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Who Owns Pre-Embryos?
An anonymous reader writes: Scientifically and legally, frozen embryos are not the same as a living child. Nevertheless, they can inspire legal battles that resemble custody disputes. This article follows a case between a couple who had been dating for five months when the woman received a cancer diagnosis. Before beginning chemotherapy, she and her boyfriend of five months decided to harvest and set aside some fertilized eggs, just in case. (If the treatment saved her but destroyed her ability to have kids, and the couple stayed together and decided they wanted kids, the pre-embryos would preserve that option.) She survived, but their relationship didn't. With no explicit contract in place, the disposition/custody of the pre-embryos is now hotly contested. "[R]eading over the case, one gets the sense that there's a fundamental lack of language to describe what's at stake. There may be an emerging field of law and legal precedent, but the terms at hand don't adequately capture the nature of the dispute."
The pre-embryo owns itself.
Each 'contributor' owns 50%. No decision regarding the subject pre-embryo may be be made without a majority. Case closed.
So, what? You want to divide it in two and give each party one half? The problem you are missing is that one party may want to dispose of the pre-embryo while the other party may want to (eventually) birth and raise it. Those are mutually exclusive options.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Just let it divide once and each can take their share. Duh.
That's what King Solomon would do.
You want to divide it in two and give each party one half?
Yes, and the true owner will relinquish their share: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
=)
I guess I'm confused as to why they chose to froze her fertilized eggs instead of the eggs alone. Is there a scientific reason for choosing to freeze a fertilized egg over a non-fertilized egg? Since she was only with her boyfriend for five months and she was the one going through chemo, they should have had no reason to think his sperm would need to be preserved. I won't judge them though as I can imagine a cancer diagnosis can impact judgement, but I'm curious if one option was better than the other.
...the moment he fertilized her ovum. He is the biological father, he is half responsible for these children if they are born.
He cannot force her to give them up any more than he could force her to abort the fetus or give the child up for adoption.
At this point I ask, "Dude what the FUCK were you thinking?" Could have saved her eggs without fertilizing them.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Brilliant! Just say you're going to split them in two and give half to each, then whoever gives in and says the other can have them wins! King Solomon FTW!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Instead of the law trying to pick a winner on this one just make the law that the disposition of the embryos must be contracted before the service can be provided. Then have a very steep fine for any clinic that doesn't obtain and properly store that contract. Then mandate that there is a maintained copy of a "suggested" set of common contracts that are continually updated to reflect any edge cases that end up in the courts such as one of the partners become mentally incompetent etc.
This way some morality police lawmakers can't step in and turn this in to an abortion/anti-abortion debate where the actual consumer of these services then lose.
I read the referenced article. Bottom line: the woman wants the child/children, the man does not them to exist at all, apparently to avoid an "image" problem of being an un-involved father. At least as I understand what was written. The woman apparently has said that she will not be demanding any support or anything more from the father. In that case, I would say that she should be allowed to have the child(ren). This conforms to _my_ morality which considers the life of a child (or potential child) to be more important than the "image" of a "deadbeat dad" that the father has expressed. Especially since the latter is not true. In this case, he's just a sperm donor as far as I'm concerned. Too bad they didn't consider all the possibilities when they drew up the contract. I realize that others will disagree, but I hope we can remain civil in tone despite our disagreement. I will add that if both agreed to destroy the "pre-embryos", I would not have a problem with that. To me it is like in a criminal case: If you can't decide, then vote "not guilty" (I like the English "not proven" wording better). In this case, of "want the child (to be)" versus "don't want the child to exist at all", I vote for the "want the child". I'm not sure what I would think if it were the reverse. I wouldn't force the woman to have a child she didn't want just because the guy did. That case would be even more difficult. Surrogate mother?
Can her ex opt for Sperm Donor status? She gets kids. He doesn't get landed with child support.
If a majority decision can't be reached than the status-quo basically gets maintained, the things sits frozen.
Just like if you die intestate and have two children and no spouse. Lets say you owned your house strait out for the sake of simplicity. Essentially both kids will have to reach an agreement on how to to dispose the property.
If they can't it will be pretty easy for either heir to ask the court require the thing simply be maintained, taxes paid etc out of the estates other funds, while a judge decides how to parcel out the estate fairly and what should be done. Same thing would probably happen here.
More interesting questions exist though. Lets say you and wife have some embryo's frozen as part of some assisted fertility process. It does not work, but their are left overs. You later get divorced, presently childless. She decides to try again and the implantation is successful. Can she come back for child support? Are you a dead beat dad if you want nothing to do with it?
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
intellectual property. Two artists record song but don't release it. They split, who owns the tune?
The woman may have her reproductive capability destroyed and so may only have this option to reproduce. However, the guy may not want to be a daddy with this woman.
Personally, I'd try to make some sort of deal to settle the issue, like if she raises any of these embryos over his objection, he bears no responsibility, ever, for the progeny. But if you RTFA, that's already the case, and he still objects to being a father to kids he won't be involved with.
It seems (from TFA) that every state is coming up with its own solution, like following the contract, or "balance of interests".
And what happens if some couple no longer has means to pay for embryo storage, but they assert a right to force the embryo-maintainer to keep their embryo's anyway? Just how much is reproduction a right?
--PM
They both decided on creating this pre-child. They should have had an agreement on what to do. Our court system sees this all the time with post-born children. Where's a King Solomon when we need him? /you say anonymous coward like it's a bad thing?
