Frozen Families

 

This guest post is from Charles Horikami, Regent Law 2L:

 

In Matthew 22:37-38 Jesus teaches us that the “first and great commandment” is to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all they soul, and with all thy mind.” In thinking of the priority that a person should have in life it is often said that God should come first. What then should we prioritize? I contend that we should prioritize that which God prioritizes: family. Continuing in Matthew Jesus teaches that the second commandment is to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” What closer neighbor do we have then those we live with, our family. 22:39.

But family and what it means to be family is evolving, times and technology are changing, and the implications that come with these changes bring new questions to which we don’t have answers. Just last month, on October 31, 2022, twins were born in New York. What makes them unique is that they were not born by their biological parents’ interactions, nor were they born for their biological parents, and most interestingly, their biological parents are (at least in the father’s case) quite likely dead. On April 22, 1992, during George Bush senior’s presidency, a man “in his early 50s” helped create an embryo with the egg from a 34-year-old donor. In 2007 this man and his wife (not the egg donor) donated the frozen embryos for other couples to use. Now, 30 years later, twins were born. What is the eternal status of such a frozen family, not related by blood, but birthed in love to create a family?

In Job 1:1-2 we learn that Job, a “perfect and upright” man had “seven sons and three daughters.” Later we learn that his children “were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house: And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead.” 1:18-19. Fast forward to the end of Job, 42:12-13; “the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning . . . He had also seven sons and three daughters.” While the rest of Job’s property was literally doubled from e.g. 7000 sheep, 1:3, to 14,000 sheep, 42:12, his children were not. His children remained from 7 and 3 to 7 and 3. Families are eternal, those to whom we are related, remain related despite death, and I believe that there is some semblance of a family unit after we pass on; parent/child relationships are eternal.  

In the gospels Jesus refers back to Genesis when rebuking the Pharisees and teaches that “for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Mark 10:2-9. This presumes that marriage is ordained by God and is eternal in nature, and that marriage is of a higher bond then parents because children leave the parents to cleave to their spouses and “whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it.” Ecclesiastes 3:14. Just as children’s relationships with their parents are eternal, so too spousal relationships may be eternal.

          Frozen embryos donated or otherwise, 30 years to 1000 years later, are children of the parents that love them. They will have some familial connection to their biological parents who loved them enough to ensure their birth but will have a stronger connection to their parents who actually birthed and lovingly raised them. But that relationship is secondary to the one they will have with their spouse, the one that God endorses for eternity, the one that should take priority when considering the neighbor that God wishes us to love, the neighbor that is closest to us. By loving our family we are able to prioritize that which God prioritizes and thus fulfill the first and great commandment: “to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all they soul, and with all thy mind.”