Rescue the Freezing, Care for the Developing: Fertilized Eggs Need a Loving Home, Too

 

This guest post is from Anna Hartis, Regent Law Rising 3L and Current Family Law student:

Around February of 2022, Nathan and Grace Bedlock adopted Simon and Thaddeus, twin boys who were 15 years old. However, unlike many 15-year-old boys, those 15 years were not spent going to daycare and school, playing with toys and video games, or enjoying movies and meals with family. As Nathan put it, “They’d been frozen for 15 years.” The boys were frozen until they were transferred to Grace, making her pregnant with them. A year after she became pregnant with the embryos, the embryos had grown into full term babies, and Grace gave birth to them. When interviewed about two months later, Grace explained, “We believe that life begins at fertilization, so for us, this was adoption, just at an earlier age.”

 

Like Simon and Thaddeus, each embryo is a person who can and should be placed into a uteral home instead of being either thrown away or broken down in the name of scientific breakthroughs. A fertilized human egg is a person. By being implanted into a woman’s uterus, a fertilized human egg can receive the chance to reach his or her full potential as a human being. If a fertilized human egg is not implanted into a woman’s uterus, he or she will lose his or her life by being discarded or destroyed like a piece of property.

 

Simon and Thaddeus were people before they were born, as are all other embryos. A fertilized egg is a person. Science says that a fertilized egg is able to become a full-grown adult and is genetically complete. Fertilization can occur by sexual intercourse, artificial insemination, or in vitro fertilization.[i] Fertilization marks the point at which a male's spermatozoon (sperm) and a female's oocyte (egg) unite to form a genetically unique organism (zygote).[ii] For this reason, a fertilized egg, which is a zygote with a human genome, is a human because he or she can then be biologically classified as a Homo sapien whose life has started on the developmental path that can continue through all of the stages of the human life cycle.[iii] Plus, once the egg is fertilized, he or she is genetically complete.[iv]

 

Simon and Thaddeus received the chance to reach their full potentials as human beings by being implanted into Grace’s uterus. By being implanted into a woman’s uterus, fertilized eggs can receive the chance to reach his or her full potential as a human being. Fertilized eggs can be preserved in a process called cryopreservation, the freezing and thawing of reproductive material such as sperm, eggs, and embryos for later use.[v] A frozen fertilized egg can then be donated to another woman by being implanted into her uterus.[vi] Once the egg is implanted, it can develop naturally.[vii]

 

If Grace had not received Simon and Thaddeus into her uterus, the boys could have been thrown away or destroyed. If a fertilized egg is not implanted into a woman’s uterus, he or she will lose his or her life by being discarded or destroyed like a piece of property. If an egg is not implanted into a woman’s uterus, he or she can be thrown away,[viii] or donated for research purposes.[ix] An egg can be used for research purposes by being turned into embryonic stem cell lines, which are derived through the destruction of spare fertilized human embryos.[x]

 

As of 2021, there are more than half a million frozen embryos in the U.S.[xi] Each of these embryos is a person who needs to be rescued from being thrown away or being broken down to death as collateral damage of scientific breakthroughs. Instead of being the reason for their destruction, science should be—and can be—used to place these embryos in loving uteral homes that they will eventually leave to grow into the only kind of property that they should ever be seen as—vessels fit for God’s use. 

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[i] 2 Handling Child Custody, Abuse and Adoption Cases § 9:8.

[ii] 36 Issues L. & Med. 221.

[iii] 36 Issues L. & Med. 221.

[iv] St. Healthcare L. Libr. 1346161 (C.C.H.), 2019 WL 1346161.

[v] 35 J.L. & Health 99.

[vi]  2 Handling Child Custody, Abuse and Adoption Cases § 9:8; St. Healthcare L. Libr. 1346161. (C.C.H.), 2019 WL 1346161.

[vii] 15 Intercultural Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 285 fn. 87.

[viii] 21 B.U. J. Sci. & Tech. L. 108, 113.

[ix] St. Healthcare L. Libr. 436923 (C.C.H.), 2016 WL 436923.

[x] 2 Ind. Health L. Rev. 95, 96.

[xi] 47 ESTPLN 30.