Wake up, pro-lifers! Embryo adoption is morally licit!

The Church Calls Abandoned Embryos “Orphans“; Defends Embryo Transfer as “Licit”; and Promotes “Prenatal Adoption” as “Praiseworthy“!

We are responding to Dr. Monica Miller’s very troubling comments in the June 2026 issue of Defend Life. Unfortunately, Dr. Miller, like Fr. Tad Pacholczyk at The National Catholic Bioethics Center, is strongly opposed to Embryo Adoption (EA) and both argue that Dignitas personae 19 has already condemned Embryo Adoption. This is a flawed conclusion for many reasons.

What Dignitas personae 19 is condemning as “ethically unacceptable” is not Embryo Adoption at all; rather it is condemning the use and destruction of “donor eggs” and “donor embryos” during an IVF “treatment for infertility” by “infertile couples” that is commonly referred to as “Three-Parent IVF” – aka Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy (MRT) – that artificially creates an embryo with DNA taken from two mothers and one father.  DP 19 rightly condemns using donor eggs and embryos (taken from a “second mother”) in “Three-Parent IVF” (MRT) “for the same reasons which make heterologous procreation illicit as well as any form of surrogate motherhood“. * 

Then, after formally condemning “Three- Parent IVF” as an “ethically unacceptable” IVF treatment for infertility – because it uses and destroys donor eggs and embryos – Dignitas Personae 19 begins a new paragraph that mentions the unrelated proposal of prenatal adoption for the very first time:

“It has also been proposed, solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are otherwise condemned to destruction, that there could be a form of ‘prenatal adoption’. This proposal, praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life, presents however, various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above.” 

Dr. Miller falsely claims that the article in the March-April newsletter “totally misquoted DP 19” and she also wrongly concludes that “DP teaches that EA is not a moral option.” Her comments focus on “various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above.” But a careful reading of the “various problems” in the previous paragraph identifies them as “problems of a medical, psychological, and legal nature“. These are not moral problems, and, regrettably, it is Dr. Miller herself – and Fr. Tad – who are misquoting DP 19 and are wrongly condemning what DP 19 has called “praiseworthy“.

In DP 18, Pope Benedict XVI himself refers to frozen embryos as “orphans“:

“The majority of embryos that are not used remain ‘orphans’. Their parents do not ask for them and at times all trace of the parents is lost.”

And, importantly, why do both Dr. Miller and Fr. Tad ignore the licitness of all therapeutic procedures on embryos – including embryo transfer – which is magisterially defined in Donum vitae I, 3 and which is magisterially cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church n. 2275? Here is the quote in DV I, 3:

“Are Therapeutic Procedures Carried Out on the Human Embryo Licit?

As with all medical interventions on patients, one must uphold as licit procedures carried out on the human embryo which respect the life and integrity of the embryo and do not involve disproportionate risks for it but are directed towards its healing, the improvement of its condition of health, or its individual survival.” (Emphasis is in the original.)

The Blessed Mother has asked pro-lifers to “Wake Up” many times in her messages. “Women Against the Killing and Exploitation of Unprotected Persons” was founded because of her urgent messages to stop the “Killing and Exploitation of Unprotected Persons.” 

Who could be more unprotected than a frozen and orphaned human embryo?

* Scientific American, “Eight Healthy Children Born Using Three-Person IVF Technique”. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/three-person-mitochondrial-ivf-leads-to-eight-healthy-births/ (Accessed July 1, 2026)

Missy Reilly Smith is Foundress & President of WAKEUP; and Elizabeth Bothamley Rex, PhD, is a Catholic Bioethicist, an Associate Scholar at The Lozier Institute, a former Adjunct Professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary and Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, and the author of several books and articles in The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly including: The Magisterial Liceity of Embryo Transfer.