Title: Embryo ‘Adoption’ Is Growing, but It’s Getting Tangled in the Abortion Debate
Author: Caroline Lester
Date: February 17, 2019
Abstract
The article, Embryo adoption is growing but it’s getting tangled in the abortion debate, is written by Caroline Lester. In the article, Lester introduces Paul and Susan Lim who believes that life begins at conception. Paul and Susan already had two children and decided to have a third child by adopting a frozen embryo, which will also allow them to save a life because if the frozen embryos are not adopted then they will die eventually.
Main document
The I.V.F (In Vitro Fertilization) is becoming very popular in the United States. In the recent years, “giving birth with donated embryos is becoming more popular”. As the I.V.F is gaining more popularity, more concerns and questions are also raising. There are a lot of agencies which offers donated embryos. However, “many of the agencies that offer donated embryos, including a vast majority of those supported by federal grants, are affiliated with anti-abortion rights or Christian organizations, leading some people to question whether single people, gay couples and others who might be interested could be missing out.”
In 2017, three organizations were funded by the government. Ms. Tyson’s Nightlight Christian Adoptions was one of them. According to the article “Similar to the traditional adoption model, those donating embryos are often involved in selecting who receives them. So when Ms. Tyson does get a client who identifies as atheist or L.G.B.T., she usually suggests other embryo transfer programs that aren’t religiously affiliated.” Here, even though Ms. Tyson’s organization receives funding from the government but not all the clients are getting treated the same way neither getting equal benefits.
There are a lot of ethical concerns about I.V.F because the success rate is not 100% of this modern technology. According to Amit Banerjee, “success rate of this technique vary with the treatment, patient condition and with respect to other condition.” For example, adopting a frozen embryo is pretty expensive, clients who are receiving embryos has to pay around “$12000 and $17000”. So, the pressure of paying this much might affect the patient’s condition which might lead to complications. It is hard to say that this technique has high success rate because the “clinics provides the pregnancy rate instead of providing the health of the baby or the rate of healthy babies through this process.
As the number of donors are increasing at high rate, more and more embryos are collected every year. However, not all the embryos are getting adopted. The embryos which are getting left behind are basically dying after a certain amount of time.
References:
Lester, C. (2019, February 17). Embryo ‘Adoption’ Is Growing, but It’s Getting Tangled in the Abortion Debate. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/health/embryo-adoption-donated-snowflake.html
Banerjee, A. K. (2006, December 31). An insight into the ethical issues related to in vitro fertilization. Retrieved from http://ispub.com/IJH/6/1/4581
