Cremated embryos made into gruesome jewelry…
In a move that both socially conservative and socially liberal news sites agree, an Australian company that turns “destroyed” embryos into personalized pieces jewelry is being referred to as everything from “ghoulish” to “crass”.
Divergent new sources, on one side, the solidly conservative Catholic News Report, and on the other, the usually left-leaning news portals Mediaite and Slate magazine all agree that the rings and necklaces made from cremated human embryos officially qualifies as creepy.
As noted by the Catholic News Report;
“I have no words. I have no category for who would think this would be something good to do,” said Jennifer Lahl, the founder and president of the California-based Center for Bioethics and Culture.
“It’s so undignified that these embryos have been destroyed to become jewelry,” she told CNA. “I thought, ‘My gosh, it really has hit rock-bottom’.”
Lahl, who has a background as a pediatric critical care nursing and hospital administration, has long been a critic of egg donation and IVF.
Now, the small Australian company Baby Bee Hummingbirds is turning embryos into keepsake jewelry.
A story in the Australian mothers’ website Kidspot portrays the process as a solution to “extra” embryos that are created in the in-vitro fertilization process. It recounts the story of a couple who had conceived three children, including twins, but faced financial strain in paying for the annual storage of the leftover embryos and could not imagine disposing of them or donating them.
“I don’t believe there is any other business in the world that creates jewelry from human embryos, and I firmly believe that we are pioneering the way in this sacred art, and opening the possibilities to families around the world,” Amy McGlade, the founder of Baby Bee Hummingbirds, told Kidspot.
Not differing all that much from their conservative counter-part, Mediaite notes of the “ghoulish” practice of company in question;
Baby Bee Hummingbirds, an enterprise started by Amy McGlade in 2014. McGlade’s company reportedly has made “over 4000 pieces of jewelry using breastmilk, placenta, hair, ashes, or cord stumps – including 50 made with embryos.”
The mother now carries “seven embryos in her heart-shaped pendant worn close to her heart, always.” She underlined that “when we completed our family, it wasn’t in my heart to destroy them. Now they are forever with me in a beautiful keepsake.”
“Except her jewelry ‘babies’ are dead,” Wesley J. Smith pointed out in a Thursday post on National Review Online, since the blog entry detailed how “families send them ’embryo straws’ which the company expertly preserves and cremates, creating a type of ’embryo ash’.”
Smith contended that the jewelry service demonstrates “the crassness of our age.”
Author Phil Lawler included the issue in an online round-up on Thursday, and labeled the jewelry service a “ghoulish form of exploitation. You, too, can use your children as consumer goods, if you choose to deny them the right to life!”
Slate magazine also cited three separate tweets, all exclusively from the pro-life perspective;
Contempt for human life is now in full disgusting flower: Couples are turning extra IVF embryos into jewellery https://t.co/ug1M7lRC1E
— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) May 4, 2017
If we value kids only to serve us, of course they can be made into jewelry if they no longer serve our needs alive. https://t.co/OZIvPm0pNK
— Fr Matthew Schneider (@FrMatthewLC) May 4, 2017
This is so dystopian and horrific: Couples are turning extra IVF embryos into jewellery https://t.co/bHKsVk6fvp #commodificationofhumans
— Sr. Theresa Aletheia (@pursuedbytruth) May 4, 2017