And already fertilizing some eggs just in case? Anyone surprised that relationship didn't survive?
Who Owns Pre-Embryos?
From a scientist: What the fuck is a pre-embryo.
the disposition/custody of the pre-embryos is now hotly contested.
No, it isnt. you're just substituting a made-up term for a real word and hoping it lends greater importance to the click bait. Eggs, Sperm, and Embryos are all components of human and mammalian reproduction. pre-embryos are some neoconservative evangelical dry-hump term used to justify strange ballot measures like outlawing masturbation or criminalizing miscarriage. in the interest of science lets clear this up. follow along at home with sed/grep/awk in TFA.
If the biomatter belongs to a specific person, then it is their biomatter. If you spit on a judge, your biomatter has incriminated you in the act of contempt. If you rape, then your vaginal secretion/sperm is accounted for by the prosecution during your trial as evidence and considered during sentencing. If you froze eggs, they're yours. At best the whole complaint here is a mysoginists tantrum.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Your understanding of the objections to human genetic experimentation has a disconnection with the sentiments people really have.
First off, I don't know of any pro-choice person who doesn't support contraceptive use to prevent pregnancies in the first place, it is another group that gets worked up over that being used.
Secondly, the concerns are about the outcome of the process. What is the end result? What are they wanting to happen?
Heck, some groups freak out over snowflake babies, the thousands of excess embryos that aren't needed, but in my experience, those are also antiabortion groups.
As with any business contract, party B would be free to buy party A out of their half of the contract. Presumably, this would absolve party A of owing any sort of child support later down the road.
Don't overcomplicate things. That's a good part of why our legal system is so corrupt.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
You want to divide it in two and give each party one half?
Twins! Everyone wins!
I am not sure it works in this case. In the story the king operates under the assumption neither party wishes to see the child destroyed (children were valuable laborers after all), but perhaps one party cares deeply enough for the child their desire for its well being trumps their selfish desire to possess it or wish to spite other party by denying possession.
In these cases we very likely have one party who wishes to see the embryo destroyed. It does not make sense to turn something over to someone who has a stated intent to destroy it, only to prevent a court from doing so.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
In that case nothing happens until both agree. How else can you solve it? Letting one give birth while the other opposes? Letting one dispose?
Embryos seem just ripe for moral debates. Here's another one I've been thinking about recently.
The current most realistic way for humans to get to another star system is via a generation ship; it's the only way out there that doesn't require some sort of revolution in other technologies, such as long-term cryogenic hibernation or relativistic travel. Minimizing mass is of course absolutely critical. The most practical implementation would be to have a crew of three young, short-statured women with a family history of good fertility, a large embryo bank onboard, and appropriate facilities for implantation, with the embryos chosen for implantation in-transit also being female and from family histories of short stature and good fertility. One would try to maintain it so that there's always at least (but ideally not much more than) three people at or younger than a reasonably fertile age, so that there's a few chances to compensate should one woman prove infertile, die, or not wish to take part in furthering the population of the generation ship. Upbringing would be handled by the older generation, with the main focus of education being on medicine and repair skills. If a successful colony could be established on the other end then could a broader range of embryos be used to increase the genetic diversity, including males and people of larger stature and higher caloric consumption.
Now, best would be to start out with a staggered age for the initial crew of the generation ship and keep a staggered age throughout the transit. But here we start to get a problem. No ethics review board is going to approve the decision to, say, lock a six year old girl on a tiny, highly risky spacecraft for the rest of her life and give her a future responsibility to bear other peoples' children and then die in space. She's too young to give informed consent to such a monumental decision. Even if she were to travel with her mother, most ethics review panels would find that morally equivalent to a mother locking her child in a bunker for the rest of her life and refuse it. An infant is even worse - she couldn't even give uninformed consent, let alone informed. But the solution of only starting out the crew with informed consenting adults only postpones the issue. For each child they carry en-route is born without a choice in the matter, into a small, highly dangerous, probably uncomfortable craft with few to no peers, limited opportunities for enrichment, and no ability to leave the situation except death. Is that morally any better than sending young, non-consenting children to begin with?
"...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
So, who does the "biomatter" belong to when the "biomatter" is a fertilized egg?
It's not her DNA, it's not his DNA. And the fertilized egg is not a human in the eyes of the law...
So, who does the "biomatter" belong to? And why?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Pre-embryo eggs are not fertilized therefore in my opinion they are still the exclusive property of the woman. This situation is no different than a couple of people dating for five months and breaking up. The man cannot contest ownership of the pre-embryo eggs within his former girlfriend in the latter case.
I honestly don't understand why men take the risk of fathering children anymore. All it does is create a financial, legal, and personal stranglehold around your neck. The mother of your children can, at any time, and for any reason or no reason, discard you yet keep the lion's share of your paycheck forever.
Marriage and parenthood are just not worth the risk.
He is the biological father, he is half responsible for these children if they are born.
The problem is that there are NO children yet. Only cells with 2 half nuclei inside (= pre-embryos)
The problems are very real, but concerns children which do not exist yet, but due to biology and the existence of those cells could very well come into existence.
He cannot force her to give them up any more than he could force her to abort the fetus
The notion is different.
- the "abortion" case is about the mother. It's her body, she decides what she's doing, nobody can force her to undergo a procedure that might has consequences on her health / ability to proceates further.
