Embryo ‘Adoption’ Is Growing, but It’s Getting Tangled in the Abortion Debate

So, we have so-called "Christians" saving embryos (clusters of cells) but at the same time discriminating against actual gay and lesbian human beings? Why am I not surprised?

It always amazes me, in comments on articles like this, how quick people are to judge the choices made by infertile people. "Why don't they just...adopt from foster care." Have you adopted from foster care yourself? Because if you haven't, hold your judgement.

Why are the Feds funding embryo adoption. This appears to cross the boundary between church and state. If churches and anti abortion groups want to do this, let them pay for it themselves. Not on my dime.

Similar to how insurance companies will pay for viagra but not for fertility treatments.

Is there supposed to be a problem here? Are there gay people or single moms looking for embryo adoption who can't find it? Are they paying more than others? I didn't hear that in the article. The implication is that tax dollars might be directed specifically and unfairly to christian organizations but no evidence for that was given at all. I personally don't believe these embryos are people yet. They have a person's genome, which is a recipe for a person, not the person him/herself, but I don't see any problem here unless someone can show that there's discrimination. Once a woman decides she wants to bring the embryo to term, in my view, it becomes a person at that point. It is the combination of the genome, and the woman's choice, that makes the person. It doesn't matter if the woman helped make the genome or not.

Please stop using the word adoption. This is assisted reproduction. Potential parents have about as much interest in adoption as the vast majority of the posters here. Any reference to “why not just pick one from foster care” is completely useless. I am an adoptive parent and was in a similar situation (single, 42) when I decided I wanted to be a mom. I opted to adopt a live human being rather than become pregnant. And, no, I didn’t adopt from foster care although I did spend a year taking MAPPs classes, fixing up my home, getting background checks, having a home study done and filling out forms. Anyone who has been through a real adoption knows it ain’t for sissies. Fighting through the bureaucracy of the foster care system is hard. Any misstep and you are out. Getting information about a child is difficult due to privacy laws that protect the bio-parent. You may find yourself in an unwanted relationship with bio-siblings, cousins, grandparents and the foster care system for decades. I can see why individuals who want to have the pregnancy experience would go this route. Just don’t call it adoption.

Personally, I don't consider an egg or an embryo to be a human being, but many do. This brings up a serious question. If the donated embryo is subject to a "rescue operation" and fails to implant, who is the murderer?

I'm a single mom to a 2-year-old, through embryo adoption/donation. I got my son on Miracles Waiting, which seems to be the go-to for open donation for single moms and LGBT folks. There is a completely separate system from closed donation, where folks just donate to fertility clinics. Most of those, tend to be done via waiting lists. For me, it was really wonderful. I'm glad my son knows his donors.

In addition to all of the above, other potential ethical issues loom. I wish this article had specifically addressed how these embryos get from biological parent to “adoptive “ parent. Do parents choose the recipient or just throw their embryos into the pot? Do the recipients have the same options, in terms of physical and other features they recipients of sperm donations have? Women who use donated sperm can specify multiple requirements about a donor. This sets up an unequal system, that favors the embryos of rich, white and intelligent biological parents. This article does not provide enough information about the process. Are these donations made anonymously? Of course, we now know there is no such thing. Sperm donors are being identified every day, sometimes with bad consequences. How will it feel to find out you are the product of a discarded embryo? How will the biological parents explain that to the offspring when they are located? Even in an open adoption, this is fraught with peril and psychological issues. These offspring are not the product of an unintended pregnancy; quite the opposite. Whether or not you believe these embryos have personhood, the ethical issues need to be addressed if this is to continue.

always puzzles me how evangelicals and deeply "religious" christians will spend a fortune trying to have a baby via a body birth when it should be obvious to them that is not part of "god's plan" for them. meanwhile, children are languishing in foster care, or group homes. at the very least, they could donate time and money to reading to children in hospitals, or helping others in some other way. or they should be like sarah of the bible if their belief is that strong.

It is hardly surprising that the people who feel that discarding a frozen embryo is a sin have been at the forefront of working to find ways to match the embryos with infertile couples. The donations are tied to Christian organizations, because Christian organizations are most interested in finding good homes for what they feel is a human life. And frankly, kudos to them for working on one of the most problematic aspects of fertility treatments. If we are to be upset that anti-abortion forces are working to avoid what they'd relate as equal to an abortion - discarding a human embryo - then we can get off our collective butts and form secular organizations which do the same. That would protect the equal rights of all groups concerned. But it is stupid to whine that the people who are driven to this action by religious imperative are acting in a manner consistent with their religion, when no one else took the opportunity to do so before them. Assuming that donated embryos can routinely grow into healthy babies, the Christian groups found an excellent way to reduce to harm and the anxiety of discarding human embryos.

Would be nice if all these so-called Christians cared at least half as much about other people's babies after they're born.

Who wrote these grant guidelines? Why isn't "complying with all applicable non-discrimination laws" part of the selection criterion? Why isn't, providing a benefit to the larger section of the applicable population a criterion? I smell a "Trumpist" in here somewhere.

YIKES. Paid for in part by our tax dollar... and there is the bureaucracy that is being paid for with our tax dollars -- federally subsidized jobs at many levels. If such programs must exist and are subsidized by taxpayers then IMO it would be best as part of a Universal Single Payer Health Network with a single bureaucracy. (Instead of supporting multiple CEOs CFOs, etc.) Too bad people are not adopting the children in foster care or are we still playing the white families shouldn't adopt any kind of "ethnically different" child game? Give the adopting families grants of 8K... altho I believe many times the adoptees indeed are given some state aid. Perhaps, the NYTimes should do an article on the topic of the foster care system.

