MIRACLES WAITING vs Political Extremists

Here's some text from the home page of the best-known embryo donation site, run by Baptists: "The tiniest of human beings, once earmarked for death, may now have a chance to live a full life thanks to the creation of a center to receive donated embryos."

I have two beautiful children who were created by in vitro fertilization. They used to be frozen embryos, or more accurately, pre-embryos. I also had several other pre-embryos which did not become children, though they were implanted at the same time, and one pre-embryo which did not grow after thawing. If every IVF pre-embryo was a tiny human being, I would have six children, not two. In addition, I would be a little sister. My mother had a miscarriage several years before I was born. She conceived that child the old-fashioned way. Like most natural pregnancies it did not continue to term, though the next two did.

In a previous article I noted that, though I have no connection to the site, Miracles Waiting is the only embryo donation site I would ever consider using. Every other group facilitating embryo donation is run by politically extremists. The goal of evangelical Christian embryo donation agencies is to elevate the fertilized eggs in clinic freezers above the status of the women whose eggs created them. They claim that each such fertilized egg is really a child.

This is utter nonsense. The best fertility clinics report a success rate of only 16% per embryo implanted. That is similar to the pregnancy rate in nature for each egg which fertilizes. These are not tiny human beings. They are not even technically embryos, but rather "pre-embryos".

Conservative embryo donation agencies don't even care about helping to create families through the use of surplus embryos. If they did, they would put their resources into helping some of the millions of existing orphans worldwide be adopted. The goal of such groups is to elevate pre-embryos to the same status as living children. From there, making all abortion illegal is a small step.

Because the Christian extremists prioritize their political agenda over creating families, they refuse to donate to non-traditional families or to mothers over the age of 45. They are bigots, plain and simple.

Obviously some frozen pre-embryos have the potential to become children. If they did not, no one would become a parent from IVF and I would not be donating my unused embryos to an infertile couple. I pray that their dreams come true and they get one or more children from using these embryos. But I wouldn't bet the farm on it. They have a good chance of becoming moms from using these pre-embryos. It's not a sure thing. That's why frozen embryos are not children. And it's also why I urge you, donor or recipient, to only use MiraclesWaiting.com. To use any other embryo donation site promotes bigotry and limits a women's right to do what she will with her reproductive capacity.

LYING TO THE KIDS

"Donor embryo children 'not told'
By Caroline Ryan
BBC News Online health staff in Berlin

Only a third of couples who conceived their children using donor embryos plan to tell them, research suggests.

Researchers at City University, London, found many of the families they asked feared revealing the information could cause distress within the family.

In contrast, 90% of 30 IVF families and 100% of 28 adoptive families surveyed said they would tell their children about their origins."

There is no rational reason to lie to children about their genetic origins. It can only hurt them when they inevitably find out later. They will already know in their heart that something is wrong in their family. The averted eyes when the child asks a relative "why don't I look like you". The scramble to explain away why a blood type is incompatible. Kids can add, and will eventually wonder how their mother conceived them at age 45 or after a bout with chemotherapy.

We live in an age of genetic testing. It is needlessly traumatic for adoptees or children who came from donor embryos to find out they are not genetically related to their parents on the day they or a relative is diagnosed with a hereditary disease.

What is worse is when the children do not find this out. My ex has a cousin who was adopted at birth. She was never told about the adoption. Growing up a tall, pale, voluptuous woman with straight red hair in a family of short, olive-skinned people with curly black hair she didn't really need to be told she was adopted. It was glaringly obvious to everyone who met her. Yet every time she raised the subject she was told not to be ridiculous, of course she wasn't adopted. This is insanity.

When this woman's mother was hospitalized, and later died, from a serious inherited illness, any parent with an ounce of compassion would have told this girl she would never contract the same disease. But the lies continued.

Not telling the children they were conceived with donor egg or sperm is meant to spare the feelings of one person: the infertile parent. Any child who is the result of a gift of embryos will be proud to know the lengths to which their parents went to bring a baby into their lives. But adults are needlessly ashamed to have fertility problems and want to simply for get about it. They lie to their children because they are too insecure to tell the healing truth.

Prospective parents too ashamed and insecure to raise a child in a home where communication is open and family matters more than genes should rethink becoming parents. Lying to children about something as essential as their genetics serves no one and will ultimately destroy any trust the child has placed in the parent.