A flashback to my first book from 2015, God's Magical Dust. I wrote and illustrated this bilingual Spanish-English children's book shortly after my daughter was born. I wanted there to be a book about donor conception that was available in Spanish, and also one that incorporated Bible verses for support. Among Catholic theologians, there is some controversy as to if embryo adoption is a valid form of adoption, and the topic of donor conception is rejected carte blanche. I poured over the reasoning behind the RCC's stance on artificial reproductive technology, and while I agree on the part about creating "excess" embryos that are then just thrown out or donated to science (or even worse, aborted after multiple embryo transfers prove to be more successful than hoped for), that is where my agreement ends.
I agree that sex belongs in the safety and sacredness of marriage between two consenting adults (the details there also differ between me and the RCC, since I do not think the gender of the spouses matters). However, I do not believe that sex is some sort of super-natural way of the couple becoming more like God, in that literally "two become one" when natural conception goes according to plan.
My husband and I grew much closer in our relationship with each other not because we got lucky and conceived without effort, but because we had to work hard and long and make sacrifices and have many heart-to-heart conversations that drew us closer as we decided how to proceed on our journey towards parenthood. The fact that our "unitive act" didn't directly lead to the conception of our children is a non-issue for us. We are closer as a result of not only our joint experience of infertility, but also because of the various manners in which we tried to resolve it.
That said, I disagree that IVF (in vitro fertilization) or IUI (intra-uterine insemination) are in any way inherently evil. Most especially if the gametes of the two spouses are used.
When it comes to donor gametes, this becomes much more convoluted. Personally, for us, we could not get on board with bringing a "third parent" into our family. However, because we know life begins at conception, embryo adoption was just that - adoption. So we were bringing not a "third parent" but a whole other family, the genetic family, into our family, in a way. For us, we couldn't get past seeing the use of donor egg or donor sperm as different from "having a baby with someone other than my spouse", even if sex was not a part of the equation.
But I had to allow for the possibility that other couples may see things differently. Other couples may very well be able to look past that, precisely because there is no hanky panky going on. And for those couples, I would hate to impose my own person comfort level, if it meant the difference between having a baby or not. Embryo adoption is not feasible for everyone, and it is not available everywhere. Egg and sperm donation is much more common and sperm donation in particular is a lot more affordable than embryo donation for the recipients.
Ultimately, when we decided to pursue embryo adoption to start our family, it was done with a ton of spiritual research and reflection. The end result was the birth of this book, God's Magical Dust. Because really, what else are human gametes if not "God's magical dust"? After all, in the Bible it says that from dust we come....
The book is rather two books in one. The first half is in English, and the second half is a repeat of the first, but in Spanish. This was mainly so as not to take away from the illustrations by excessive text. But also, there was a page minimum to publishing the book ;)
I hope you enjoy God's Magical Dust and feel free to share your thoughts!