- here the cells are in a test tube somewhere in a fidgde. mother's phyiscal body isn't in any way concern by the discarding of the cells. it's only the mother's role as a potiential parent (if the children come into existence).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Well, by mass and volume, her contribution is significantly larger and represents a greater amount of biological investment, so if we are going that route she would have clear ownership.
one could argue that a embryo is "more mother" because a woman only has limited amounts of eggs whilst a man has "unlimited" amount of sperm.
a 80 year old man never had a menopause.
furthermore a woman has to carry and feed a embryo over 9 months.
both are sub-classes of the laws of physics : )
If she keeps those eggs on ice for ages and then randomly decides to defrost them and germinate a few in her magic garden... then the guy is responsible child support.
No really.
Child support laws basically assume that birth control and the last 100 years of medical science didn't happen. The concept of them is that if she got pregnant in any fashion by your porn star energy drink... then you've apparently consented to be a daddy.
You go on a one night stand with a girl at a bar... use a condom... she says she's on the pill... she calls you six months 9 months later to tell you that you're a father... Congrats, you're playing child support.
Here some lackwit is going to say I'm not being a chivalrous gentleman. That's because chivalry is dead. Look, responsibilities and rights go hand in hand. When men were responsible for everything they had all the rights. And women didn't have any options. If they got knocked up they couldn't really do anything about it. And the culture of the time put great significance on being "chaste". If she already had some other dude's baby then it was a lot harder for her to get a husband which was a serious problem.
Today none of that applies but the child support laws don't care.
There was a dude that was literally drugged, woke up tied to a bed with a girl on top of him, he ejaculated in her because men really don't have any control over that if you're bouncing on top of them, he told the police about it immediately, the police did nothing, she got pregnant, gave birth, filed for child support, and the courts made him pay for her rape baby.
Yep.
So, the issue with those eggs set aside is child support. If she signs something to the effect that he's not on the hook for any of the child support... I'd see no reason for him to care one way or the other.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Why divide when you can multiply?
Clone the embrios and give each parent a copy so that they can do as they see fit.
Semi-joking aside, there's the issue of one of the parties not wanting the embrios to ever be born. I think that the correct thing to do is to reach some sort of agreement in which you let the party that wants the child to be born to keep the resulting child, but waive the other party of any and all responsibility.
Which is more than fair. Making a baby requires* two consenting adults which "should" be mature enough to understand the consequences.
* assuming best case scenario, ie, not rape
The answer is simple, there is more than one person making up 'western civilization'. The conflicting arguments are coming from different people and groups, the same groups who are having the same basic debate within western culture.
May I suggest a ratio of 10 women, selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature, for every man ?
Then change the law so the 2nd party can relisquish all onrwership and rights of their half in return they are not now or ever held financially responsible for any resultant childs welfare.
Who Owns Pre-Embryos?
From a scientist: What the fuck is a pre-embryo.
Wikipedia is your friend.
Basically:
- Bunch of cells, still disorganised (apparently, you wait until for the primitive streak to call it proper "embryo". I didn't remember that from my lectures)
- They float around, they haven't implanted into an uterus yet. (That I vaguely remember from my medical studies).
(Well, of course, they were fertilized *in vitro*. It would be hard to find an uterus to implant onto at the bottom of a test tube).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
As with any business contract, party B would be free to buy party A out of their half of the contract. Presumably, this would absolve party A of owing any sort of child support later down the road.
Don't overcomplicate things. That's a good part of why our legal system is so corrupt.
You can't contract out of child support, much like you can't contract into slavery. You can write the contract, sure, but no court will enforce it. The only way to (currently) do so is to donate sperm to a state-endorsed sperm bank. If you simply just donate sperm you will still be on the hook for child support - this has already been tested in courts.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Each person gets 1/2 the embryos to do with as they want and they give the other 1/2 up for "adoption" to the other person. If in the future either decides to implant them the other party has no say or financial obligations to the other.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
The problem is that there are NO children yet. Only cells with 2 half nuclei inside (= pre-embryos)
Small correction: apparently you still call it "pre-embryo" even later than that, as long as they aren't implanted into an uterus yet (and they haven't formed a primitive streak. I didn't remember at all this latter part).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Actually it is a scientific term, it is common synonym for proembryo. But thanks for sharing your hate and ignorance.
Yes, she can and she will. At least, you produced the sperm while still her husband and would-be father of her children.
If a sperm-donor can be hit for child-support, you would have not a chance. And not just in Kansas, Illinois too only makes exceptions for sperm donated "through medical channels involving a doctor".
It may work the other way too — a donor may get parental rights after an artificial insemination.
Presumably, with the rights comes a child support obligation as well — the two better be inseparable.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Embryos seem just ripe
Eww.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Why not ship the frozen fertilized ova to another star system w/o any humans on board? Once they arrive at their destination, robots should be able to handle growing them in a gestational tank and decanting them at the right time.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
In cases that have the potential to go sideways where two or more parties are involved the hospital/doctor/professional should be required to have the outcome spelled out, codified, and notarized. And if and when one party changes their mind...tell them tough! This was a monumental decision and once it was made it was set. Please leave your "but what if" one offs at the door because they are just that...rare occurrences. They can be addressed when they occur.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
No, no, the article states
"Scientifically frozen embryos are not the same as a living child."
So it must be so. Science agrees.
