Did you know that there are more than 400,000 lives that are frozen and waiting for their "verdict"?
I had lunch with a friend who's currently going through an embryo adoption today. That was the first time I've heard of such a thing, and it's just so mind-boggling to me!
How it all started was the IVF treatments, which help infertile couples to become pregnant by taking the wife's egg and the husband's sperms and "artificially" fertilize the egg for the couple, and then "plant" the fertilized egg back into the wife's womb. Because the procedure to obtain the eggs is very painful and costly, the doctors usually take and fertilize more than one eggs at a time and freeze them (and they can last almost indefinitely if frozen properly), in case the couple decides to have another child later, or in case there is any failed attempt in fertilizing the eggs. Makes sense. However, when the couple have had enough children to complete their family, there are often still fertilized eggs left in the freezer that are not going anywhere. Even though they only consist of 10 to 100 cells at this point, they are still "lives" that were brought upon yet would remain frozen forever. To put it in my friend's words, "they are in limbo!"
By the way, I looked up the word "limbo" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, and interestingly, the word limbo came from the Roman Catholic theology, referring to "an abode of souls that are barred from heaven because of not having received Christian baptism." Now, I don't really agree with this theology. However, I thought that this word describes these embryos perfectly. They are already alive, yet they can't realize their ultimate purpose, which is life.
And this is where embryo adoption comes in. Once the genetic parents of these eggs decide that they are done having babies, they have several options of what they can do with the eggs. They can donate it for research (which means death), throw it (also death, obviously), or give them up for adoption. (Well, some say that there's another option which is to keep the eggs forever, but that just means that they will end up with one of the above three destinations after a very very long time of being frozen.) My friend is very excited about this adoption, because not only can they have a kid (they are certain that they can't have any kid of their own), she gets to be a mother almost from the very beginning to experience the pregnancy and really bond with the baby starting in her womb. She gets to be the baby's "biological" mother! What makes it more interesting is that they are both Americans (Caucasians) but they are adopting (and she is giving birth to) an Asian baby!
I am not really a hardcore pro-life advocate when it comes to the abortion issue, but somehow I really feel a sense of injustice for these frozen babies. Maybe it's because that unlike most abortion cases, these babies were intentionally "conceived" with an intent to bring them to life, yet they were not chosen. Maybe they just seem too much like the back-ups. Or maybe it seems very unnatural for me that they are waiting. When they are frozen, they are not dead, but not living either. Whatever the reason is though, I just wanted to share this with you so that more and more people are aware of this option. Regardless of where you put this issue on your moral scale, I really think that practically speaking, this is a win-win-win situation for all three parties involved - the genetic parents, the frozen baby, and the adopting parents.
