Embryos Don’t Belong in Jewelry

In Victorian Europe, hairwork jewelry was a popular means of remembering the departed. Family or friends would snip lockets of hair — or the dying individual would cut a locket himself and give it to loved ones — to be preserved in bracelets, rings, and other decorative keepsakes. Today, that tradition has been revived, albeit in a different form.

In recent days, pro-life advocates have sounded the alarm on jewelry made from “leftover” embryos. Though this service is offered by a number of online jewelry retailers, U.K.-based Blossom Keepsake’s marketing went viral. “POV: you’re an IVF mama who needs to decide what to do with leftover embryos,” one Instagram story from the brand reads. 

Blossom Keepsake advertises potential embryo inclusion in any of their jewelry, framing the service as a way to “honour this chapter of [the family’s] story — by transforming these embryos into timeless pieces.” Customers can request the release of their embryos from the IVF clinic, send them to the jeweler, and receive their custom order 8–10 weeks later. (RELATED: Eugenics: The Dark Side of IVF)

At first glance, the service may seem like a modern equivalent to the Victorian tradition of hairwork — but it’s really much darker. 

Dystopian, Not Victorian 

Blossom Keepsake and similar retailers recognize the emotion involved in the creation of embryos for IVF or surrogacy. Fertility clinics usually create more embryos than can be implanted, which leaves the intended parents on the hook to freeze their biological children and pay the attending storage fee to the clinic, offer them up for “embryo adoption,” or destroy the remaining embryos. (RELATED: Catholics Cannot Endorse the President’s IVF Mandate)

Blossom Keepsake seems to soften the blow of the third option: “When storage is ending and donation does not feel right, there is a gentler way to honour what you created.” Though you’ll never meet the unborn children you created, you can carry their remains with you through a commemorative necklace or ring. 

But do people belong inside jewelry? 

This strange question can only be asked because our culture has failed to correctly ask and answer all the preceding questions — Should human beings be frozen in cryostorage? Should fertility exist as a consumer good? Is there a right to parenthood and children? 

What Do We Owe to Embryos?

It’s deeply unfashionable to bring reason to bear on emotionally charged issues like IVF. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to reach this point in a face-to-face conversation because people tend to focus on the secondary and tertiary questions, such as whether dead embryos belong in jewelry, instead of the primary questions. But the primary questions must be dealt with in order to have any sort of moral clarity on the issue and its related facets — namely, are embryos persons?

The science is astoundingly clear. “Embryo” as a term refers to the phase of human development from conception up to about eight weeks, at which point “fetus” becomes the operative term. From the moment of conception — whether in utero or in a laboratory setting — that new being has a completely distinct genetic makeup and would naturally progress through the stages of human development unless by disease, an inhospitable environment, or deliberate destruction. (RELATED: The Messed-Up World of People Who Believe Abortion Is Love)

An embryo is not a non-human; it is simply a very young, very small human. And in terms of personhood — in terms of personal dignity and human rights — an embryo is comparable to a toddler or an adolescent. These words refer only to different stages of progression through the natural course of human development. An embryo exhibits different physical traits and abilities than a fetus, which exhibits different physical traits and abilities than a newborn, which exhibits different physical traits and abilities than a teenager, and so forth.

And so, if embryos are persons, then there are certain rights that they possess — chief among them, the right not to be killed, whether for convenience or for commemorative jewelry.  

IVF Causes More Deaths Than Live Births

The practice of IVF, in which eggs and sperm are retrieved from donor parents and then combined in a laboratory setting to create multiple embryos, has created a brave new world of ethical nightmares. It’s easy to argue that the ends justify the means when the desired end is a longed-for child — after all, there is nothing more precious than new life.

But the means matter just as much as the end, and the reality is that IVF results in embryo death on a massive scale. IVF doctors routinely create more embryos than a woman desires to carry to term. By some estimates, as few as 2.3 percent of all embryos created through IVF are actually born. The rest are frozen or destroyed — only a handful are made available for adoption by other hopeful parents.

Victorian hairwork jewelry was commemorative, but it didn’t directly result from or cause the death of the remembered individual. It was a common way of remembering a person who had reached the end of his or her life, untimely though that death may be.

Embryo jewelry, on the other hand, can only be created through the intentional destruction of a person. Yet, ironically, it aims to remember a person who was never allowed to grow or be born in the first place.

READ MORE from Mary Frances Devlin:

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Mary Frances Devlin is a George Neumayr fellow and contributing editor with The American Spectator. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame. Follow her on X at @maryfrandevlin.

READ MORE from Mary Frances Devlin:

America Is in Awe of Erika Kirk

Harvard’s Sacred Cash Cows

I Read Dylan Mulvaney’s Memoir So You Don’t Have To