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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."
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.
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.
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?
It's only a side point, but for what it's worth that's a possible verdict under Scottish law, not under English.
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
The woman apparently has said that she will not be demanding any support or anything more from the father.
Except that her agreeing to this now means nothing if circumstances change. If she falls on hard times in the future, the state may then go after the father for child support no matter what the couple agreed to previously.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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.
It's bigger than that. By arguing that she doesn't want anything from the father it implies she is deserved something.
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...
"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"
So can she not force him to pay child support if it's her decision to keep them?
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
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
Yep. Whether or not the children receive support from the absent father is wholly up to the judge. She cannot deny the children's right to support.
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"
That entirely depends on the jurisdiction - a similar case went to court in the UK back in 2000 - 2007 and the man won his case.
The woman appealed all the way to the European Court of Human Rights and lost her case completely.
The issue is that the man withdrew his permission for the embryos to be used - up to the point at which they are implanted in the woman, they are jointly owned and cannot be used without express permission of both parties. Embryos are also not legal entities, and as they are not yet part of the womans body, she does not get automatic final say over their use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
Would your argument work for you if the man was able to take the fertilized eggs and have them implanted in a surrogate who brings them to term? Surely the woman should have some say in that?
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.
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.
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 ?
That's like saying you can rape your wife because, at one point, she gave consent. It's completely idiotic.
Sorry, but by the time they've split up, he has withdrawn consent, and if she wishes to have a child he has the right to say "not with my sperm you don't". What's that, you now can't have children unless they're mine? Too damned bad.
This is very different from forcing her to abort a fetus, because it's outside of her body and frozen -- which means it's a tissue sample until someone goes to fairly extraordinary lengths to put it back.
I don't think this is nearly as cut and dry as people think. You can't just say "it's her egg, and he's already knocked her up" ... because she isn't pregnant, and this isn't about what she can do with her own body.
Is her ex legally required to have a child with her now that they've split up? Because it's not like in most cases you knock up your ex long after the breakup.
Suddenly a tissue sample in cold storage comes down to "can she force him to have a child with her now"? Because since it's not in her body, it's not like that is the deciding factor.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
She can not, but the state can. People forget that child support is for the benefit of the child, who had no mechanism or capability to consent to the agreement.
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.
Actually, it is not her decision regarding support in the first place, she does not have standing to absolve him of that responsibility.
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.
in addition to points made by others here, there's also another issue. Say the mother wins absolves the father of any legal responsibilities for the child that is born. The child grows up, develops some sort of rare disease or is involved in a horrible accident. The child tracks down the father for spare parts, i.e. bone marrow or a kidney. This now puts him in an awkward position that would never have occurred without this decision. if the disease presents itself during childhood, can the father then be compelled to provide donor material?
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.
No Risk - No Reward.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
Embryos seem just ripe
Eww.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
If the sperm donor can be positively identified, yes they can go after him.
Kansas, last year. Lesbian couple want a child. They enlist a male friend to provide the sperm.
A couple years later, the female couple breaks up. The custodial mom applies to the state for financial aid. The state goes after the sperm donor for recompense. And gets it in court.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/...
I believe there was a similar case in Sweden a couple of years ago.
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
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.
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.
That's like saying you can rape your wife because, at one point, she gave consent. It's completely idiotic.
Sorry, but by the time they've split up, he has withdrawn consent, and if she wishes to have a child he has the right to say "not with my sperm you don't". What's that, you now can't have children unless they're mine? Too damned bad.
This is very different from forcing her to abort a fetus, because it's outside of her body and frozen -- which means it's a tissue sample until someone goes to fairly extraordinary lengths to put it back.
I don't think this is nearly as cut and dry as people think. You can't just say "it's her egg, and he's already knocked her up" ... because she isn't pregnant, and this isn't about what she can do with her own body.
Is her ex legally required to have a child with her now that they've split up? Because it's not like in most cases you knock up your ex long after the breakup.
Suddenly a tissue sample in cold storage comes down to "can she force him to have a child with her now"? Because since it's not in her body, it's not like that is the deciding factor.
