This guest post is from Anna Colby, Regent 3L and current Family Law student:
Does life imitate art? The title of Sofía Vergara's famous sitcom, Modern Family, seems to be an accurate description of the lawsuit she is involved in with her ex-fiancé, businessman Nick Loeb.
In 2013 Sofía Vergara and her then-fiancé Nick Loeb created two embryos through in vitro fertilization, and then subsequently broke up in 2014. The embryos have been frozen in a clinic in Beverly Hills as the ex-lovers fight over their future.
Loeb is fighting for the right to implant the embryos in a surrogate, and raise them by himself, with all parental responsibility, while Vergara is fighting for the embryos to remain frozen. The case has gone through different courts in different states, but as each side brings new arguments to new judges, it remains to be seen what will happen with the embryos.
Loeb raises important questions about parental rights - questions that demonstrate how far the law and the courts must come to catch up to modern science. In an opinion piece that Loeb wrote for the New York Times, he asked two such questions,
"When we create embryos for the purpose of life, should we not define them as life, rather than as property? . . . A woman is entitled to bring a pregnancy to term even if the man objects. Shouldn't a man who is willing to take on all parental responsibilities be similarly entitled to bring his embryos to term even if the woman objects?"
Does intent affect the timeline of when parental rights begin, or how an embryo is classified? Does gender affect the strength of a person's parental rights? Does the reproductive viability of a person outweigh another's interest in not becoming a parent? And may a person's religious beliefs about the sanctity of life have any influence on the court's decisions?
These are the types of questions that society must discuss, and that a court must answer as this case progresses. Family restoration values children and parental protection of those children. As the Vergara-Loeb embryo case plays out we all have a front seat to witnessing new horizons of legal parenthood.
I highly respect Nick Loeb for wanting to raise his children. I say this to show that I believe life begins with the embryo. Although my belief is a religious one, I googled "embryo" out of curiosity. The definition that popped up included, "an unborn or unhatched offspring in the process of development." Why should an offspring's process of development be paused? Nature does not work like that. So, I wonder why humans believe they have the right to go against nature?
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, many issues will arise once the embryo has developed and is born. For example, will Sofia be asked to terminate her parental rights? If she doesn't terminate, then could Nick ask her for financial support, regardless of his "promise" to accept all parental responsibilities? This case will definitely be an interesting one to follow as the outcome may become the next highly contested controversy in politics.