Stunning. On the one hand, the embryos are considered "dead" if not adopted, but, apparently, some folks would rather they stay dead than end up with a gay or atheist parent. What is wrong with those people?

I am so glad this topic is finally getting some coverage. I have long been frustrated by the blind eye of "life at conception" folks who look past the fact that many of the IVF "babies" are selectively aborted- meaning couples intend to get pregnant via IVF then choose to abort 1-3 implanted embroyos. To me, it is always the double standards that are so frustrating. Life at conception would mean millions of babies in the freezer and thousands of deliberately aborted babies. Obviously, those realities dont pair up with religious dogma. This is also why personhood is an impossibly slippery slope...I mean, when do they come after my birth control pills because they prevent my eggs from becoming a life?

I think we should build a wall around these embryos that our tax money can’t get through.

“As Christians, of course we believe they’re persons,” said Ms. Tyson, whose organization attracts mostly evangelical Christian clients. “But for the reproductive medical community, if you bestow humanity to the nascent human embryo, you’re interfering with other services that they like very much.” This is America and Ms Tyson and her cohort are entitled to their beliefs as are all Americans. However her statements exemplify the arrogance and denigrating attitude of many "Christians" toward their fellow citizens who have different beliefs (a majority, in fact). The medical community does not provide services because they "like [them] very much." They provide those services because other citizens who are just as ethical and have just as much integrity as Ms Tyson have made the choice that those services are important to them.

So many problems with this: How many foster children have any of these people adopted? Shouldn't an actual living, breathing human with a name & face be first in line over a bunch of cells? Why would anyone want "their child" (ie, the frozen embryos) brought into this world with someone else as parents? Is there suddenly a shortage of needy children already on this planet? Wait, the my tax dollars go to support this? And yet they wage a war on funds going to Planned Parenthood? (whose main mission is to provide health services to women in need!) (living, breathing women, not a bunch of cells some choose to consider a living being) The population is fast approaching 8 billion - but let's bring more children into the world so we can tax it's natural resources even further. Why care about the planet when these people will magically fly to the magical clouds to live in Shangri La when they die, right?

Our brave new world - children and embryos as a commodity. An individual decides when it suits them to become a parent, has the means to pay for it - a commodity.

After having my kids through IVF I donated 3 frozen embryos to a lesbian couple in 2008. They did two transfers. Neither resulted in a live birth. That's because these aren't children. In nature, and in IVF, only about one in 4 fertilized eggs becomes a baby. Gay/lesbian couples are subjected to open discrimination by real adoption agencies in Trump's America. Now our tax dollars are going to fund extreme Christan embryo banks. Embryo donation becomes another tool to define a literal fertilized egg as a baby and deny women reproductive freedom. How ironic.

“But 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.” So my tax dollars are being used to support religious organizations that feel free to discriminate against single parents and gay couples. My guess is that they also discriminate against minorities. I’m really tired of my tax dollars supporting religious bigotry.

It seems to me that government money would be better used to promote adoption of actual children.

I really, really don't understand why my tax dollars are going to support some individual's optional embryo transplant. This is not a general good, like education or transportation or poverty relief, that warrants public money. If Americans actually had a say in how their money was spent, I doubt they'd vote for spending it on embryo transplants.

Sounds like a good option, akin to post birth adoption, to enable people to become parents and families to grow. If donors want to donate and people want to receive, hey, why not. Maybe there will even be some future Einsteins amongst the donations.

Must be frustrating for a child waiting to be adopted in america to read this article. So many “progressives” go to great lengths; time, expense, etc. to avoid adopting older black and brown american children.

This is a strange article that reads like an advert for embryo adoption. It raises, very gently, questions about whether the USG should be subsidizing organizations (companies?) that provide embryo adoption services and why the companies that receive government funds are Christian affiliated. Let's just recap. A quarter million births per year in the US are started via IVF. There are close to half a million frozen embryos in storage in clinics. A small number of parents choose to implant an unrelated donated embryo (around 2000 births per year). DHHS provides a limited amount of funds to organizations that try to match embryos donated by biological parents to a willing womb. Why these organizations need public funds and what they do with these funds is not made clear. The IVF industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that is thriving even without government subsidies. If there is demand for donated embryos, I doubt that DHHS needs to be involved. Strange, how market interventions are OK in the name of ideological beliefs about embryos. It's comendable that some people are willing to consider this avenue to parenthood, but it remains a small percentage of total births. I personally don't see the need for the USG to be subsidizing these companies. At best, it might consider asking IVF clinics to systematically ask parents whether they would be interested in eventual donations. For prospective parents that might be a tough question...

My tax money is paying for this? The Federal government gives out grants? Well, now we know where Trump can go to find the money he wants for that mess on the border that he has created. In fact, using that grant money to build more dog cages for real, live, living and breathing children and babies sounds just about right given the history of these people: Nothing for real children - everything for imaginary ones. In all of these months I have yet to see any contingent of any denomination of Evangelicals step forward and beg this government to stop abusing asylum-seeking children. In fact, last night I heard Senator Lindsey Graham say that the children in Kentucky would be far better off if Trump used the money that has been allotted for their schools to be used instead to BUILD THAT WALL! Or did he say "finish"? Yank the tax-exemptions of these groups and put that grant money into WIC where it belongs. No more kids in cages!