Some of the strangest news I’ve ever seen came across my screen this week. A company in Australia is turning frozen embryo children into jewelry for their parents to wear.
Previously
Baby Bee Hummingbirds had been making jewelry out of mothers’
breastmilk and placentas. Now, the company has turned its attention to
frozen human embryos— embryos that couples choose not to implant in the
mother’s uterus and no longer want to store or “donate.” To put it
plainly, they’re making trinkets out of discarded children.
Founder
Amy McGlade says, “I don’t believe there is any other business in the
world that creates jewelery from human embryos, and I firmly believe
that we are pioneering the way in this sacred art, and opening the
possibilities to families around the world. . . .What a better way to
celebrate your most treasured gift, your child, than through jewelery?”
Babies, Not Trinkets
Drs. Paul and Susan Lim have argued compellingly
that we don’t “donate humans”; we donate objects: furniture, money,
cars. Twisting language like this obscures what’s really going on in the
industry of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). As the Lims’ own story shows,
embryos are human. The proof is in their youngest daughter, adopted as
an embryo, with her own genetic makeup, her own hands, feet, brain, and
personality. She now lives a fully human life, and existed as a frozen
embryo before they knew her.
One
Australian mother, who carries the ashes of her embryos in a heart
pendant, candidly says, “My embryos were my babies — frozen in time.”
She remarks, “I needed them with me.”
The author of the article also overtly affirms that the embryos are babies
whom parents should honor. Try as they may, advocates of this new trend
can’t help but say what they know deep down to be true: these are
babies. “Ms. Stafford chose a heart pendant through Baby Bee
Hummingbirds, so she could carry her babies close to her heart, where they should be.”
And yet,
that’s not where they should be. God designed embryos to live inside a
mother’s womb for protection and growth. They are not supposed to be
incinerated and hung round a mother’s neck, no matter how close to the
heart they hang. How do we love embryos? By allowing them to keep living
and growing.
Baby Bee
Hummingbird’s Facebook page responds to criticism by saying, “Please
only read with love and respect. The families we craft for are truly
aware of the various worldwide options for embryos in storage. They are
informed, educated, and loving people who have made an educated
decision.”
This is
part of what makes embryo jewelry so breathtakingly surreal. Educated
and wealthy married couples are choosing to turn their children into
wearable ornaments. In the process, they attempt to make death into
something precious.
A Time to Question
IVF has
become the default option physicians suggest for couples struggling with
infertility, yet it has gone largely unquestioned in the broader
Christian world. Now is the time to begin raising serious questions, if
we haven’t already. The ethical issues are many, including the historic
disregard for life in creating the procedure and the ongoing disregard
for life as the techniques continue to develop. The mass majority of IVF
not only destroys human life; it conceives life it knows will be
destroyed. Add to this the gigantic financial incentive doctors have to
perform IVF, and Christians ought to openly, articulately, and lovingly
challenge the mainstream of this approach to conceiving children.
As
Christians, we also need to equip ourselves to understand and guide
parents who have frozen embryos in limbo. We must be able to point them
to a better way of celebrating their children than turning them into
necklaces. Let’s remind parents that, rather than wearing babies around
their necks, they could clasp their arms around their children as they
tuck them in and hug them goodnight. Instead of petrifying their
children in stones around their wrists, they could hold their hands to
cross the street.
We must
value all human life as a precious gift from God. We also must be
willing to help those who have frozen their embryos — whether
unwittingly in ignorance or with a stinging conscience — to know that
their frozen children are, or were, just that: their children. And we
stand ready to offer them the hope of the gospel.
Savior of the Weak and Wicked
Whatever
sons and daughters have been lost in IVF, they are not lost to God.
Just as hundreds of thousands of embryonic humans sit frozen and utterly
vulnerable to the whims of adult humans, there is One who became
vulnerable for us, whose beginnings were the same as theirs. Our Savior
Jesus, true God of true God, became an embryo for us.
Jesus
became poor and weak, even to the point of death. And he subjected
himself to the whims of adult humans, too. But no one took his life from
him — he laid it down willingly. He died for our guilt, the guilt
that’s more than just a feeling, but a true status. God’s Son Jesus
received our punishment through his death on a cross, and God raised him
from the dead, so that we can be forgiven and set free to love him. We
can even be forgiven for creating children with the knowledge that some
of them will be killed at our word.
Let’s
call everyone, all the guilty, the people that we once were, to turn
from their wicked ways and trust Jesus. Let’s speak into the confusion
of our culture with the truth that a child’s death is never sentimental
and never precious. And let’s help rescue children who are perishing,
rather than turning them into an accessory for their parents to wear.
