The latest twist in the ever-complicated world of reproductive medicine, embryo donation is attracting increasing attention as an option for couples who have had no luck with IVF or who are looking for a less-costly alternative. At the same time, the legally murky practice of formally adopting embryos, as the Vests did, has opened a new front in the abortion battle. Snowflakes, the first embryo-adoption program in the country, began matching donor embryos to infertile women in 1997 with the help of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family. Some critics say the practice is being promoted in an effort to give embryos the same legal status as children. (No state currently recognizes embryo adoption.) “We operate from the premise that these embryos are life, and we believe life begins at conception,” says Snowflakes director Lori Maze.
The Bush administration has pushed embryo adoption with a $1 million public-awareness campaign at the same time it has opposed the use of embryos for medical research. At the heart of the matter: the distinction between donation and adoption. “The problem with this label [adoption] is it elevates embryos to the status of a child in many people’s minds, and then you end up on a slippery slope. If you can adopt embryos, how can you do stem-cell research on them or discard them?” asks Susan Crockin, a Boston-based attorney specializing in reproductive law.
So far, 19 Snowflakes babies have been born and 15 more women in the program are pregnant. While the still-small embryo-adoption movement has yet to spread beyond the Christian community, there is clearly a growing interest among infertile couples in embryo donation, which is less politically charged than adoption. “I’m getting 10 times as many questions about embryo donation than I had even two years ago,” said Dr. Richard Scott of Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey, the country’s second largest IVF clinic. For many of those couples, the estimated 100,000 frozen embryos in storage in the United States could turn out to be the answer.
