Bioethics Babe

What if saving a human life could itself be morally wrong?

More than 1.5 million human embryos are estimated to be frozen in the United States, many abandoned by the parents who created them through in vitro fertilization (IVF).

For some, the solution seems obvious: Why not adopt these embryos, give them a chance to be born, and welcome them into loving families?

But is embryo adoption an act of mercy, or another form of surrogacy?

In Part 2 of Bioethics Babe's Frozen Embryo Series, Fr. Tad Pacholczyk makes the Catholic moral and theological case against embryo adoption, responding directly to the philosophical and theological arguments in its defense.

Fr. Tad served for more than 22 years as an ethicist, Director of Education, and Senior Ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center.

We discuss:

• Why Fr. Tad argues that embryo adoption is a form of surrogacy
• Whether procreation ends at fertilization or continues through pregnancy and birth
• What Dignitas Personae and Donum Vitae teach about embryo adoption
• Whether the Catholic Church has definitively settled the debate
• Fr. Tad's responses to the philosophical and theological arguments for embryo adoption
• Whether embryo transfer constitutes therapeutic, life-saving medical care
• The moral risks of thawing and transferring frozen embryos
• Whether artificial womb technology could provide an ethical alternative
• The heartbreaking question of what should happen to embryos left in cryopreservation

If destroying frozen embryos is wrong, leaving them frozen indefinitely is troubling, and embryo adoption is morally impermissible, what are we supposed to do?

This is Part 2 of a series presenting competing Catholic bioethical perspectives, following Dr. Melissa Moschella's philosophical case for embryo adoption in Part 1.

Regardless of how a child is conceived or born, every human being possesses equal and inherent dignity.

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Can you oppose IVF and still support embryo adoption?

If IVF violates the dignity of the child by separating procreation from the marital act, what happens once that child already exists, frozen and unable to continue developing?

Would embryo adoption repeat the original wrong of IVF, or could it be an act of rescue?

In Part 1 of a special Bioethics Babe series examining the arguments for and against embryo adoption, I sit down with philosopher and natural-law scholar Dr. Melissa Moschella, author of To Whom Do Children Belong?, to explore the philosophical case for embryo adoption.

At the heart of her argument is a crucial distinction: procreation ends at fertilization. Once a new human being exists, Melissa argues, gestation does not create that child. It provides care to a child who already exists.

But that raises difficult questions.

Does gestating an embryo who is not genetically your child make you that child’s mother? Is embryo adoption really a form of surrogacy? Does it violate the Catholic principle that procreation should remain inseparable from the marital act? Could embryo adoption unintentionally normalize the IVF industry? And do frozen embryos have not only a right not to be destroyed, but a positive right to care?

We discuss:

• Why Melissa believes IVF is morally wrong but embryo adoption can be permissible

• When procreation actually ends

• The difference between generation and gestational care • Whether gestation necessarily creates motherhood

• Why embryo adoption differs from donor conception and surrogacy

• The Catholic inseparability principle and whether it applies after fertilization

• Whether embryo adoption risks cooperating with or normalizing IVF

• Artificial wombs and what they reveal about the meaning of gestation

• The rights of frozen embryos and our duty to rescue

• What justice requires when a human being already exists but cannot continue developing without someone willing to intervene

At the center of the debate is a profound paradox: Human beings were created outside the body, frozen, and placed in a condition where they cannot continue developing without a gestational environment. Does human dignity prohibit placing them into a womb, or could human dignity require that we allow someone to rescue them?

This is Part 1 of our series on embryo adoption. In upcoming episodes, we’ll examine competing arguments so you can hear the strongest cases on both sides.

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How early can a baby be born and survive? And what happens when whether that baby receives lifesaving care depends on which hospital the mother walks into?

The edge of viability is moving. Babies born at 22 weeks are surviving and thriving, and there are now documented survivors born at just 21 weeks. But outcomes can vary dramatically depending on where a baby is born, whether active treatment is attempted, and the experience of the medical team.

In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with neonatologist Dr. Robin Pierucci, who spent nearly 25 years caring for critically ill and extremely premature babies, including 17 years as medical director of a Level III NICU.

We discuss:

• How babies born at just 21 and 22 weeks can survive

• Why the edge of viability keeps moving earlier as medicine advances

• What happens in the delivery room when an extremely premature baby is born

• Why a baby's hospital can dramatically affect the care offered and the outcome

• How decisions about whether to resuscitate can influence the very survival statistics later presented to parents

• What parents should ask about a hospital's resuscitation policies before delivery

• The lungs, brain, skin, and other extraordinary developmental challenges of extreme prematurity

• How doctors help these babies not merely survive, but thrive

• Why disability and uncertain prognosis should not determine a child's human worth

• The striking bioethical tension between lifesaving treatment for extremely premature babies and abortion at similar gestational ages

• Whether a constantly changing threshold like viability should determine which human lives receive protection

If the edge of viability keeps changing as medicine advances, can viability really tell us anything about the value of a human life?

