Embryo Jewelry & the Disposal of Human Bodies
What do we do with the remains of our loved ones? Must Christians choose burial, or is cremation an option? The topic is endlessly discussed and considered in blog posts, literature, ethics reviews, and now, even in a car commercial. In its newest campaign, Volkswagen portrays a family, including Grandmother, trekking across the U.S. with Grandpa's cremated remains, visiting places Grandpa would have wanted to see. At journey's end, a grandson pours Grandpa's ashes into the Pacific Ocean.
Cremated remains are certainly versatile: they can be scattered, buried, placed in a columbarium, used to fertilize a tree, floated in a helium balloon, dropped from an airplane, or even launched into space.1
But what about decisions regarding the body of a relative who has not died? This is the dilemma facing couples who have gone through IVF and created more embryos than, for a variety of reasons, were implanted in the woman's womb. While these "excess" embryos languish in frozen storage, many couples struggle over what to do with them. They may feel incapable of having more children or be physically unable to, but at the same time they may be unwilling to subject their embryos to destructive research and reluctant to let them be adopted by another couple.
One Australian couple, along with an enterprising artist, came up with the "perfect" solution: to turn the embryos into jewelry. Instead of offering her seven embryos a hospitable womb, the mother chose to encase them—their ashes, that is—in a heart-shaped pendant so she could have them "forever with me in a beautiful keepsake."2
Mourning jewelry, which dates back at least to the eighteenth century, encases and so preserves a lock of a loved one's hair. Today's keepsake jewelry might be a locket or other small chamber containing a loved one's ashes. But embryo jewelry is created through mixing the embryo's ashes with jeweler's resin, and shaping the mixture into the desired design.
Jewelry that portrays embryonic or fetal human beings already exists. Pro-lifers are familiar with the "baby feet" pin showing the size of a fetus's feet at ten weeks. Necklaces depicting the four-celled embryo or a double helix can celebrate bioscience.3 These do not raise ethical red flags because they are not made from or with human remains. But even keepsake jewelry that does preserve a few ashes from a relative's remains, while certainly atypical and to many an odd and antiquated practice, is not immoral.
There is a huge difference between the decision of the Australian couple and the myriad ways of disposing of cremated remains. In the former case, their decision to make jewelry from their seven embryos directly precipitated those embryos' deaths. Encasing the remains in resin and thereby giving them aesthetic value does not make that decision morally legitimate. In the former case, while one may question the appropriateness of scattering human ashes or even incorporating them into food or drink, such actions come after the death of the loved one; they do not precipitate it.
What have we come to, that any of us, in a fog of moral blindness, could even consider the conversion of embryonic children into keepsake jewelry as in any way appropriate? Have we lost our sense of proportionate moral outrage? The public conversation, as conducted via tweets, blog posts, and anonymous comments, explodes with coarse indignation over trivial matters, while eliding more personal, and therefore more uncomfortable, reflections on technologies and techniques that undermine our respect for all human beings.
The good news is that the couple's decision was not broadly celebrated, and in fact was widely questioned. Even so, some comments were tempered with equivocation and vacillation on the order of, this is "creepy," but maybe it's also "an attempt to honor the profound, if complex, moral status of the embryo."4
At this point, it would be tempting to revisit concerns about IVF and its consequences for couples and their future offspring, but I would like to propose a different consideration: how do we think about human bodies after death?
Burning or Burial?
For millennia, cremation was practiced widely—except in Christendom. But beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, the popularity of cremation among Christians began to rise. This triggered a response from theologians who recognized that there had previously been little discussion about the moral dimensions of this custom.5 As Christian ethicist David Jones notes, one concern is whether cremation decisions have been based upon theological reflection, ethical conclusions, utilitarian calculations, or mere convenience.
Outside the U.S., burial space is vanishing, particularly in metropolitan areas.6 This and other practical factors, including cost, environmental concerns, and relative ease of arrangement, seem to be the impetus behind the increase in cremations (although the current "green" perspective rejects cremation because of its carbon emissions, and proposes resomation, a lye and hot water process that dissolves the body, which is then "disposed of" down the drain).
In his discussion of cremation as an option for Christians, Jones notes that the decision is not a matter of sin, affecting one's eternal destiny, but of ethics,what it communicates, and whether it is a Christian act. Jews and the early Christians were known for burying their dead, a practice which set them in marked contrast to the societies in which they lived. In fact, church historian Philip Schaff observes, Christians' care for their dead was a driving factor in the expansion of Christianity in the ancient world.7 Cremation and being burned at the stake were reserved for criminals and heretics. These historical considerations may not be applicable today, but the remarkable respect shown by Christians in prior ages for the dignity of the human body is still relevant.
The contemporary conversation about how to treat human bodies needs to include two important theological considerations.
First is the dignity of the human body. Christians have consistently affirmed the dignity of the whole person as an ensouled body—or, if you prefer, an embodied soul. The body is neither to be used just as we please, nor casually disposed of upon our death. Robert George describes current neo-gnostic views of human bodies as careening between treating them as something to be escaped from and something to be manipulated at will. In this ultimately nihilistic view, non-bodily persons inhabit non-personal bodies, and the material body is severed from one's mental and spiritual being.
A second consideration is the affirmation of the bodily resurrection. The post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus in a physical, glorified body give us a foretaste of our own future. Confidence that we will experience resurrection in physical, glorified human bodies to enjoy eternal fellowship with God lies at the core of Christian hope.
Ethical Hard Choices
How, then, ought we to think about the disposal of human remains today? The most ethical thing might be to donate one's organs for transplantation (followed by burial or cremation) or one's body for medical education (which necessitates cremation). Jones suggests that when circumstances preclude burial, the important ethical consideration is how the body is handled, and what is communicated about Christian faith and hope at the funeral or memorial service. (Needless to say, a party to "put the F-U-N back in Funeral!"8 is out of bounds.)
Let us assume for a moment that the Australian couple are Christians. Their embryonic children were human beings with intrinsic dignity who deserved a chance at a full, flourishing, and embodied life. If the effort to provide that failed, how then might they have communicated respect for their children's brief lives, and their hope of resurrection? Certainly not by entombing them in a glittering pendant.
Yet, even here, there is hope. The patristic argument that God will gather the material of the body and put it together at the resurrection is comforting. No tomb—glittering pendant or otherwise—negates the belief that God will raise even the tiniest embryos on the last day as fully embodied persons.
Paige Comstock Cunninghamis the Executive Director of The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity in Deerfield, Illinois.
Get Salvo in your inbox! This article originally appeared in Salvo, Issue #42, Fall 2017 Copyright © 2026 Salvo | www.salvomag.com https://salvomag.com/article/salvo42/treasured-remains
