That's a strong argument.
Thus they argue that despite the noble intentions of embryo adopters, their actions are still immoral.
When a human life is in the balance, it is a very difficult question.
What say you to this argument?
I say that I will not condemn someone for attempting to save a human life, but I would like to hear what the Magisterium has to say about it.
I'm thinking the reply to the Smith argument as something like the following:
It is immoral for a woman to allow herself to get pregnant by means other than intercourse with her husband in so far as such a pregnancy would involve procreation without the conjugal act. Embryo adoption, however, is an act that does not involve procreation; procreation has already occurred and the adoptive mother was not a party to it. Therefore, in this instance, it is licit for the woman to get pregnant by means other than the marital conjugal act.
Smith would say it is still wrong because embryo adoption is a form surrogate motherhood, which the Church has condemned. I answer that surrogate motherhood is immoral because it separates procreation from pregnancy. In this case of embryo adoption, pregnancy has indeed been separated from procreation. However, it is not the adoptive mother who has created this separation. In fact, she has no part in it. The genetic mother did it. The adoptive mother is merely rescuing the child who has been put in an horrible situation as a result of the evil act.
On the other hand, a surrogate mother is a party to the separation of pregnancy from procreation because her consent to acting a as a surrogate is what makes such separation desirable for the genetic parents. Therefore a surrogate is complicit in the evil act. In contrast, the fact that a woman chooses to adopt an embryo has absolutely no influence on whether the embryo gets created via IVF. Of course, this would not be the case if embryo gets created specifically for the purpose of giving it to the adoptive mother, which is why it seems to me IVF has to be outlawed before embryo adoption becomes morally licit.
What do you think?