Frozen human eggs at a fertility center. Photo: Mark Boster / LA Times
After successfully conceiving a daughter through in vitro fertilization, Gina Rathan and her husband Cheddi was faced with a moral dilemma they didn't expect to encounter: what to do with the "leftover" preserved frozen embryos they created, but hadn't used?
"I don't see them as not being life yet," says Gina Rathan, 42, a pharmaceutical sales representative. "I thought, 'How can I discard them when I have a beautiful child from that IVF cycle?' "
Many other former infertility patients also appear to be grappling over the fate of embryos they have no plans to use: An estimated 500,000 embryos are in cryopreservation in the United States.
As with the Rathans, this unexpected conundrum often arises well after the infertility crisis has passed, triggering impassioned and highly personal debates about the science and ethics of human life. The discussion boils down to a fundamental question: What is this icy clump of cells smaller than a grain of sand?
i can't believe humans with this caliber really
exists.
you will be burned to crisps surely.
They could be sold to homosexual couples - married ones, of course - none of that evil "living in sin" lifestyle for these babies.
Which would be better in your opinion, AnUnSi, to terminate the babies, or to have them raised by homosexuals?
Your one statement defies your other statements.
6. Each human embryo has the right to be born to a married mother and father who have brought the embryo into existence only through normal intercourse.
These embryos have not been brought into existence through normal intercourse. According to your logic, they are demon seed, and ought to be destroyed.
What is "married", anyways, AnUnSi? Are Hindus and Moslems married? Are Protestants married? Are people who are married in a civil ceremony truly "married"?
I think my idea was pretty good, but you didn't comment on it - why not send these babies to Mars?
1) A tray of 100 fertilized embryos.
2) Two 5th graders.