Embryo adoption/donation--what do you think?

I was struck by the possible implications of this and wonder what others might think about the ethics of permitting people to "adopt" extra frozen embryos rather than consign them to research or leave them in storage for years and years.

Here's a link to the article which appeared in our local paper today. It's long but extremely interesting, I thought.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/sciencemedicine/story/FA773A43C3167F37862576C90013FFF8?OpenDocument

I've gotta admit I don't know what to think but wonder if the worms are already wriggling out of the can.

What do you think?

How about instead of adopting an embryo, these nutters adopt actual, already-born children who are waiting for forever homes?

I think that's a point many of us will agree with. However, please note that the family featured in the story already had FIVE adopted children, so I think we can let them off that hook somewhat even though I'm inclined to think, "Isn't FIVE kids enough without undergoing an expensive procedure to get the embryos implanted? Do you really need more?"

There is some merit, IMO, to the belief that embryos are children who ought not be consigned to research but rather deserve to be born since they've already been created basically.

What do you think of the social and ethical issues of these embryo-kids having multi-layered genetic families with the possibility as in this case of an egg donor as their biological mother, the embryo fathered by a married father's sperm and then another couple entirely as the surrogate parents?

An embryo isn't a child, though. It certainly has the potential to become a child, but it isn't a child.

Again, it's more important to take care of the already-born children in need of loving homes.

It is also more important to make sure the living children have good lives, good health care. There seems to be a big disconnect there. I argued this once with a Christian who said that after a child was born it was in Yahweh's hands if the child had a good life and/or health care. It was just up to humans to make sure that every embryo was born, not to try to take care of them afterwards. Logically, I would think that it would be up to Yahweh if the child was born or not, too. Unless Yahweh doesn't consider embryos to be a child either.

WMDKitty wrote:An embryo isn't a child, though. It certainly has the potential to become a child, but it isn't a child.

I agree with you. Notice that I didn't say I believed that embryos are children but only that I thought there was some merit in believing that they are and thus should be rescued from long-term storage, use in stem-cell research or discarded.

Again, it's more important to take care of the already-born children in need of loving homes.

Again, agreed.

No thoughts on the possible ramifications of what constitutes a family becoming even more diversified and complex in nature?

My thoughts about the "diversified and complex" part is that if you are into genealogy you know that 10% on average of the people in each generation don't have the parents that they think they have. Many families are more complex and diversified than they think right now. DNA and blood tests uncover some family secrets, some never do get known.

True. However, if they don't know that the people whom they believe are their parents actually aren't, then their family is genetically more complex than they thought, but they don't know that. That isn't relevant and doesn't equate to the situation to which I referred.

The egg donor mother, inseminating father and the surrogate parents of the two implanted embryos have drafted contracts requiring that their respective children not be denied getting to know their several other half-siblings as well as having access to genetic information that might be beneficial in future.

THAT's what I meant about families becoming even more complex.

What happens, for instance, if inseminating father and his wife get a divorce? These two embryos were only fathered by her ex who is also the father of their natural child. She doesn't care to maintain contact with the embryos-now-children fathered by a man she detests (let's posit) and to whom she is no longer married, but she has custody of the child she had by implantation while married to him, a full sibling of the embryos-now-children and biological child of her ex and the egg donor. Who gets custody of the "rights" to access? Doesn't this sort of thing have the potential for manifold and problematic complexity?

I don't think so. Dave will correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the parent considered to be the father (or mother I suppose) that accepts fatherhood at birth and even if later it comes out (I'm thinking there are cases about this) that he isn't the father, he still has to pay child support if he gets a divorce? I think access to medical histories might be possible but now you can't force anyone to see a child they don't want to see. Ask all the divorced parents who would love to have the absent parent in their child's life! Families are messy things. Hopefully one raises one's children to recognize what is possible to get from other people and what isn't.

I think that family is weird. They want something but they might not get it even with a legal document. I don't think there is any way to legislate that the people are kind to the children. They might get legally forced to see them and make the parents wish that hadn't happened.