by Melissa Moschella, PhD, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life.
One of the most serious ethical concerns with in vitro fertilization is that for every child born with the help of IVF, there are typically many other children — the “spare” embryos produced by the IVF process — who are kept in cryostorage and consigned to an uncertain fate. Most of these human beings will remain frozen indefinitely until their parents eventually stop paying the storage fees and they die. Although the lack of reporting requirements makes it difficult to get accurate numbers, experts estimate that there are between five to ten million frozen embryonic children in the United States alone.
Biologically, there is no doubt that these are genuine human beings at an early stage of life. All that they need to continue their lives and grow to maturity is an adequate environment that provides them with oxygen, nutrition, and protection, and at this stage of life, the only environment that can provide them with those basic needs is a woman’s womb.
Why Embryo Adoption?
For all who recognize the profound, equal, and intrinsic dignity of every human being, the fate of these tiniest and most vulnerable of human lives is a tragedy that calls for a humane and compassionate response. That response is embryo adoption. When the parents of frozen embryos are unable or don’t want to gestate and raise them, we should treat these embryonic orphans just like other orphaned children and facilitate their adoption into a loving family. The embryos’ parents probably followed the standard IVF protocols and are not usually given the option to limit the number of embryos that they attempt to produce.
We should also enact sensible regulations that prevent IVF clinics from routinely creating “spare” embryos in the first place, as Germany and Italy have done. These countries have also passed regulations that make it illegal to create embryos to sell them to prospective parents — a practice that unfortunately already occurs in the U.S.
The California Conceptions Donor Embryo Program buys eggs and sperm from “donors” and then uses them to make embryos for prospective parents, who pay a handsome fee for this service. Although a sponsored link to this program is the first thing that appears in response to a Google search for “embryo adoption agencies,” this program is the antithesis of embryo adoption. The purpose of embryo adoption is to welcome existing embryos into a loving family that will gestate and raise them.
How Does Embryo Adoption Work?
The only fully licensed embryo adoption agency is Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which offers “Building Families Together,” a Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program.
Other agencies, such as the National Embryo Donation Center and Embryos Alive, try to mimic adoption best practices, but are not licensed adoption agencies. Other embryo donation programs are run by some fertility clinics, which typically involve anonymous embryo donation and do not follow the best practices of adoption.
Like other adoption agencies, Snowflakes requires that prospective adoptive parents complete a home study with a licensed adoption agency and facilitates “matching” between the embryos’ current legal parents and the prospective adoptive parents.
Parents who want to place their embryos for adoption would contact Snowflakes (or another agency) and submit a family profile. Prospective adoptive parents likewise prepare a family profile and also indicate to Snowflakes the number of embryos they would like to adopt. Snowflakes tries to keep siblings together, asking prospective adoptive parents to adopt all of the remaining embryos from a particular set of parents.
Once a match has been agreed upon by both parties, an adoption contract is signed, officially transferring ownership of the embryos to the adoptive parents. Unlike the adoption of already born children, the embryos are legally treated as property rather than as persons. For this reason, the embryo adoption contract is a property transfer contract. Finally, the embryos are shipped to a participating fertility clinic, where the embryos will be transferred one or two at a time into the uterus of the adoptive mother in the hopes of achieving a successful pregnancy.
Although clinics do their best to ensure that the conditions in the adoptive mother’s uterus are favorable, the embryos do not always implant for various reasons. The implantation rates following the transfer of previously frozen adopted embryos are similar to implantation rates in IVF: Roughly one-third of embryo transfers result in implantation, and roughly one-fourth result in live birth. The process does, therefore, involve some risk both to the child and to the adoptive mother, especially if miscarriage occurs after implantation. The risks are outweighed by the prospective benefits, given that the alternative is indefinite cryostorage and death.
Embryo adoption allows the adoptive mother to gestate and breastfeed her adoptive child and thus begin the bonding process even earlier than in traditional postnatal adoption, as well as enabling the adoptive parents to ensure that the child is well cared for during pregnancy (something that is usually far from guaranteed in infant adoption) and saving the child from having to suffer the “primal wound” of separation from the birth mother.
The only humane and compassionate way to deal with these millions of children whose lives are currently in limbo is to be adopted by loving parents willing to gestate and raise them.
What Legislation is Needed?
Apart from passing sensible IVF regulations to prevent additional human beings from being created only to be consigned to indefinite cryostorage, legislators can help the millions of embryonic human beings who already exist by facilitating embryo adoption.
First, just as the government facilitates postnatal adoption through tax credits for adoption-related expenses, the same should be done for embryo adoption. Currently, couples who pursue embryo adoption do not qualify for adoption tax credits, making the costs of embryo adoption prohibitive for some people. Changing the legal definition of adoption to include embryo adoption or changing the tax rules to allow embryo adoption to count for the adoption tax credit is one important step that legislators should take.
Second, legislators should place legal limits on the number of years that parents can keep embryos in cryostorage without any attempt to gestate them. After that time limit has passed, the embryos should be declared abandoned and made available for adoption.
Although such measures will not resolve the problem posed by these millions of frozen embryos, they are crucial steps toward building a society in which even the smallest and most vulnerable of our fellow human beings are treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve.
