How long can they stay in storage?

I would think that the couple might decide later on that they actually do want another child.

I also do not think that the couple should try to involve themselves in the adoptee's life, if an embryo is adopted by someone else, unless that person is a relative.

Ah, but Lars, these five are/will be siblings. All five are the *children* of this couple. What kind of parent brings a child into the world not to care for it? (Ethics, if not religious doctrine.)

Plenty of people cannot care for their children - for any number of reasons, good or otherwise.

I just was reading an advice column earlier today referencing a fertility Dr. who supplied his own sperm to patients.

People do have a right to know their DNA background for health reasons, of course.

(Honestly, I never get tired of reading various advice columns - seemingly no limits to the weirdness of people.)

The best answer to the couple's problem is that it is their situation. They need to search their souls and talk it over between them and any councilor they may wish to consult. As you pointed out, there are several paths they can take.

As far as having a connection to any future children they would need to work that out contractually with any prospective parents. I hope their families and friends respect their decisions.

I think it is best if others simply welcome their new baby with joy.

I think technology has brought us to a dangerous and unethical place. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.

I think stranger adoption (child placed with people not related to them) is difficult enough to figure out, but not until we have a generation of children created in a lab, gestated by a stranger, possible with eggs and/or sperm by other strangers, are we going to know what this means to a person's psyche and identity. All of this technology has NOTHING to do with the best interest of any child; it's all about people figuring out how to buy and pay for something they want for themselves. I would say to destroy the fetuses because they will only be used by those wanting something from them.

A similar issue can come about, I imagine, with divorce.

In some other states, can they be destroyed?

"Potential' human beings mean sperm and ovum. If sperm and ovum have joined there is now a human who never existed before. DNA strands that did not exist before. When you enter into the IVF circus you go with full knowledge and acceptance you will be aiding and abetting the killing of more human life than you will every allow to be born. It's part of the show.

In the 80’s I was going through infertility treatment. However we declined to do IVF for a variety of reasons, one of which was that technology had gotten ahead of ethics. This was a very personal decision so I don’t judge what others choose to do. For me the decision on what to do with extra embryos would be gut wrenching.

Different religious and cultural traditions have differing beliefs about what constitutes a human being, as I'm sure most everyone is aware, which would, of course color what choices people consider...

Thanks. I knew I could count on thoughtful comments here.

Today I looked into some articles about IVF and 'leftover' embryos. One said there are more than half a million frozen, in storage, in just the US. Storage costs several thousand dollars a year. Some facilities are concerned about how to pay the bills when storage costs go unpaid. I noted one clever businessman willing to 'relieve' parents of this burden by getting consent to 'place' the embryos with paying 'adopters'.

The solution I liked best in the stories I read was to allow a couple to participate in a ceremony during which their embryos are removed from the cold, allowed to thaw, then cremated or interred.

I would want such embryos respectfully destroyed.

edited to clarify: that is what I would do if it were me, I'm not even attempting to say that's what everyone/anyone should do. I don't think there is "one" answer.

Such slippery slopes....

There's no easy answer, that's for sure. I will comment that I know of a case where a woman who has exhausted every means of getting pregnant recently adopted (bought) an embryo. She had to agree to a certain number of visits with the biological parents over a period of years (18, I think). I hope all goes well for her and her baby.

A woman's body releases multiple eggs. A mans body releases numerous sperm. They all don't survive and one baby is born. Yes, there could be twins, triplets, but most of those hundreds of fertilized embryo's will not reach maturity inside the women. The woman's body naturally disposes of them.

The fertilized embryos which get frozen in IVF would not have survived if they were left in the womb. The frozen embryos could be potential humans if they were incubated outside the woman, but who knows?

Personally, I would not look at those fertilized eggs as babies or even potential humans. If left inside the woman, only one would have been born.

I would not overthink it or romanticize it.

Jane

jane__ny I'm not sure where you got your information, but it's incorrect. A woman's body rarely releases more than one egg per monthly cycle. Yes, men release numerous sperm, but it only takes one to fertilize that one egg. There is no such thing as a "potential human". It's a scientific fact that human life begins at conception, and scientists don't overthink or romanticize anything. You can think or believe whatever you want, but it doesn't change facts.

I agree with your rationale, Jane. However...many men and women who have gone through so much to create *their* embryos are emotionally attached to them. I think it's natural -- and laudable -- to feel 'parental' here, which is why I like the idea of a final committal ceremony where embryos are allowed to perish, much as they would have done without the scientific intervention. ("Extras" having naturally perished when they failed to implant.)

