The Ethics of Embryo Adoption

Excellent book written on "The Ethics of Embryo Adoption and the Catholic Tradition". Highly recommended if you're at all interested in the subject of embryo adoption. This book is a comprehensive collection of essays that examines and advances ethical evaluations of the controversial and increasingly popular practice of embryo adoption. In the United States alone, 400,000 frozen embryos created for in vitro fertilization exist but are no longer desired for that purpose. What are we morally obliged or permitted to do about these "spare" embryos? More of their genetic parents are considering donating these embryos to others to gestate and raise. This practice is politically volatile (figuring in debates about embryonic stem cells) and medically and morally complex. At the present time within the Roman Catholic Church there is no official teaching on embryo adoption. Catholic ethical analyses grapple with the way embryo adoption comports with respect for embryonic human life yet challenges Catholic moral critiques of assisted reproductive technologies. This volume brings together leading philosophers and theologians to engage Catholic debates about embryo adoption in an interactive format. The editors, a philosopher bioethicist and a moral theologian, provide a helpful overview of the practice and the arguments surrounding embryo adoption. They engage neglected Catholic ethical resources and issues to advance the current debate and chart new directions in Catholic moral thinking about this intriguing practice. The volume also includes a description of embryo adoption from a physician practitioner along with reflections from a couple who successfully adopted an embryo.

PART ONE: The Morality of Embryo Adoption
PART TWO: The Debate Engaged
PART THREE: Morality in the Practice

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Another book I also highly recommend is called: "Human Embryo Adoption: Biotechnology, Marriage, and the Right to Life" (Paperback) by Thomas V. Berg, Edward J. Furton. What should we do with the hundreds of thousands of frozen human embryos held in fertility clinics around the world? One solution would be adoption. Would such a course of action be moral? That is the question faced in this volume. The leading thinkers in Catholic bioethics divide into two opposing camps in a great debate over biotechnology, sexuality, marriage, and the right to life.