This is easy. Based on current legal standards, to force the woman to become a mother against her will is rape. To force the man to become a father is merely a call for more stringent child support enforcement.
Not to mention the woman has the absolute right to destroy the embryos if she so chooses.
Summary judgement for the woman unless you want to upend hundreds of years of law.
Current legal standards are based on the embryo being attached to the woman's body and you have to
violate her person to remove it so the scale is tilted to her favor.
In this case the embryo is not part of the woman's body or the man's body so they have equal right to it.
Who Owns Pre-Embryos?
From a scientist: What the fuck is a pre-embryo.
Which scientist? I was a researcher for seven years, mind...
the disposition/custody of the pre-embryos is now hotly contested.
If the biomatter belongs to a specific person, then it is their biomatter. If you spit on a judge, your biomatter has incriminated you in the act of contempt. If you rape, then your vaginal secretion/sperm is accounted for by the prosecution during your trial as evidence and considered during sentencing. If you froze eggs, they're yours. At best the whole complaint here is a mysoginists tantrum.
Even leaving aside the fact that the biomatter in question belongs equally to both parties, you're still wrong and here's why: biomatter not attached to your body is not legally considered to be your part of your body. It's considered medical waste or similar and as such it is handled by the legal system as any other property; IOW you may be found responsible for it but you're certainly not going to be the default owner of it. You'll be accountable but with none of the privileges of ownership.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
King Solomon would propose it, then give the entire embryo to whoever relinquished control. Problem is, it's lose-lose for the party who wants the embryo to remain intact, and win-win for the one who does not.
...is if she wins, she can be impregnated, and have kids against the guys wishes... ...and the guy is on the hook for child support...
Since it wouldn't be possible without the contributions of both, and they haven't yet been implanted (which is the object of any of the "oral contracts" they supposedly entered into), they should be flushed if either side withdraws their consent. Very simple.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
If this were concerning abortion, the argument is that it is just a clump of cells.
For this even pre-embryos have a presumed future personhood status.
Gotta love the mental gymnastics.
Things like clones and identical twins aside, the scientific way to attribute a certain glob of biomatter to a specific person with a high certainty would be DNA analysis.
The problem here is that this scientific way completely fails for fertilized eggs, as their DNA is clearly different from either biological parent.
> What the fuck is a pre-embryo?
Dinner and movie.
"As with any business contract"
Parenting is not a business contract.
Sure. All we'll need is a radical revolution in gestational engineering... which is probably even further away that a revolution in relativistic travel or reliable long-term cryogenics. The uterus is a surprisingly sophisticated organ. Or maybe not so surprising when you consider that it's designed to safely host a parasitic organism for nine months while sharing a circulatory system with its host, and preventing either organism's immune system or incompatible blood chemistry from killing the other.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I think I voice the majority view when I say I'm tired of seeing you spam discussions repeatedly with this completely off-topic crap.
The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release
With a title like that and a game like that, it undoubtedly deserved to die. Besides, nobody is obliged to give you a soap box or distribute your crappy derivative game, no matter what your views are. Suck it up - you suck!
Don't like it? Then market it yourself and let it stand or fail on its' own merit. That's the way the world works.
Now go ahead and rage because someone finally decided to take a moment of their time to point out that you, like the emperor, have no clothes. It'll be fun to watch.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
They mean frozen fertilized eggs. The eggs have to be fertilized with the male's sperm before freezing. I'm not an expert but apparently that's how it is, they can't be frozen and then fertilized later.
So, there are some fertilized eggs that would grow into human beings if implanted back in a women. Half the material is from the female, half from the male. In the UK both people's consent is required just to keep them on ice, let alone use them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Seriously go find another woman who is more healthy and make it happen with her. Why carry on the past with someone faulted, sorry not her fault, but you know what I mean. And think of the children, what chance do they have of same or other faults?
You haven't lived in a house full of women, have you?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Why didn't she bank unfertilized eggs? Why pre-fertilize them?
GAH!!! If you're going to talk about scientific things, please learn the correct terminology which would be ovum in this case. Life is tough enough without people constantly trying to invent words to make themselves sound important.
Parents give their children up for adoption. How would it be different for one parent to give up rights/responsibilities for an embryo?
Certainly, it wouldn't take much of a law to allow the same legal ability.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Monsanto and Halliburton own them, Dickkk Cheney said so.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
When it comes to abortion no one seems to care about the father's opinion or feelings on the matter even though without him there'd be no fetus. It's all about a "woman's choice" while utterly ignoring the other side of the equation. Western society in general seems to value females more than males. So I'm guessing this will end up the same way.
Each 'contributor' owns 50%. No decision regarding the subject pre-embryo may be be made without a majority.
It is not so certain if it is 50%. An X chromosome has different (higher) base pair number than a Y chromosome. And even when an embryo would be female (XX), the mother "owns" all genetic material of the mitochondria.
Nor is it a new story, or a new anything.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
May I suggest the more logical inverse? ;)
We're just a couple of frozen embryos.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Okay, maybe not more logical, but...
I've just been through this process and signed the appropriate contracts (in Norway).
When freezing embryos here, both parents sign an agreement that the embryos will be frozen for a maximum of five years, and that the explicit consent of both persons needs to be given before they are removed from the freezer, either for destruction or implantation. After five years they are destroyed anyway.
Problem solved.
Why not ship the frozen fertilized ova to another star system w/o any humans on board? Once they arrive at their destination, robots should be able to handle growing them in a gestational tank and decanting them at the right time.
