It was a little more than I could take, somehow. I'd just been delivered my third incorrect coffee beverage in three days in Weatherwood (is it, like, illegal to serve a pregnant woman a decaf iced latte made with WHOLE milk around here?), and I just didn't want to be reading all this stuff as I choked down the unnecessarily bitter brew. I wanted to be a normal oblivious third-trimester chick. I didn't want to be panicking years in advance about whether we'd ever be able to get this to work again (not that we're at the finish line yet with this time!), what with my crappy eggs, or whether we're out of extracted sperm and will be looking for donors, or...
But anyway. On the front page, a gruesome article about Snowflakes. If you've used embryo donation to build your family, my heart is with you; you probably went down a long strange road to get there, and it's your family and good for you.
So why was I disgusted by the article? The conflation with national politics. The assumption that every IVF cycle produces kajillions of spare embryos, and most patients and doctors are too dumb/ethically insensitive/atheist to care. The degree of control that upper-middle-class evangelical IVF patients want to exert over who can receive their donated embryos:
"With another program, to be honest with you, they could have been adopted by lesbian parents, and I'm totally against that," said Mr. Deacon, 35.
It took two and a half years to bring themselves to fill out the papers. On their forms, they said the adopting family must be conservative Christians and, ideally, include a stay-at-home mother.
"I knew that I had to do it," Ms. Deacon said, "to get through the selfishness within myself, that these are my children, and letting someone else raise them and me not being able to have them."
(Are turbo-Christion IVF couples more likely to have extra embryos—are they trying to have kids younger than average?)
(Having the embryos in the freezer is also really different from having 'em growing in your body: does that freedom from deadlines, from biological imperatives, allow natural finickiness to bloom in a way it can't for normal adoptions?)
I also found it interesting that the couple profiled took the same number of embryos as we did to get to a live baby: 13. One hates to be reductive, but: at that kind of rate (or even at the 1 in 2 or 1 in 3 for spontaneous fertilizations), it's just not the same as a baby.
Oh, and then the Janet Maslin review of Dave Plotz's new book on the Repository for Germinal Choice. I linked to his Slate material a long time ago; I bet it's a terrific book. But Janet Maslin to review? Someone who reads like one giant id? Plot summary, then summary judgement, just like always? Oy. She doesn't evaluate books; she reports on, or maybe reacts to, them. Keep her on the thriller beat, folks. Please.
UPDATE Want to read a coherent account of just how scary all this pro-lifers-noticing-the-embryos-in-the-freezer stuff is? Go read Will Saletan. Want to read one that's both coherent and wildly funny? Go read Julie.
I read about this in a little pregnant, then over the weekend CNN did a story on it. It was less political, in terms of Rep vs Dem, but just as inflammatory.
They interviewed people on two sides of the donate embryos debate - donate for infertile couples or donate for stem cell research.
The most interesting part of the interviews was that they both were fairly "Christian" and used that as their decision making tool. The woman who donated her unused embryos to infertile couples said she belived an embryo was a baby, and it deserved a chance to live. The woman who donated hers to stem cell research said she couldn't morally let "just anyone" raise "her" child. "What if they need me?"
Posted by: Garnigal | Monday, June 06, 2005 at 10:14 AM