There are further implications to this: the laws are drafted so that a child is always entitled to maintenance from a parent. Should the courts let her have a baby and agree to regard him as merely a donor and thus relieves him of his obligations there is a greater than even chance that sooner or later a court will be forced to accept that letting a man say "I don't want this obligation" before the first trimester ends is very similar to letting a woman say "I don't want this obligation" before the first trimester ends. Two precedents - Women can already give up their obligation to the child/foetus AND court somewhere (hopefully with jurisdiction) already let a man say "I don't want this obligation".
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
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.
So far, she hasn't carried any embryo for even a second. And your first argument is totally bogus - if you have a limited amount of money, that doesn't give you the right to claim a large chunk of Bill Gate's money directly from him "because he has more."
This whole thing is stupid from the get-go. The fact that she doesn't consider her current child as a "real child of hers" makes it clear that she would unfairly treat is as second-class if she could get pregnant from the eggs. That's the same as treating adopted kids as "not really your kids." Neither one of the parties comes out of this looking good - just incredibly stupid. Good thing they didn't breed.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"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
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?
Why didn't they just keep Dad off the birth certificate? The State can't go after someone if they don't know who he is....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
if you have a limited amount of money, that doesn't give you the right to claim a large chunk of Bill Gate's money directly from him "because he has more."
Really? There's a whole political philosophy set up around doing exactly that.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
Nor is it a new story, or a new anything.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
That entirely depends on the jurisdiction - a similar case went to court in the UK back in 2000 - 2007 and the man won his case.
The woman appealed all the way to the European Court of Human Rights and lost her case completely.
The issue is that the man withdrew his permission for the embryos to be used - up to the point at which they are implanted in the woman, they are jointly owned and cannot be used without express permission of both parties. Embryos are also not legal entities, and as they are not yet part of the womans body, she does not get automatic final say over their use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
Would your argument work for you if the man was able to take the fertilized eggs and have them implanted in a surrogate who brings them to term? Surely the woman should have some say in that?
Since the legal matter is still being sorted out, I'm trying to look at it from an ethical standpoint. If she had agreed to have her eggs fertilized knowing that they might be implanted in another woman so that a friend/boyfriend could have a biological child in the future, then I think that it would be true that she already gave consent.
If you read the article, you'll find that the couple had been friends for a decade before they started dating and neither seemed to think their romantic relationship was going to be a long term one. The decision to freeze her fertilized eggs resulted from a 7 minute conversation. Even after the relationship ended, email correspondence showed that he was OK with the decision to freeze the eggs and would do it again.
It wasn't until after a later relationship of his went sour over the issue that he attempted to prevent her from using the eggs.
Given the above I look at it this way. He consented to do this as a friend to help her out, not because he wanted to raise the kids that might result. He knew that he may not be in the picture down the road. The problem is that he didn't think through the potential consequences it might have on his future relationships. That sucks for him, but in my mind it is too late to withdraw consent. If she had known he might later change his mind, she could have gone the sperm donor route instead.
This is true. They've even overturned "clean break" agreements where a lump sum or property has been given as a one-off payment.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Actually, what I typed is not in any way like your statement at all.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Too late, buddy. Should have thought of that before you jetted into that test tube.
Most guys get into this problem by shooting into a vagina... which is much more fun for the few seconds that the male orgasm lasts.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Another note. Apparently they only harvested 8 eggs which is not many. They could have only fertilized half with his sperm and froze the rest unfertilized but knowing that the results from unfertilized eggs aren't as good, the dude said to fertilize them all. Had he not said that, she would have had the option of having the remaining eggs fertilized by someone else.
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
So what if he wanted to take the eggs and have a kid with another woman - what would your stance be on that? The combination of the two constituent parts should surely mean that if he wants to use them without her ongoing consent he would be allowed to just as much as she does now...?
Too many people here are jumping to the conclusion that the fertilised eggs are solely the property of the woman even though they are the result of two donations - why should the mans contribution matter less in these cases?
People forget that child support is for the benefit of the child
Easy to do when it is paid to mother, who can do whatever she wants with it
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.
How does that fit the definition of "win-win" at all?
me. Glad to have cleared that up for y'all.
Separate dorms.