You'll have to make sure the decanting is done correctly. Like good wine, the younglings will need to breathe.
Incredibly naive, even from a biological perspective.
An embryo can have as many as 4 parents before it even implants into a womb, which could be a 5th party. One ovum, one mitochondrial, and the two haploids you're referring to. Does the addition of an individual for mitochondria or ovum dilute the other "owners?" That doesn't even account for the outside future possibility of selecting from the 23 groups from individual diploids.
From a legal perspective, it's even more challenging; you don't even need to RTFA to understand that there could be surviving NoK that inherit ownership - including the *state*, contractual relationships relating to storage and IP, even larger sociocultural moral obligations that might be considered wrt over/under population. Suppose a retrovirus has been used to engineer the genome of the embryo to add coding DNA for some trait?
How does that fit the definition of "win-win" at all?
me. Glad to have cleared that up for y'all.
Exactly and I think his point is that you need a majority to do anything otherwise they stay in the freezer. Case closed.
Separate dorms.
What the fuck is a pre-embryo.
Pre-embryo is a flicker in the eyes, the inviting smile, the day at the private beach, the Las Vegas trip gone peach, all combined with a healthy egg, shaken but not stirred.
Embryos don't need a uterus. Just look at ectopic pregnancies. And then there are cases such as this. Anything that the placenta can feed off of is fine.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I saw that one...had Sigourney Weaver in it.
Space doesn't think much of the mass of your puny space ship. Minimizing mass is absolutely critical ONLY during launch, and only if thrust during launch must be provided by a combustion engine that burns tons of fuel per second. While this is the case, I wouldn't worry about mass - as long as mass is a major issue, we're not ready for long-range space travel.
Seems simple enough.
If they split the cost, then half the embryos belong to her, half belong to him.
If the laws say that the genetic daddy has to pay child support, he is just going to have to deal with it.
what is a frozen embryo scientifically? other then a frozen human in the embryonic stage of development?
would an adult in suspended animation also not be considered human for some reason?
It seems a bad idea to confuse law and science. Legally women are property in some countries, There was a time when legally people with black skin were not 'persons', legally speaking. The law is based off of human precepts and philosophies, but science is base off of hard physical realities.
A frozen , zygote, remains a frozen human zygote, with exactly the same potential to be a human as everyone reading this post once had, all of us having passed through the same stage of growth. Is a zygote, scientifically a child? I guess that would depend on your definition ( and therefore what test you use ) for making that determination. However the common definition from google would say it is a child, in so much as the definition is testable.
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=define%20child&safe=active
It should also be noted that weather or not it is immoral , or should be illegal to kill human children , is not a question that can be answered by science, aka not a testable proposition.
Posting anonymously due to personal information in this comment, but I will disclose that I am male.
So far all of these comments tend towards the idea that the man wants to be released from any obligations he has towards the pre-embryos, and the woman decides later to carry them forward.
What about the opposite of that? What if the man wants custody and wants to hire a surrogate to carry those pre-embryos through to full-fledged crying baby stage? Does the egg-donor similarly owe child support, or can she sue for custody?
I will tell you, as one who recently filed a batch of pre-embryos in a freezing facility, and who is hoping literally today for the good news that the process has worked, even from the perspective of having a very happy and fulfilling marriage, that the existence of those pre-embryos in the freezer weighs pretty heavily on my mind. I wouldn't have gotten into the whole fertility treatment process (and trust me, it truly sucks) if I did not desperately want children of my own. If the she in my equation decided to give up and walk out, it is not at all obvious to me how I would deal with that or what I would want.
In our case, we already signed the relevant paperwork referred to by many helpful comment-posters above.
As a secondary thought, I cannot imagine that any reproductive medicine establishment would choose to be in the middle of such a legal battle. It is definitely in the interest of such facilities to demand signed paperwork before participating in the creation of those pre-embryos. (Ours had such a policy.)
You can write the contract, sure, but no court will enforce it.
Place a deposit, use Ethereum!
I have heard of this where the 'donors' give the child up for adoption to the gay partner, but have never seen a verified instance.
So legally, they should both have "the man's rights", which is none at all.
They contributed to a sperm-bank, effectively.
Anything beyond here is akin to adoption.
Proof: Biologically, another woman could implant.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
There could be precedent in a case I once heard about, where blowjob+secrecy+turkey baster resulted in a pregnancy. The court ruled that the man was not on the hood for child support because the sex act he consented to could never reasonably be construed as one that could end in a pregnancy. Only the woman's extraordinary actions resulted in the pregnancy, therefore she alone was responsible. I think that was a reasonable ruling.
And yet, that law hasn't been implemented, so the father would still be on the hook. Recently, a man who donated sperm under an agreement that he would have no further rights or responsibilities got hit up for child support and lost in court.
"What the fuck is a pre-embryo."
In the article, they stated that a "pre-embryo" is "an embryo that has not yet been implanted".
Something wrong with that? I think it suffices for the purposes of a magazine article. As long as they define their terms, I find it highly unlikely that they are using linguistic subterfuge to further some weird political agenda.
"If the biomatter belongs to a specific person, then it is their biomatter."
OK, so according to you, the sperm belong to the guy and the eggs to the woman, right?
Well, given the fact that they have no way of removing the man's biomatter from the pre-embryo without destroying the woman's biomatter, can you see why the issue is "hotly contested"?
