The federal government’s only program aimed at preventing the discarding of “extra” frozen human embryos is itself in danger of being discarded.I have good friends who have two four-year old twin boys that were "snowflake" babies. Great kids. Would the world be better off if these boys had just been thrown out? Of course not.
In a move that pro-lifers are calling more evidence of the Obama administration’s “pro-abortion slant,” the White House has sought to defund the Embryo Adoption Awareness Campaign in its fiscal 2013 budget.
The Department of Health and Human Services “is not requesting funds for this program” because “the Embryo Adoption program will be discontinued in FY2013,” HHS officials said in a February funding report to Congress.
While some observers support this move as a way to free up funds for more urgent reproductive-health concerns, supporters of embryo adoption say this is the wrong time to abandon embryos that are sometimes called “snowflake babies.”
“I think that daily we talk to people about … embryo donation and adoption, and we hear the response, ‘Really? I didn’t know that was even possible,’” said Ron Stoddart, executive director of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which in 1997 pioneered the process of infertile couples “adopting” the extra embryos that another couple’s in-vitro fertilization process inevitably produces.
This administration values death over life.
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Thank you for calling attention to this, Rick. While it wasn't the sole reason why we chose snowflake adoption, President Bush's choice to fund research and to help promote it was one of the reasons we chose to adopt in that way. At the time, the fertility clinic we worked with to get pregnent with our eldest daughter hadn't even heard of the program. And as it turned out we were the first couple in that hospital to actually do an embryo adoption.
I don't believe this signals the end of embryo adoption per se, but it will make it more difficult for adoption agencies and clinics to work together and for programs to receive the promotion they deserve. We chose to do embryo adoption because it is a noble way to solve a great problem, a side effect of our advances in medical technology.
For many, if not most couples who pursue in vitro fertilization, a large number of eggs are fertilized resulting in an excess of embryoes. Two, sometimes three are implanted to try to achieve pregnancy. The unused embryoes are frozen to be used at a later time. And herein lies the problem. If the couple no longer deisres to expand their family with those frozen embryoes, they really have no suitable options. They can destroy them (and in so doing destroy life.) They can donate them to science for stem cell and other research, which also destroys the embryo. They can keep them frozen indefinitely at a cost of around $3,000 a year. Or they can blindly donate them to people pursuing pregnancy. While this last option is preferable, it gives no power to the genetic parents to determine who should have and raise their genetic children. Embryo adoption answered this need, allowing genetic parents to select couples wishing to adopt who had been screened, certified by a social worker to have a home environment suitable for raising children and who submitted a portfolio of pictures and information about the adoptive family.
As I mentioned, I don't believe embryo adoption will go away, it will just make it harder for genetic parents and adoptive parents to meet and that is a shame. As you suggest, snowflake adoption has meant the world for our twin boys.
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