Embryo Adoption

I heard about the idea of Embryo Adoption as a potential path to pregnancy the same day I heard that embryo storage was akin to abortion.  I was listening to a speech by Dr. John Kilner, a noted bio-ethicist from Trinity International University.  I was lucky enough to spend some time with Dr. Kilner while he was in town giving the keynote speech for a conference my company was putting on.  Dr. Kilner made it abundantly clear that IVF was not unethical; it is simply a way to connect an egg and a sperm.  To him, infertility is just a disability that medical technology could cure.  Dr. Kilner's problem with IVF was that some clinics, in an attempt to raise their success rates, would attempt to create a surplus of embryos (I'm looking at you Nadya Suleman's doctor!), and dispose of or store any extra.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that destroying an embryo at any stage is a problem to many Americans; it is, for some, the same thing as an abortion of a viable embryo.

Dr. Kilner said that the use for surplus embryos would be for a future implantation.  You can put them in frozen storage, he said, but at a cost.  1/3 of embryos do not survive cold storage.  Imagine you have three children, and you hand them off to a babysitter.  When you come home only two of the children had survived.   Needless to say, you wouldn't use that babysitter again.

Is freezing an embryo the same thing as an abortion?  It's not for me to say.  What I can say is that this is a difficult thing for infertile couples to hear.  Not only do you have to worry about the cost of funding IVFs as well as the stress inherent in the process, but now, if you have extra embryos, someone can call you a baby-killer if you don't use them all.  This is quite the dilemma for someone who has already experienced the tragedy of infertility. 

As I drove Dr. Kilner to the airport, I told him about my wife's and my journey through infertility.  After hearing a bit about our story, he suggested that embryo adoption would be a less expensive and 'easier' path to pregnancy.   It would be an adoption, but wouldn't require travel, and my wife would be able to experience pregnancy.  There was the ethical side to him too:  We would be saving embryos that had been put in cold storage by other couples.  Embryos would not be destroyed nor used for research.

So now I'm in an ethical dilemma:  Cold storage=bad, but using embryos from cold storage=good?  It's a double standard that could be self-defeating.  If you keep everyone from using cold storage, then there would be no embryos for people to adopt who desperately need to get pregnant.

The change that occurs in a endometriosis patient is miraculous.  Women can receive a new lease on life.  She can get a few years endo-free.  I don't want to envision a McEmbryo world, and there should be some sanctity involved with embryos.  But it seems to me that mothers should be able to help other potential mothers if they want.

When I checked with the best embryo adoption center, they said we needed to be married 3 years in order to adopt.  At that time, we hadn't been married 2.  We are getting close to our third anniversary, and it is starting to look like one of the best options.