Over a million “little, tiny image-bearers of God” are frozen on ice in the United States through IVF — some of which may never see the light of day.
“As pro-lifers, we believe that those are human beings made in the image of God. We know that those are human beings made in the image of God,” Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” tells the founder of Them Before Us, Katy Faust.
Faust agrees wholeheartedly and is disturbed by the treatment of these embryos.
“The American Society for Reproductive Medicine has some recommendations for what you do with those surplus embryos. The first option is to thaw and discard,” Faust explains. “The dehumanizing language is already just crazy.”
“The second option is to donate them to research. Destroy those little lives so that we can better figure out how to increase our fertility rate successes in the future. The third suggestion that they have is donate the baby to another couple,” she continues. “None of those three options honors children’s right to life and right to be known and loved by their mother and father.”
Of the embryos on ice, Faust explains, 20%-40% of them have been “functionally abandoned,” and some “have been on ice for 30 years or more.”
One option, Faust explains, is for couples to adopt the abandoned embryos. However, that does not come without a price.
“When we are properly understanding embryo adoption, not embryo donation, that is adults doing hard things on behalf of children. Those couples need to go in with the mindset of, ‘I am here to shepherd you through what is going to be the kind of questions that children in our species have never had to ask before,” Faust says.
“‘Why is it that I am genetically older than my own mother?’ You’re going to have to answer those questions to your kids. ‘Why is it that I was born and my parents had already died by the time that I was born?’ We are going to have some incredible struggles parenting those kids,” she continues.
However, some IVF-born children are now actively speaking out against embryo adoption.
“They are concerned that both on a public level, but also in terms of the industry, that it won’t do anything to stem the tide of the mass creation of surplus embryos. If there’s a perception that, ‘Oh, no problem, the surplus embryos are just going to get adopted,’ then there’s really no stop. There’s no reason for either the public to say, ‘That doesn’t seem right,’ or for the fertility industry to say, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t do this very often,’” Faust adds.
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