{"id":839,"date":"2013-09-18T08:56:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T08:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/who-owns-a-frozen-embryo.html"},"modified":"2013-09-18T08:56:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T08:56:00","slug":"who-owns-a-frozen-embryo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/who-owns-a-frozen-embryo.html","title":{"rendered":"Who owns a frozen embryo?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So I promised myself that I wasn\u2019t going to blog until after work today, but very interesting article in the Tribune (outside the paywall) today: \u201cFormer Couple Take Fight over Frozen Embryos to Court.<\/a>\u201d <\/p>\n

Now, look, I\u2019m pro-life. I find the idea of creating embryos in an IVF process, only to cryo-freeze them in perpetuity, or flush them down the drain, or donate them to science to be destroyed in the research process, to be disturbing. And once they have been created, their status should have a certain \u201cbest interest of the child\u201d element \u2014 in which their best interest is served by any action that moves them forward to being implanted and being allowed to, well, live. <\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not where we are, legally. Unborn children of any kind have more of a property status. For the most part, they\u2019re treated as the expectant mother\u2019s property, and it\u2019s her decision to do with her property what she wishes, whether it\u2019s to continue to gestate until that point when the \u201cproperty\u201d achieves legal personhood and is no longer her property (though, let\u2019s face it, stories of infanticide and child abuse tend to have a degree to which the mother considers the child as property that she owns and can treat\/dispose of as she wishes), or to get an abortion to discard of her property. <\/p>\n

In cases such as this, I would ordinarily expect the legal decision to be made on the basis of property rights. Who owns the embryos? What do the contracts underlying their creation say about the situation? If there\u2019s no clear ownership specified in the contracts, what does common law say about dividing jointly-owned property? Does he own half, and she own half, so that if there are four vials, she gets to take two home with her? <\/p>\n

At the same time, the legal justification for abortion is generally that a woman shouldn\u2019t be obliged to bear a child against her will, and the rationale for not according men similar \u201crights\u201d is that, to force a woman to get an abortion at the behest of the father is a violation of her bodily integrity. Here it truly does seem that the tables are turned. If the child\/embryo in question has no \u201cright to life\u201d and it\u2019s purely about the desires of the two adults in question, how can her desire to bear a child override his desire not to be a father? \u2014 and yet, according to this article, past court cases have produced conflicting rulings. <\/p>\n

In a similar case, a Pennsylvania appeals court last year awarded frozen embryos to a woman who hoped to give birth over the objection of her ex-husband, who wanted the embryos destroyed. Like Dunston, the ex-wife was believed to be infertile because of cancer treatments. The decision upheld the trial court ruling that the ex-wife\u2019s desire to have biological children outweighed the ex-husband\u2019s disinterest in becoming a father. But high courts in other states have determined that parenthood cannot be thrust on an unwilling party. The Tennessee Supreme Court, for example, decided in 1992 that fatherhood would be a greater burden for the ex-husband than destroying the embryos would be for his ex-wife. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, this all ties in with the anti-adoption movement<\/a> from a couple weeks ago, as well as the whole debate on men\u2019s \u201creproductive rights\u201d<\/a> that was, I believe, the last straw before Ann Althouse first ended, then began to moderate comments, back in July. <\/p>\n

Because once the unborn child has no rights, you get into a very murky place indeed.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I promised myself that I wasn\u2019t going to blog until after work today, but very interesting article in the Tribune (outside the paywall) today: \u201cFormer Couple Take Fight over Frozen Embryos to Court.\u201d Now, look, I\u2019m pro-life. I find the idea of creating embryos in an IVF process, only to cryo-freeze them in perpetuity, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWho owns a frozen embryo?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So I promised myself that I wasn't going to blog until after work today, but very interesting article in the Tribune (outside the paywall) today: "Former\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/who-owns-a-frozen-embryo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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