Sept 8 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Ron Stoddart, executive director for Christian Adoption and Family Services, has launched the Snowflake Embryo Adoption Program. The program offers married couples the chance to save a frozen embryonic baby from destruction by having it implanted. The agency has the respect of the pro-life movement since, as Mr. Stoddart explained to LifeSite, it does not encourage in vitro fertilization but only offers those embryos already created a good home, in place of destruction or indefinite storage.
The Washington Times, which reported the story, suggested that there might be some conflict with Stoddart’s program and the Catholic Church since the Church teaches against the artificial creation of embryos. However, this is not the case. During the first widely publicized proposed destruction of frozen embryos in 1996 in Britain, the Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano noted that in the “extreme circumstances” brought by the use of in vitro fertilization to cause the existence of thousands of frozen embryos slated for destruction, the embryos should be offered for “pre-natal adoption.”