Conceiving a Child Via First-Class Mail? That Doesn’t Sound Like Fun!

Making a baby together is fun, right? Not for one Italian couple. The stork is paying them a visit via long-distance: They’re conceiving via a sperm bank in Spain.

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According to a report published in Spero News, an Italian man sent his semen to a gamete bank in Spain, where scientists injected it into a female ovum to create a live embryonic human being. That tiny embryo was then frozen and dropped in the mailbox. The frozen embryo was mailed (yes, mailed!) to a private medical center in Turin, Italy, where it was to be implanted into the uterus of the intended mother.

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Apparently, according to the French journal Le Quotidien du Médecin, a lack of donors in Italy led the couple to resort to Spain,

One hates to mention money at such a romantic moment–but using surface mail to ship little Junior, instead of visiting the clinic personally, apparently resulted in quite a cost savings for the couple. At approximately $5,500, the procedure was quite a bargain–and the potential parents were able to reduce the expenses related to travel, accommodations, medical appointments, and time off work.

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Read the rest of the story here.

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The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its 1987 Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation, explains:

Techniques of fertilization in vitro can open the way to other forms of biological and genetic manipulation of human embryos, such as attempts or plans for fertilization between human and animal gametes and the gestation of human embryos in the uterus of animals, or the hypothesis or project of constructing artificial uteruses for the human embryo. These procedures are contrary to the human dignity proper to the embryo, and at the same time they are contrary to the right of every person to be conceived and to be born within marriage and from marriage.(32) Also, attempts or hypotheses for obtaining a human being without any connection with sexuality through “twin fission”, cloning or parthenogenesis are to be considered contrary to the moral law, since they are in opposition to the dignity both of human procreation and of the conjugal union. 

The freezing of embryos, even when carried out in order to preserve the life of an embryo – cryopreservation – constitutes an offence against the respect due to human beings by exposing them to grave risks of death or harm to their physical integrity and depriving them, at least temporarily, of maternal shelter and gestation, thus placing them in a situation in which further offences and manipulation are possible.