Adoption Uncovered

Embryos Enter the Already Complex World of Adoption.

Photo by Amina Filkins

Adoption is Already Complicated

Superficially, adoption seems straightforward. A child needs a home so one is provided. Most people who have had any experience with adoption in real life know otherwise. Three longstanding methods of transferring a child from one family to another are the most common. Each of these have traumatic backstories that years of legal decisions and legislation have tried to rectify. The first is domestic baby adoption. Historically baby adoption has completely omitted the human who gives birth to the baby at the center of the process. More recent efforts to make sure a mother is presented with all her options before and after she meets her child take time and patience if done properly. (1) If a child is coming from foster care the process can be even more complicated. Red tape has been imposed on social workers over time to give them incentives to try to align birth family with resources to allow them to keep the child and stem biases that have led to inappropriate placements in the past. It takes time to allow birth families as many chances as possible to make things work, then interview all interested and eligible extended birth family before a conclusion to go ahead with adoption is made. (2) International adoption involves even more strict adherence to law and process in addition to paying out money to domestic and international partners who are responsible for getting the child Stateside. (3) Then if a child is transferred to a new home paperwork and attention to trauma follow. That doesn’t account for the people who aren’t matched with a child or can’t afford other paths to grow their family. 

Embryo adoption is a new frontier without widespread regulation 

As confusing and painful as adoption has been for many in the past, that isn’t stopping many families from trying to add to their family through this practice. In recent years babies available for adoption are becoming fewer and foreign countries are choosing to keep their adoptable children within their borders. (4) Many families don’t find themselves able or interested in taking on an older child or sibling group, or investing the resources in a child with special needs. In this climate where there are fewer young, healthy adoptable children, families are looking to technology to grow their families. Some people have been able to take advantage of practices like IVF (In-Vitro Fertilization) where eggs are fertilized outside of the body and then transferred into a uterus to hopefully implant and yield a baby. (5) As a byproduct of these revolutionary treatments there are often embryos leftover, sometimes many of them. (6) This has led a small group of people to develop a new path to grow families that is starting to gain traction. The process to adopt an embryo is still being bushwhacked through new legal territory. Transferring an embryo from one family to another currently doesn’t even constitute adoption. It is a transfer of property similar to the sale of a boat or a contract on a house. (7) The definition of what an embryo is doesn’t even appear to be settled. Is it human tissue? Is it a human? Maybe these are the wrong questions. 

The Christian Right was instrumental in beginning this practice and they continue to be the gatekeepers 

Regardless of what an embryo is, the embryos that remain after a couple has completed IVF treatments represent an opportunity. The first group of people to capitalize on this have been those most interested in seeing embryos as human lives that need to be preserved. The Christian right have followed their convictions to come to the conclusion that if conception represents the beginning of a life worth converting, then these embryos should be implanted and allowed to grow. (8)

Since those who have first championed this practice have a very specific worldview, often the people who are offering their embryos prefer to make sure those who give birth to and parent those embryos have the same worldview. (9) Currently only a handful of organizations in the country offer the service of matching embryos to families, so they get to determine what type of people they would like to work with. (10)

As birth rates decline and international adoption avenues continue to close, embryo adoption may represent a way to build a family for those of many races and religions who can’t afford IVF, or LGBTQ couples who want to parent. These are often not the people who are chosen by Christian couples offering their embryos.   In order for many people to be able to have access to this process, embryo adoption will need to divorce itself from the select group that has developed it. (11) Over time guardrails can be put in place to ensure embryos are more widely available to different groups of people (12) , and a more regular home study system can be offered to those who want a chance to use embryos to have their own children. 

Where will this practice go in the future, and how will we decide who will benefit from it?

Currently individual rulings and suggested practices are hodge-podging together a sort of expected path to embryo adoption. A lot of adoption legal history is filled with a fix here and a patch there. Often this leaves gaps and showcases the biases of those who make the rules regarding adoption. We are at a point now where embryo adoption could be steered toward becoming a practice that could benefit many families in more ways than just offering the privileged few a path to parenthood. Alternatively, if the loss of abortion rights trickles down into the realm of the embryo all of IVF in addition to embryo adoption could be at risk. (13) Which perspective will prevail? Will we get to the place where embryo adoption can benefit many families of many kinds? Will embryo adoption become limited or cease to exist because a vocal group of people don’t want to take the risk to create excess embryos? Ideally, people with a variety of voices will need to speak up and contribute to an ethical, scientifically realistic and welcoming framework that opens the practice to all who could benefit.

Sources

  1. “10 Birthmother Stories Guaranteed To Change The Way You Look At Birthmothers.” America Adopts, americaadopts.com/10-birthmother-stories-guaranteed-change-way-look-birthmothers/.
  2. Featherstone, Brid, et al. “The role ofthe social worker in adoption – ethics and human rights: An Enquiry.” British Association of Social Workers, 2018, http://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/EPoverty/UnitedKingdom/2018/NGOS/ATD_Annex2.pdf .
  3. “Why Are There So Many Regulations in International Adoption.” Creating a family.org, 31 July 2014, creatingafamily.org/adoption-category/regulations-international-adoption/.
  4. Khazan, Olga. “The New Question Haunting Adoption.” The Atlantic, 19 Oct. 2021, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/10/adopt-baby-cost-process-hard/620258/  .
  5. “In vitro fertilization.” Mayo Clinic, 10 Sept. 2021, http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/in-vitro-fertilization/about/pac-20384716 .
  6. Doughty, Steve. “1.7 million embryos created for IVF have been thrown away, and just 7 per cent lead to pregnancy.” Dailymail.co.uk, Dec. 2012, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255107/1-7-million-embryos-created-IVF-thrown-away-just-7-cent-lead-pregnancy.html.
  7. Maxwell, Obermayer R., and Hippel LLP. “Five Things to Know About Embryo Adoption.” jdsupra.com, 17 May 2022, Five Things to Know About Embryo Adoption.
  8. Buckwalter-Poza, Rebecca. “THE FROZEN CHILDREN: THE RISE—AND COMPLICATIONS—OF EMBRYO ADOPTION IN THE U.S.” PSmag.com, 3 May 2017, psmag.com/news/frozen-children-rise-complications-embryo-adoption-u-s-80754.
  9. Taylor-Coleman, Jasmine. “The Americans who ‘adopt’ other people’s embryos.” bbc.com, 18 July 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36450328.
  10. “Embryo Adoption is Growing, but it is Getting Tangled in the Abortion Debate.” NYTimes.com, 17 Feb. 2019, http://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/17/health/embryo-adoption-donated-snowflake.html  .
  11. Cromer, Risa. “‘Our family picture is a little hint of heaven’: race, religion and selective reproduction in US ‘embryo adoption’.” ScienceDirect.com, Nov. 2020, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405661820300137.
  12. “Current Embryo Adoption Awareness and Services Grantees.” opa.hhs.gov, opa.hhs.gov/grant-programs/embryo-adoption-awareness/current-eaa-grantees.
  13. Gerson, Jennifer. “How overturning Roe v. Wade could affect IVF.” PBS.org, 24 June 2022, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-overturning-roe-v-wade-could-affect-ivf .

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