating if their adoptions of the exposed infants might encourage other parents to expose their children, too. It is difficult to imagine, that is, their raising concerns about “complicity” in a broader framework. If they considered it at all, I suspect their worries dissolved when they heard cries from the dung heap.
The early Christian action of saving exposed infants is, as far as I can tell, universally hailed as a good, proper, and ethical Christian action. Their context is different than embryo adoption, to be sure, but can we learn lessons from them?
First, when we see a child we can save, we save it. Second, in the face of blatant disregard for human value, with Christian conviction, show a different way.
Plainly the early Christian practice of adopting exposed infants was not complicity in a wider framework; it was exactly the opposite. By rescuing exposed infants, they were—not only in their words, but in their actions—denouncing the practice of exposure. How could it be anything else? To value the lives thrown away by the system is to proclaim the system unjust.
So, too, with embryo adoption. The practice itself is not complicit in the wider framework precisely because it is a firm condemnation of it—not only in words, but in action.
In comparing embryo adoption to this early Christian practice, I do not mean to draw absolute moral equivalency. Reproductive technologies raise important questions that require deep, thoughtful answers. But in our desire to provide such answers, let not our ears be deaf to cries from dung heap—or the cryotube. Anderson is right, of course, that embryo adoption is not a comprehensive solution to the problem of excess embryos. But even as a response to the crisis, I think Anderson underappreciates how far embryo adoption might go.
As an academic and a thinker, I welcome more rich, Christian cultural criticism. And I think—lest I condemn my own professional work to futility—this kind of Christian moral deliberation matters and changes lives. But I suspect what we need even more is a lived vision of a different system. I suspect, that is, that countercultural action in response to the unrestrained production of embryos will go further to illuminate the problem than any moral treatise.
For now, we see a lamentable situation before us: millions of human persons are instrumentally produced and discarded—literally and figuratively. In the face of such a system, what practice could be more countercultural than adopting them? What practice would condemn this injustice more than recognizing and naming the humanity in each embryo, making the often costly—in more ways than one—decision to care for him or her?
Maybe we are complicit in a larger, unjust system. But complicity can result from inaction as much from action. We risk complicity either way.