The original intention of this whole per-embryo freezing was in case she lost her ability to have children on her own after that. She survived the cancer treatment, but what her reproductive functions? Seems to me the easy answer is that if she still has that function, she does not have to have these specific frozen embryos to reproduce. She can conceive a child with someone else. They should just be destroyed and nobody will get them then.
That's why oral contact sex is better than any oral contract.
I can't speak for ALL western nations, but according to WebMD, the third trimester begins at week 27. According to WhatToExpect.com, in the US, "if the pregnancy is farther than week 24, abortion is no longer an option". I looked this up to sate my own curiosity and not to feed into your flamebait post.
And then the newborn babies are left to die on the planet? Do you see the problem here? If we can ever build robots sophisticated enough to raise and educate human beings from birth, then at that point the humans seems a little redundant.
I claim ownership of all my DNA, Identity, and all other biological information unique to me including but not limited to gene sequence and chemical composition and/or arrangement.
Any claims contrary to this are not withstanding.
Why not ship the frozen fertilized ova to another star system w/o any humans on board? Once they arrive at their destination, robots should be able to handle growing them in a gestational tank and decanting them at the right time.
I have a vague memory of reading about a natural experiment where something effectively like this happened (wolf children?) The children were basically insane because they missed parental bonding.
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
If a majority decision can't be reached than the status-quo basically gets maintained, the things sits frozen.
I actually wrote a couple of articles about this, and I interviewed some lawyers and medical ethicists.
The general legal principle was: You can't force someone to have a child without their consent.
When you have sex, you've given your irrevocable consent.
When you donate your sperm through a legal procedure for anonymous sperm donors, you've given your irrevocable consent. That's the only way you can donate sperm without being legally responsible for the costs of bringing up the child.
When you store your sperm with the intention of being used by a specific person, you can withdraw your consent.
If my girlfriend and I decide to store my frozen sperm, or our frozen embryo, we both have to give permission to go on to the next step and get a pregnancy.
This came up in the following interesting real-life situation: A man dies unexpectedly. After death, a doctor harvests his sperm. His wife, girlfriend or parents want to use the sperm to have a grandchild. But he never gave permission. Most of the lawyers said that they couldn't legally use the sperm to produce a child and make him a father without his permission. In reality, they usually harvest the sperm, and after a few months, decide not to go through with it.
But there are a few stored embryos that couples created because they wanted to keep the option of having a child in the future, after cancer treatment or some other medical reason. When I looked at it, the law was pretty clear that both parents have to consent. Accordingly, I was interested in the New Yorker article.
Some contracts are revocable, and some are irrevocable. If I agree to work at McDonald's, that's a revocable contract. If I sell a house, that's an irrevocable contract.
In the past, courts have treated these IVF agreements as revocable contracts. According to that article, New York treats them as irrevocable contracts. Massachusetts doesn't.
Some contracts are oral, and some must be in writing. I can go to work for a restaurant based on an oral contract, but I can't sell a house based on an oral contract. The law has traditionally required written contracts when the stakes were high and people might remember things differently. That judge in Illinois seems to have decided to accept an oral contract. It sounds like she's going against established law, which isn't a good thing. It also sounds like she's making decisions based on her own personal feelings, which also isn't a good thing.
Why are you limiting it to just 3 people? It seems like a contrived problem.
King Solomon would propose it, then give the entire embryo to whoever relinquished control. Problem is, it's lose-lose for the party who wants the embryo to remain intact, and win-win for the one who does not.
Nope, because here are 8 embryos. So she can have 4, and he can have 4. Problem solved.
Figure a trip of a few centuries. You're going to have to have a LOT more than three people alive at any given time, just to stay sane. Humans are social animals, and need some sort of society. Nor are you going to have a baby girl born on the trip and automatically agree to spend her life as a barely sane brood mare. Not to mention that you are going to have to have a semi-working society ready to hit the ground at the new world and set up some form of civilization.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Warning: This post contains content known to the state of California to cause cancer.
So, what? You want to divide it in two and give each party one half? The problem you are missing is that one party may want to dispose of the pre-embryo while the other party may want to (eventually) birth and raise it. Those are mutually exclusive options.
If that is the case then they can use the embryos they saved with a person that is willing to be a parent. If they don't have any such embryos, tough luck.
You have no right to force someone else to be a parent against their will.
But that is the simple solution.
In this very real case you have a woman that wants to have children with a man she doesn't like. This makes me think that the cancer treatment and the strained relationship has given her some mental baggage that she needs therapy for. Hopefully that alone would be enough to resolve this issue.
pre-embryos are some neoconservative evangelical dry-hump term used to justify strange ballot measures
Because as we know, the New Yorker is a hotbed of neoconservative evangelical activity.
There was a case on Slashdot.
Basically, if you're doing anything even slightly out of the ordinary that may be very expensive, consult a lawyer. They aren't all that expensive for a short consultation, and in any event are a whole lot cheaper than eighteen years of child support. The people involved had tried rolling their own agreements, a very bad idea in many cases.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Why not ship the frozen fertilized ova to another star system w/o any humans on board?
You don't even need that. If it is properly compressed and de-duplicated, you can encode most of human genetic diversity on a 64GB USB thumb drive. You might want to take along a second copy just in case there are some read errors on the first one. Then you just need some DNA splicing equipment, an artificial womb, and some generic ova to boot up the process.