This is a conversation about the limits of medicine, the extraordinary resilience of extremely premature babies, and why our technological ability to save a human life is not the measure of that life's worth.

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Are we our bodies? Or are our bodies simply something we have, something we can control, alter, suppress, or even redesign to conform to who we believe ourselves to be?

Nearly half a century ago, St. John Paul II began delivering the 129 lectures that would become known as the Theology of the Body. But far from being simply a Catholic teaching about sex and marriage, Theology of the Body offers a sweeping vision of what it means to be human, and it may be more relevant now than ever.

In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. John Grabowski, Professor of Moral Theology and Ethics at The Catholic University of America, to explore St. John Paul II’s understanding of the human person, the meaning of the body, sexual difference, love, marriage, and self-gift.

What does it mean to say that we don’t merely have bodies, but are embodied persons? Why did God create us male and female? Does the human body have an intrinsic meaning that we receive, or is it something we can redefine? What does sex communicate through the “language of the body”? And what happens when technology gives us increasing power to separate sex, procreation, biological reality, and personal identity?

We discuss:

• What Theology of the Body actually is

• Why St. John Paul II begins with Genesis and “the beginning”

• Original solitude, original unity, and original nakedness

• Why the body reveals the person

•What it means to be a unity of body and soul

• The spousal meaning of the body

• Why human beings are created for communion and self-gift

• Male and female embodiment and sexual difference

• The “language of the body” and how our bodies can communicate truth or falsehood

• The difference between love and use

• Sexual desire, chastity, and authentic freedom

• Why contraception and natural family planning are morally different

• How Theology of the Body helps us think about IVF and reproductive technologies

• What St. John Paul II’s anthropology says about separating sexual identity from the biological body

• The difference between medicine that heals the body and technology that attempts to redesign it

Dr. Grabowski has taught at The Catholic University of America for more than 30 years and has served three terms as a theological advisor to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He and his wife, Claire, were appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to the Pontifical Council for the Family, and Pope Francis appointed him as an expert to the 2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family. He has written or coauthored eight books on moral theology, marriage, sexuality, bioethics, and the human person.

St. John Paul II believed the Church needed an understanding of the human person that was “up to the challenge” of the questions of our time.

Was he anticipating the very crisis of what it means to be embodied that we are living through today?

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Our culture prizes autonomy, independence, and self-sufficiency. But what happens when we inevitably need someone else?

From the preborn child who is completely dependent on his or her mother, to the person living with profound disability, to the elderly patient who can no longer care for himself, some of the most vulnerable human beings are also the most dependent.

So if we equate dignity with autonomy, what happens to human dignity when autonomy disappears?

In this episode of Bioethics Babe, Arina Grossu Agnew sits down with Leah Libresco Sargeant, author of The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto, to challenge one of the most powerful assumptions in modern culture: that human flourishing means needing other people as little as possible.

We discuss:

• Leah’s journey from atheism to Catholicism and the search for objective moral truth

• Why Alasdair MacIntyre and virtue ethics challenged her atheist worldview

• Why Leah rejects autonomy as the ideal of human flourishing

• The difference between autonomy, agency, and stewardship

• Why dependence does not diminish human dignity

• What feminism gets wrong when it confuses equality with sameness

• Why pregnancy poses such a profound challenge to the autonomous model of the human person

• Abortion, the dependence of the preborn child, and the real vulnerability of mothers

• Why a truly pro-life society must support women, children, families, and caregivers

• Disability, aging, and what happens when independence becomes a measure of human worth

• The connection between our fear of dependence and the cultural push for assisted suicide and euthanasia

• The real costs of caregiving and who should bear them

• Whether technology is helping us heal the body or tempting us to escape its limits

• Why needing others, and being needed by others, is part of the human condition

• How our dependence on one another ultimately points toward our deeper dependence on God

If dignity depends on being strong, productive, rational, and independent, then all of us are only one illness, accident, disability, or season of life away from losing it.

But what if we have it backwards?

What if dependence isn't the opposite of human flourishing, but part of what it means to be human?

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What gives our work dignity? It begins with the dignity of the person who does it.

This Labor Day, as we celebrate the contributions of workers who build, create, serve, care for others, and sustain our communities, we’re reminded of something deeper: our worth is not determined by our productivity, accomplishments, abilities, or even our capacity to work.

Every human person possesses inherent dignity and inestimable worth, from fertilization to natural death.

That conviction is at the heart of Bioethics Babe and the questions we explore each week at the intersection of medicine, science, faith, and culture.

As Bioethics Babe approaches its first anniversary, our conversations have reached listeners in 63 countries and 631 cities. Thank you for being part of this growing mission to defend human dignity and promote authentic human flourishing.

Subscribe to the Bioethics Babe YouTube channel, share our episodes, and help us bring these conversations to even more people.

To support our work, visit BioethicsBabe.com.

A surrogate was hired. Then, at 20 weeks, he was diagnosed with a serious heart defect, and everything changed.

McKenna West, a 28-year-old cardiac nurse and mother of two, says the intended parents asked her to abort their biological son after he was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS). Their surrogacy agreement reportedly required termination for a fetal abnormality if the intended parents requested it.

