What a mess some of the new reproductive technologies are making. Example, two celebrities (showing my age, I haven’t a clue who they are) apparently are in a legal dispute about whether their frozen embryos have to be preserved. From the story:
Nick Loeb is suing ex-fiance Sofia Vergara over their frozen embryos, InTouch reports. The couple, who called it quits a year ago, reportedly opted to cryopreserve embryos in 2013 and have two remaining female embryos intact.
According to court docs obtained by the magazine, Loeb wants to ensure they are not destroyed. Documents originally filed in August 2014 and refiled in April 2015 show Loeb “seeks to ensure that the Female Embryos are not destroyed, but Jane Doe refuses to agree to their preservation under all circumstances.”
Perhaps the wise thing would have been to way until actual marriage before procreating.
That point aside, IVF usually creates multiple human lives, many of whom are tossed out as somehow defective or of the wrong sex, frozen until they cease to be viable, or are used in experiments. In other words, too often, some of the embryos brought into being through IVF are treated like so much shucked corn. Good for Loeb for treating them as what they really are; his offspring.
We are told constantly that a gestating baby can be destroyed at the will of the mother for any reason whatsoever because her body and all that. Heck, Debbie Wasserman Schultz apparently thinks mothers should be allowed to destroy their seven pound fetus moments before birth.
But these embryos are in stasis, hence, the mother’s body is irrelevant.
That being so, the father should have at least as much say about his progenies’ future as the mother.
More, since no one’s body is involved in the question except those of the embryos–or “mere balls of cells” for those who disparage the biological humanity of human embryos–courts in disputes such as this should give all benefits of the doubt to the embryos’ continued existence. Hopefully, someday they will be given the opportunity to be born.