You must be a pretty crappy scientist if this is how you reason things.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Wo else?
You can't contract out of child support, much like you can't contract into slavery. You can write the contract, sure, but no court will enforce it. The only way to (currently) do so is to donate sperm to a state-endorsed sperm bank. If you simply just donate sperm you will still be on the hook for child support - this has already been tested in courts.
What happens if you donate sperm to your girl via a state-endorsed sperm bank? This may be a way to loophole the current laws in the case of frozen embryos. (silly legal system)
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
So legally, they should both have "the man's rights", which is none at all.
They contributed to a sperm-bank, effectively.
Anything beyond here is akin to adoption.
Proof: Biologically, another woman could implant.
I would agree to this. Just like presumably you could withdraw consent for your sperm in
a sperm bank* to be used before it is actually used, either party should be able to withdraw
their consent until it is actually placed into service. In the sperm bank case, you might have
signed a waiver giving up your right to retract or it could be assumed like when you donate blood
but in this case they maintained ownership but as soon as either party revokes consent then
the embryos should be flushed.
I'm not about to wade into the abortion debate but plenty of abortions are performed in third trimester in the US. The common meaning of a late term abortion is any time after 20 weeks.
Each 'contributor' owns 50%. No decision regarding the subject pre-embryo may be be made without a majority.
Case closed.
This is blatantly incorrect in the case of sexual reproduction. Up to the point of birth, 99% of the investment comes from the mother, and until birth, 100% of it is a part of the mother's body. It is in fact this distinction that best defines who the 'mother' and the 'father' are - the only such rule for which no exceptions are known in the natural world.
This is a non issue from both the biological as well as medical points of view, typical for lawyers to try and debate the obvious anyway. If it later turns out the church is paying the lawyers of the father, the picture will be complete.
It's quite funny to watch a country completely replace common sense with litigation. Funny if you don't live there anyway.
The most practical implementation would be to have a crew of three young, short-statured women.
Let me stop you right there. This ship won't last long enough to reach Mars. You're kinda forgetting about the fact that you're shipping humans, not boxes. It has been well known for quite some time now that single-sex crews are a very bad idea for long voyages.
I'm not about to wade into the abortion debate but plenty of abortions are performed in third trimester in the US. The common meaning of a late term abortion is any time after 20 weeks.
20 weeks still has nearly two months of second trimester remaining. Third trimester abortions are extremely rare, with only four practitioners performing them in the US. Often described as "partial birth abortions," they generally include a specific procedure to kill the fetus prior to removing it from the womb, where earlier in pregnancy, the fetus terminates as a consequence of removal/expulsion.
You want to know something funny? The uterus is actually incredible hostile to the embryo - almost the slightest glitch causes a rejection, while embryos implanted outside the womb will develop perfectly safely (but need to be born in C-section). This is the result of evolution trying to produce the healthiest offspring; the uterus is a "filter" to reject undesired characteristics rather than "nurture" the embryo. The embryo is a self-contained parasite that will do just fine on its own.
I work for an organization where women outnumber men 12:1. Every time someone makes a comment like this, I immediately suspect they've never been around that many women before...
Were there an even number? Then randomly distribute them among the mother and father. If an odd number, leave one frozen somewhere for eternity or until both parties agree on what to do with it.
Most human are social animals, but maybe someone on the autism spectrum would be a better fit for such an environment.
Not all, if you blow a load on your floor or she shits an egg into a tampon, does that mean the floor and the tampon each own half?
It takes two to tango good sir, if both dont agree then its the same damn difference, it will be destroyed and lost like everything else.
The State does. Everything should belong to the State. We would live in a better and less complicated world if everybody accepted that we only live to serve the State.
You can't contract out of child support, much like you can't contract into slavery.
It's ironic, really, given that child support is the closest thing we have to slavery under current law.
Huh?
Pre-embryos? Since when do we have such expression?
Pre-babies, too?
Some people have a way with words. It's like people talking about death sentence: "it's killing, not murder" and the commandment in its original language was not about killing.
Yeah, right.
It will be interesting when _you_ are declared a pre-person...
Pregnancy easily can outlast the relationship that caused it. In all jurisdictions and cultures I am aware of, it is a woman's decision to keep the baby or not (if someone is allowed to decide at all).
Thanks for getting my point and not being a 'King Solomon'-waving or 'think of the child support!' dipshit, like most of the others here.
This is not a "women's body"-issue (as actual pregnancies may be construed as), but one of multiple sane adults enabling a postponed decision. Gender is irrelevant here, the subject is irrelevant and philosophically speaking, the number of parents is irrelevant as well.
The pre-embryos are not alive yet and the situation is thus equivalent to owning pretty much any inanimate objects with multiple people. The only slightly complicating matters are that the objects are very rare and irreplaceable, yet non-liquidatable. They could be inherited frozen T-Rex eggs: the problem (and answers) would remain the same.
If they have no agreement, but both their DNA is in there, then each of the two rightfully has a veto on their use. I do really not see what the issue is here, except some delusional "think of the children" nonsense.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's easy to force someone to had a kid without their consent.
1) Rape a female and tie her down until she gives birth.
2) Rape a male. He now has no say over whatever the female wants to with a baby. There have been cases where this happened and the male was forced to pay child support.
3) Steal some sperm from a condom (from sex or masturbation). The male may never know until she comes after him for child support.
