The Embryo Thing
I meant to write earlier in the week on the final decision around Natalie Evans' attempts to use her frozen embryos. This case feels like it's been coming up in the news at its various stages forever, and given that it's actually been five-plus years, in news terms, it actually has been. I know this is going to make me sound horribly unsympathetic, but she really needed to get over it years ago. Five years looks dangerously obsessive to me, and five years' effort to produce a child who will have to be told categorically that it wasn't wanted by one of its parents also pushes things into the realms of plain old cruelty.
I daresay that people will say that it's important to her that she has a child that's really her own, and maybe that's so overriding an instinct in some people that it warrants this saga. But really, if she'd applied to adopt a child in the first place and been accepted, she could have had five years of happy parenthood by now. If she applies at this stage I'd actually like to think that the obsession and the tendency to cruelty would stop her being accepted.
April 16th, 2007 - 13:08
I am sorry but I really cannot agree with you at all. Your ‘five year’ argument is fallacious, because it’s usually about the length of time a full course of infertility treatment from mild drugs to a second or third course of IVF takes, especially if you add in the further two years before a referral for infertility happens.
She wasn’t wanting some theoretical child or demanding her ex provide sperm to fertilise donor eggs. these were already fertilised and frozen, which must have required some thought and planning before then. And obviously the father wanted the child (ren) then, else he wouldn’t have produced the sperm. Lots of children grow up unwanted by a father who walks away. I’m not saying it’s ideal but it’s common.
And legal processes especially where precedents are being set don’t tend to happen overnight (unless there is a compelling emergency reason for them to be expedited).
I don’t like it when men try to control a woman’s fertility. A right to choose must work both ways – or are you anti-abortion, too?
April 17th, 2007 - 15:17
I’m not remotely anti-abortion Gert, and I’m incredibly strongly against any attempt by men (as a gender) to control women’s fertility.
I’m one of those people whose real father walked away from them before they were born, and as far as this case is concerned, my viewpoint is obviously affected by that – I’d rather no child ever had to be told that they weren’t wanted by one or both of their parents. But at least in most cases no one goes into a pregnacy *knowing* that they’ll one day have to tell their child that.
Fair enough I exagerrated over the five years of adoptive bliss, but I stand by the two key points I made;
1) That deliberately embarking upon a pregnacy to give birth to a child who will know that one of their parents didn’t want them is unnecessarily cruel given the possibility of taking on the care of another unwanted child and helping it feel wanted, and
2) She’s exhibiting what looks (to me) like obsessive behaviour in dragging on this case for five years.
May 9th, 2007 - 18:50
I agree with point 2. However, I think that a man gives up any claim to his sperm the second it leaves his body and the gentleman in question is being almost as obsessive as the lady.
Point 1 is very well made but who is to say that she wasn’t going to bring a father figure into the mix so that said offspring is raised by two loving parents?
I’d chose a life of uncertain parentage over no life at all and think that she should have been allowed to try to have the children.
Having said all of that, there are millions of unloved children in the world and this obsession with biological parenting is downright stupid.
I’m totally pro-choice by the way.
No doubt it’s an interesting case as it can be cut and re-cut just about any way you want.