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July 19, 2006

500,000 Embryos and the Potential Tyrant of the Family

While looking for a picture to supplement my previous post, I found this amazing article. It is incredibly even handed in describing the crisis of the high number of frozen embryos and is clear about its implications. And Mother Jones is the opposite of conservative. One of its most amazing features, though, is its hightlighting of how parents feel about frozen embryos:

A new demographic is wrestling with questions initially posed by contraception and abortion. A world away from the exigencies, mitigating circumstances, and carefully honed ideologies that have grown up in and around U.S. abortion clinics, it is people like Janis Elspas who are being called upon to think, hard, about when life begins, and when it is—or is not—right to terminate it. They are in this position, ironically enough, not because they don’t want a family, but precisely because they do. Among the nation’s growing ranks of ivf patients, deciding the fate of frozen embryos is known as the “disposition decision,” and it is one of the hardest decisions patients face, so unexpectedly problematic that many decide, in the end, to punt, a choice that is only going to make the glut bigger, the moral problem more looming and unresolved.

Strikingly, Nachtigall found that even in one of the bluest regions of the country, which is to say, among people living in and around San Francisco, few were able to view a three-day-old laboratory embryo with anything like detachment. “Parents variously conceptualized frozen embryos as biological tissue, living entities, ‘virtual’ children having interests that must be considered and protected, siblings of their living children, genetic or psychological ‘insurance policies,’ and symbolic reminders of their past infertility,” his report noted. Many seemed afflicted by a kind of Chinatown syndrome, thinking of them simultaneously as: Children! Tissue! Children! Tissue!

Nachtigall also found that patients sometimes disposed of embryos in novel ways that fell short of actual plug-pulling. In a version of the rhythm method of contraception, he learned, some patients (though none of the ones in his study) solved their dilemma through the laborious—and expensive—process of having leftover embryos transferred into the woman’s uterus at a time in her monthly cycle when implantation would be unlikely. Others buried embryos. Still others could not bring themselves to dispose of them at all. “We’ll have a couple more pregnancies and we’ll just grow the whole lot,” one father told Nachtigall and his team.

The author clearly understands the implications for the abortion debate:

Arguing that pro-life advocates can taste “total victory” after “an ongoing nibble-at-the-edges battle” involving statehouse measures like informed consent and mandatory waiting periods, Charo predicted that somewhere, soon, “some obscure legislature” will propose to seize control of frozen embryos, the measure will be challenged, and the ensuing lawsuit will end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. Traditionally, she pointed out, abortion rights involves weighing the interests of the woman against those of the fetus, and up to now the woman’s interests have been considered paramount. But now the interests of the embryo, or fetus, or potential child, can be separated out. This, she said, is a watershed development.

For those who want to test the core of Roe v. Wade, Charo told the fertility specialists, “you guys are the perfect opportunity to separate the question of embryos and best interests, and the woman’s right to direct her body. You take a law like Louisiana’s, saying that personhood begins at conception, and that you cannot discard embryos. Now the Supreme Court has the ability to look at the status of the embryo, not as compared with the woman’s right to control what she wants to do with her body. There is no bodily interest. It’s entirely possible that the first real challenge to Roe will be looking at the embryo in isolation. The question about discard is very, very important. This will be where they start their litigation strategy, to chip away at Roe.”

Even though overturning Roe v. Wade is so controversial and would be a mammoth undertaking, for which our country lacks the emotional energy, we need to ask God to give us the energy to do it and the love to do it well. In the meantime the church should fight on in love with adoption and crisis pregnancy centers and counseling and looking to change laws and not be inconsistent like this dude:

It should be pointed out, however, that even anti-abortion conservatives are not united in their ideas about the embryo and whether it has rights, or best interests, or even the potential for life. Once a person contemplates an embryo—really looks at it, under a microscope or in a photograph—his or her opinion is often changed, and not in any consistent or predictable direction. This is true for pro-choice and pro-life alike. While researching a book on assisted reproduction and its impact, I interviewed California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a reliably anti-abortion Republican member of the House. Rohrabacher was one of some 50 Republicans who defied the president by voting in favor of federal funding for stem cell research using surplus ivf embryos. For Rohrabacher it was not abstract: He and his wife, Rhonda, went through ivf treatment and have triplets as a result.

Going through that process, Rohrabacher told me, fundamentally changed his thinking about life and its origins. “For a long time I’ve been pro-life, and I still consider myself to be pro-life,” he reflected, sitting on the front porch of his Huntington Beach bungalow, which, inside, had been taken over by the demands of triplet care. “I have done a lot of soul-searching but also a lot of rethinking about reality, and what’s going on here, and I have come to the conclusion that I’m…first, I’m still pro-life. But I always said that life begins at conception. But…I was always predicating that on the idea that life begins at conception when conception begins in a woman’s body.”

And, regarding IVF treatments Senator Brownback and, of all countries, Italy and Germany, have got it right:

As Slate’s Will Saletan has pointed out, pro-life lawmakers periodically threaten all-out war on the reproductive liberty enjoyed by ivf patients; Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey hinted at this when he said, “The public policy we craft should ensure that the best interests of newly created human life is protected.” Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) has suggested that the government should limit the number of embryos created to one or two per ivf cycle.

Other countries, such as Germany and Italy, forbid the freezing of embryos. In those countries, every embryo made must be implanted. Both of these ideas are of course anathema to American fertility advocacy groups and to the medical field, because it would open the door to that dreaded phenomenon, governmental control over human life and its disposition.

Finally, Catholics have a position called the "Seamless Garment" approach to being pro-life, which opposes the destruction of human life in abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, war. While I wrestle with the Biblical foundation for the death penalty (and I think there is one) I would give it up if it this were linked with doing away with abortion. War is tricky for me to completely rule out, but it sure should happen a lot less often and a lot less quickly. Also, I would like myself and the church to consider humane farming and animal welfare as a part of a consistent pro-life ethic to continue to fight against the Culture of Death.

Church Life and Theology | By jackdas | 11:45 AM

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Posted by: Claire at July 25, 2006 8:00 PM

Posted by: Neil at July 28, 2006 12:19 AM

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