Mass is always relevant in accordance with the rocket equation. It's not merely "relevant", it's fundamentally critical to transit time, at a not-even-close-to-linear scaling ratio.
Furthermore, if you have some ready-to-go technology that combines high thrust and high ISP, to the degree required for fast interstellar travel with heavy spacecraft, please inform NASA immediately. And no, Orion is not even close to a ready-to-go technology, and it's not even that great ISP; with practical-sized pusher plates, it only gets a couple thousand. Medusa does better, but not "write off mass concerning an interstellar mission" better. And they plus all of the other proposed high ISP/high thrust techs are all very, very far from ready-to-go.
"...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
Mass.
"...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
Believe it or not, humans can and do live in isolation in single family units all over the world. It's not exactly a good environment to grow up in, but it doesn't turn someone into a murderous beast or whatnot. Do also realize the alternative. Every person you add - and their corresponding mass overhead - dramatically slows down your spacecraft or dramatically scales up the size of its launch stack. There are huge costs; launching only the absolute bare minimum is critical. The slower you go, the more consumables you need, which increases its mass on its own (see the aforementioned problem), and the greater the likelihood of catastropic collapse).
No, a semi-working society ready to hit the ground is most definitely not a requirement, you don't want a "society" until you have a base set up that can sustain them, and automatic robotic labor, not human power, is far more efficient (both in mass and energy terms). But even if such a ready society was a requirement, that'd only be a task for the last generation or two, not every generation in transit. Again, minimizing mass (and thus in-transit consumables) is critical.
The biggest challenge of the whole thing is the massive difficulty of setting up a truly independent colony with as little hardware as possible. Modern technology is based on ridiculously long resource and production chains, with each part produced requiring consumables from numerous other different production chains; a single random piece of modern technology may ultimately have required some tiny degree of the usage of tens to hundreds of thousands or more chemicals or parts that will eventually wear out, in thousands of systems scattered all across the world. Every bolt on every mining truck, every hydraulic fluid in every piston, every seal, every fluxing agent, every tire tread, every hammer-mill hammer, they all need to able to be produced at a faster rate than they are consumed. One obviously gravitates toward "generalized"production processes like 3d printing for part manufacture and plasma centrifuging for refining; however, low volume / high consumable production techs such as these may be fine for low volume consumables but become a consumes-more-than-it-yields dead-end when it comes to making high volume consumables. And you can't just send an emergency resupply boat to a different starsystem. It's fundamentally critical that technology chains be condensed to their absolute simplest cores. Nor are all of your raw mineral inputs going to be found in the same location, which means a cross-planetary shipping system is needed. All of this sort of stuff is the real challenge.
"...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
Like 98% of military crews throughout modern human history?
"...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
The pre-embryos are abominations. Just destroy them. Why do you people insist on making things so complicated?
Don't fornicate. Seriously, just don't do it.
And then the newborn babies are left to die on the planet? Do you see the problem here? If we can ever build robots sophisticated enough to raise and educate human beings from birth, then at that point the humans seems a little redundant.
Most of us die, and mostly on some planet or other. Generation ships operated by humans have a very low probability of success due to human factors.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And then there's the stories where this gives rise to the Adam and Eve myth.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You want kids? Adopt. The world is full of kids who need families. You want to reproduce your own little genetic sample? Get over yourself. Your genes are well enough represented in the human genetic pool. In fact, if your judgement is that bad that you'd sink like 20 grand a shot on the iffy chance of an IVF being successful, that's a good argument that your particular genetic combo should NOT be reproduced.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
"Scientifically and legally, frozen embryos are not the same as a living child." Well, duh. They're younger, and don't breathe. Now explain how they're not individual humans, with no rights. And if it's age, then these rights can be taken away from anyone at the wrong age.
Speaking of things turning ugly in FOSS space... Should sexist opensource developers have their projects censored or removed?
Recently an opensource game release story was removed due to the game developer's open sexism(0) and harrasment(1) of women in tech.
A story posted by the editor of the popular Phoronix linux news site about a release of an Open Source videogame was later manually removed(2). The reason cited was the game developer's unacceptable views on social issues such as gender equality (3).
The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release - Phoronix" and can be accessed via the google cache(4).
With the recent inclusion of a code of conduct(5) for those wishing to contribute to the Linux Kernel some questions now need to be asked and answered about the inclusion of code from people who are known to engage in or promote socially unacceptable attitudes or harrasments of those whom the free-software movement would prefer to attract in their place:
* Are the social or political views of an author of free software relevant to that software's inherent quality? * Should the beliefs of an opensource developer weigh when when evaluating whether a piece of opensource software is worthy of any publicity or public notice? * Should men with unpopular or "forbidden" views be excised from the opensource movement and "not allowed" to contribute, in a manner similar to that which is done in employment? * Has the free/opensource software movement changed in these respects since its founding? If so is this a positive change? * Should there be gatekeepers to opensource that decide who may and who may not contribute. Should abusive developers be "blackballed" to maintain proper social order and controls?
and
* What are the consequences of not doing this
Citations: (0) Past related incident: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1310 (1) http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/... (2) Removed story URL: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p... (3) http://www.phoronix.com/forums... "Fortunately, the article has been removed now." "Thanks everybody for speaking up." (4) https://webcache.googleusercon... (5) Linux "Code of Conflict" http://whatwillweuse.com/fodde...
sheldon, amy told me to tell you to unblock her sexts.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.