McKenna scheduled the abortion. Then she refused to go through with it.

Instead, she began researching how to save the baby's life, eventually relocating to Texas, where he was born and underwent major heart surgery.

Now comes the extraordinary twist: the same parents who requested his abortion are pursuing treatment to save his life and fighting for their parental rights. His biological mother calls him “the love of our lives,” yet testified that she does not regret requesting his abortion.

How can those two things coexist?

In this episode of Bioethics Babe, Arina Grossu Agnew examines the extraordinary case of McKenna West and Baby Gabriel/Rumi and the profound bioethical questions it raises about commercial surrogacy, abortion, disability, reproductive technology, parental rights, and the commodification of women and children.

Can a surrogacy contract punish a woman for refusing to abort? Does a child's right to life depend on whether he is healthy and wanted? And why should the same heart defect that in their eyes justified ending his life before birth become a reason to marshal surgeons and intensive care to save him after birth?

This case ultimately forces us to confront one fundamental question: What makes a human life worthy of protection?

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What happens when a mother facing a devastating pregnancy complication is told that continuing her pregnancy could cost her uterus or even her life?

When Julia Wilson-Franks’ water broke just after 19 weeks, her daughter Lucia was still alive. But Julia says that over the next 10 days, numerous OB/GYNs repeatedly pressured her to induce labor or end her pregnancy. One doctor asked her, “Are you willing to leave your son without a mother?”

Sitting beside Julia when she heard those words was her 10-year-old son, Quinn, whom she had also been advised to abort years earlier.

Julia refused.

Ten days after her water broke, Lucia was born naturally at 20 weeks and 6 days. She lived for six minutes in her mother’s arms. Julia understood that Lucia might not survive, but she experienced the 10 additional days of pregnancy very differently from her doctors. While she felt they viewed each passing day primarily as increasing risk, she was grateful for every moment her daughter remained alive inside her.

In this episode of Bioethics Babe, Julia shares what happened behind closed doors during those 10 days and why she believes medical counsel crossed the line into coercion. We discuss informed consent, patient autonomy, medical paternalism, the loss of trust that eventually led her to subsequent home births, and the inherent dignity of human life regardless of prognosis or length of life.

And we confront a provocative question: In a medical culture that champions “choice,” what happens when a mother uses that choice and autonomy to refuse abortion?

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Can a 13-year-old order abortion pills online without anyone verifying her age, confirming her pregnancy, or speaking with her face-to-face?

Dr. Christina Francis, a board-certified OB/GYN and CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), decided to find out.

She went undercover, posing as a 13-year-old with multiple serious medical risk factors, including severe anemia, an IUD, a history of ectopic pregnancy, multiple prior C-sections, and blood thinner use. According to Francis, despite the red flags, she was able to obtain abortion pills through the mail without an ID check or an in-person medical evaluation.

What arrived four days later raised even more questions about medical oversight, informed consent, follow-up care, and what happens when complications occur.

In this episode of Bioethics Babe, Dr. Francis takes us inside her undercover investigation and explains the medical risks women and girls may face, including hemorrhage, infection, incomplete abortion, and the danger of an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy.

We also examine how easily abortion pills could potentially be obtained by abusers or traffickers, why Dr. Francis believes the current system falls short of genuine telemedicine and informed consent, and what she is calling on the FDA to do as it reviews the safety of mifepristone.

How did we get to a point where powerful abortion drugs can be mailed with so little direct medical oversight, and what does that mean for the women and girls medicine is supposed to protect?

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Has environmentalism become so politicized that Catholics have forgotten what the Church actually teaches?

And here’s the bigger question: Is caring for the environment actually a pro-life issue?

In this episode of Bioethics Babe, I sit down with Clare Ath, co-founder and president of Vita et Terra, to unpack a side of Catholic teaching that is often misunderstood, dismissed, or surrendered to politics.

We explore why Catholics are called to care for creation, what Scripture really means when it gives humanity “dominion” over the earth, and why that does not mean domination. We also examine Laudato Si’, integral ecology, human ecology, and the contributions of St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI to the Church’s environmental teaching.

But this conversation goes far beyond theology and into practical effects.

What happens when chemicals, plastics, pesticides, and other environmental toxins make their way into our food and water? What could environmental degradation mean for fertility, pregnancy, children, and future generations? And can we protect the natural world without embracing an environmental ideology that treats human beings as the problem?

Clare makes the case that Catholics should reject the false choice between protecting human life and caring for creation. Authentic environmental stewardship begins with human dignity and recognizes that clean water, clean air, healthy communities, and responsible stewardship ultimately serve the human person.

We also tackle consumerism, the technocratic mindset, environmental policy, subsidiarity, and practical ways families can care for creation without falling into partisan politics or nature worship.

Can you be authentically pro-life while ignoring the world future generations will inherit? And have Catholics ceded the environmental conversation for too long?

This is a conversation about reclaiming care for creation from politics and putting the human person back at its center.