

Full Question

If a human is created or designed in a test tube and carried in a womb to birth, then the creation was not from God, but by man from material from God—right? If the child is then killed before natural death, would this be considered murder? I assume cloned and “designer” babies would fall into the same category in this situation.


If God doesn’t create the child, then who does—the test tube? Certainly, humans cannot create life. God is just as much the Creator here as he is when pregnancy results from fornication. Just because humans have rearranged the way the child is conceived, the sperm and the egg are still created by God. As with conception in the womb, God still provides the soul as well as the body. This holds for cloning as well. Only God can create a soul, which is the life principle of the body. No matter how a human being comes into existence, God will always have been its creator. Certainly to kill such a person is to take innocent human life, which is always a grave sin.


Fr. Vincent Serpa O.P.