Seems like the phenomenon of 'sunk cost'.

The idea that a fertilized egg is human is more of a religious than a scientific fact. Do not get the two mixed up.

Women can and do release more than one egg a month or there would not have been the twins that I rode the school bus with.

People pay to have the eggs kept at the correct temperature but I have my own thoughts about how long those eggs are viable. I am thinking of the damage done to tissues with long term freezing.

There should be a time limit that the eggs are kept and it should be clearly stated in the contracts so company's will not continue to hold the eggs forever.

Sort of off topic but not really. Consider chisue's offspring's offspring's offspring's requesting to have her great grandparents eggs implanted. It could be doable if the eggs were still in good shape but should it be done.

Sadly, morality goes out the window when the marketplace takes over.

One of my worst examples in the realm of human reproduction is that anyone with enough money can arrange for a medical facility to buy ovum and sperm for IVF, then rent a womb to produce a made to order 'orphan' to be adopted. This is the end result of adoption being turned on its head, ignoring its origin: To find a home for a child who would otherwise have no safe place within his or her own family.

I so agree chisue and just another way the privileged take asvantage of the desperation of poor women in underdeveloped countries, where they pay surrogates to gestate and birth a child for them. What a disaster it was for those women during travel bans for covid, when they gave birth to babies they didn”t want nor could afford to keep, but the people who were to pay for the child couldn’t retrieve them. It’s an Orwellian nightmare what we are doing.

It was a disaster when babies born to Ukrainian surrogates could not be delivered to the intended American parents.

"Sadly, morality goes out the window when the marketplace takes over."

I strongly disagree. If people in good faith, willingly and without duress from others decide to do something that's within the law, they've done nothing "wrong" in my eyes. If they consider their conduct to be reasonable but you don't, you're free to have a different view and different conduct. As are they free to do other than you would.

This is a flavor of what I said before - I don't understand why people think they have the right to impose their views and their values on others.

There is serious conflict if people can buy embryos. It is against the law to buy children. Obviously the law doesn't think an embryo is a child.

Biologically most fertilized embryos do not become anything. You can look this stuff up but anywhere from 60-70% of embryos on average do not implant and of course implantation doesn't mean you get a baby because you still have miscarriage.

Frozen embryo's are a tough spot. For people who had so much invested in making them because they are desperate for a child would have trouble destroying them. I don't have any answers here. I know the problem was anticipated by the system.

Questions that some may think to be a matter of ethics and not the interpretation of laws rarely have black and white answers. They often have no clear answers. Or multiple answers. Or different answers depending on the perspectives and attitudes of those trying to make an assessment and whether there are any biases built into the thinking.

I know nothing of it myself but let's assume patricia is correct, you can't buy a child. You can pay a surrogate mother to become pregnant and deliver a baby to be raised by the financial sponsor. Is that different? A sponsor can provide money for food, shelter and medical care during a surrogate's pregnancy, and agree to provide support for a period of time after delivery. Are these different? You can pay an adoption fee when adopting a child. Where is the bright line difference? There isn't one.

Surrogacy and people who support the pregnant who say they will turn over the infant on birth are a grey area in law that is a matter of concern to those who watch this sort of thing. It is in fact a factor of what is meant by selling. Adoption agencies have historically charged enormous sums of money in "fees" for babies. In that case the birth mother isn't normally going to get anything but the de facto selling of babies to those who can pay is ignored. They are rich after all. If you are rich you can get a baby. If you are poor forget it. Calling the money a fee is the usual sophistry.

Maybe I misunderstood your earlier comment. I thought the direction of the conversation had to do with the ethics and morality of what people do or don't do.

If your concern has to do with legal uncertainties, the little I know of it, that's probably true. Old laws often don't deal well with aspects of modern life, and conduct or circumstances not in existence when what should be laws on point were developed will be silent. Don't expect that to change anytime soon, if ever.

Just to clarify, when sperm meets egg chromosomes mix to create a single cell ZYGOTE, which begins dividing to become an EMBRYO, at 8 weeks becomes a FETUS.

For some reason, the thought of stored embryos called to mind Aldous Huxley's dystopian vision of the future. In no way am I judging those who choose IVF as a way to have a family (in my mind, whether and how to have (or not have) a family, and how many children to have, is one of the most personal decisions there is.)

An excerpt from Huxley's Brave New World, at the state hatchery: I’m working on a wonderful Delta-Minus ovary at this moment. Only just eighteen months old. Over twelve thousand seven hundred children already, either decanted or in embryo. And still going strong.