"I can't recall."
If it's good enough for people testifying in front of Congress it's good enough for your local DSS caseworker.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
And even more "Even if she STILL does not want the sperm donor involved." She also has no say in the matter.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
So what if he wanted to take the eggs and have a kid with another woman - what would your stance be on that? The combination of the two constituent parts should surely mean that if he wants to use them without her ongoing consent he would be allowed to just as much as she does now...?
Too many people here are jumping to the conclusion that the fertilised eggs are solely the property of the woman even though they are the result of two donations - why should the mans contribution matter less in these cases?
I kind of explained that. The difference is that she never consented to have the eggs implanted in another woman, while he did consent to have the eggs implanted in her (at some point down the road).
Let's say the situation had been reversed and this guy had a medical condition that made future sperm production impossible. And just like the woman in this article, he specifically chose her genetics vs someone else's. If this woman allowed her eggs to be harvested to be fertilized with his sperm so at some point down the road he could have a biological child, not necessarily with her, then yes I would say he had the right to use them.
I'm not viewing the eggs as property whose ownership must be decided. I'm viewing this as a contract.
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.
An important aspect for me is that he didn't do this with the express intent of being a traditional father. Both of them were aware that their romantic relationship may not last, though they did have a long term friendship.
He did this as a favor to her, not because they were sure they wanted to raise a kid together. So as far as the issue of property is concerned, he gave his sperm to her so that the eggs could be fertilized. It's too late to take them back now. He really was a sperm donor. He just happened to be involved with the mother at the time of the donation.
I understand that any woman who he might get involved with in the future might have some issues with this. I suppose that is true of anyone whose donated sperm. It does have the added twist that he was friends with the mother and had a short term fling with her. He thought he was doing a good thing but didn't think about the potential consequences. It's too bad.
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.
Income redistribution via taxation does not give rise to the legal right for an individual to sue another individual for a chunk of money just because the other one has more.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.)
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.
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.
So the fact that she once consented to sex with him means he can fuck her any time he chooses, even now they've split?
Just that by your logic, they made an agreement and they must never change it.
Or can they?
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
Note that this wouldn't stop the courts demanding that he pay support to her for the child:
http://www.divorcesource.com/r...
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.
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.
So the fact that she once consented to sex with him means he can fuck her any time he chooses, even now they've split?
Just that by your logic, they made an agreement and they must never change it.
Or can they?
She's not asking him to donate more sperm. She just wants to use the eggs that were fertilized with sperm HE ALREADY DONATED which he did knowing that they would probably not be in a relationship by the time she planned to use them. It is something he already decided. It is something he already did.
If she consents to have sex with him, she consents for that instance only. It doesn't matter if they are in a relationship or not. There is no obligation for her to have sex with him again. If they were in a relationship, he might decide to leave her as a consequence. The important thing to remember is that he is free to have sex with anyone else who is willing. By not consenting to have sex with him now or in the future, she is in no way preventing him from having a sex life.
She can not have a baby with anyone else's sperm. This is the only way she can have a child that's a biological descendent. If it were possible to have somebody else's sperm fertilize these eggs then I think that he'd have every right to legally prevent her from implanting these eggs as they are. But he went in to this knowing that this would not be possible and he has to live with the consequences.
Yours is just not a relevant analogy.
To simplify, consenting to sex once does not imply consent down the road. He consented to have her eggs to be fertilized with his sperm with the express purpose of using them down the road.
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.
Who, other then the child's primary caregiver, should be responsible for the child's money?
Cheap storage VM.
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.
Technically he was responsible because the child would not have existed and been in need without his decision to create it. The reality is that any child with same sex parents has a father and a mother and both are responsible for the life they created. Even in situations of adoption.. you can't abdicate moral responsibility for a child you created. Of course I'm not sure how that stands up in the future when designer children with DNA from a dozen sources come into vogue.
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.
I'm not arguing with you from the moral point of view, just the legal and real world one: Birth certificate, father: Unknown, Mom when asked, "I can't recall."
What does the system do with that? Not a whole lot it can do.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Most human are social animals, but maybe someone on the autism spectrum would be a better fit for such an environment.
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.
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.