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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.
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?
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
"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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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
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...