WASHINGTON - Pushed by Congress, the Bush administration is set to promote ''embryo adoption,'' where one infertile couple donates leftover embryos to another. It's the latest move in the heated debate over the moral and legal status of an embryo.

The administration plans to distribute nearly $1 million for public awareness campaigns promoting the donation of embryos, one of several options available to couples who create more than they need for in vitro fertilization. Another option: donate them for stem cell research that has generated enormous controversy because the embryo must be destroyed to get the stem cells.

The Department of Health and Human Services says it has no political agenda and is simply following orders from Congress. The grant program was inserted into an HHS spending bill by Sen. Arlen Specter, who supports abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.

Specter, R-Pa., said the embryos should be available for research, but only if they are going to be thrown away.

''If any of those embryos could produce life, I think they ought to produce life,'' he said in a statement.

The public awareness campaign, he said, is ''sort of a test program'' for embryo adoption. ''Let us try to find people who will adopt embryos and take the necessary steps on implanting them in a woman to produce life,'' he said.

Still, the program is making some people nervous.

Officials at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine are considering applying for a grant, but fear it will suggest that donating embryos to another couple is preferable to donating them for research or discarding them altogether.

''Our biggest concern is to protect all of the options for the patients, not to make any one thing the designated best option,'' said Eleanor Nicoll, spokeswoman for the fertility clinic trade group. ''Some patients are extremely uncomfortable about the idea of other people bearing and raising their genetic offspring.''

Abortion rights advocates worry that the program lays the legal groundwork for considering embryos human beings with full legal rights. Using the term ''adoption'' rather than ''donation'' makes it appear that the program views embryos as children, said Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.

If an embryo were a person with equal rights, abortion could be more easily declared illegal, she said. ''It can be used to support their effort to roll back Roe vs. Wade.''

Fertility clinics that offer clients the option of giving embryos to other couples use the term ''embryo donation.'' The phrase ''embryo adoption'' comes from a Christian adoption agency that uses the same procedures to place embryos and babies.

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