Woman's Right to Block Use of Frozen Embryos OK'd by Court

From:Internet   Author:Admin   Time:2007-04-19   Font: [big center small]  

Aug. 15, 2001 (Washington) -- Frozen early embryos, whether viewed as human life or a crucial research tool for possibly life-saving stem cell research, were at the center of President Bush's decision last week to fund limited stem cell studies.

And this week, these "excess" embryos are back in the news, with a New Jersey Supreme Court decision that bars the reproductive use of a couple's embryos by their father against the mother's will.

The case involved a couple, now divorced, who had undergone in vitrofertilization in May 1995. The process created 11 embryos, four of which were transferred to the woman's womb and the remainder frozen.

In vitro fertilization usually results in the creation of some embryos that are not implanted in a mother's womb. The unimplanted embryos are usually frozen for possible future use. There are an estimated 100,000 frozen in vitro embryos in the U.S., many of which will never be implanted.

Upon the couple's divorce, the father raised moral objections to the mother's wishes to discard the excess embryos.

The father instead wanted to have those seven "leftover" embryos donated to infertile couples, but the woman objected. The court unanimously agreed, saying, "[The father's] right to procreate is not lost if he is denied the opportunity to use or donate the embryos; whereas if the [embryos] are successfully implanted, [the mother] will be forced to become a biological parent."

But the court also ruled that the father could pay to continue to keep the embryos frozen.

The court noted that it was in relatively untested legal waters. It said, "There are few guideposts for decision-making. Advances in medical technology have far outstripped the development of legal principles to resolve the inevitable disputes arising out of the new reproductive opportunities now available."

The ruling has made some controversial waves. Kristin Hansen, a spokeswoman for the Family Research Council, a conservative social policy group, tells WebMD, "We find the ruling very problematic in that each frozen embryo is a human life. Each one of these embryos deserved to have a birthday. They are people, not property."

But Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, tells WebMD that a few state supreme courts, beginning with Tennessee, have already issued similar rulings. He says, "You're starting to get a substantial number of state cases basically saying embryos aren't people and embryos aren't property. The Tennessee Supreme Court laid that down, and the other courts have held to that."

The court noted that the New Jersey couple had not clearly consented over what to do with the embryos in the case of a divorce.

According to Hansen, "This case also points out the complicated issues involving custody in in vitro fertilization that each couple should be made aware of before they begin that process. There are decisions that will have to be made about the future of the 'leftover' embryos."

Yet Tipton says, "We don't feel like the ruling needs to change anything we've been telling our members to do, which is you sit down with the couple before you start the in vitro cycle and discuss quite explicitly what they want to have happen to these embryos in the event that one or both of the parents die or the partnership or marriage breaks up. It's common already."

Alta Charo, a medical ethics and law professor at the University of Wisconsin, tells WebMD that courts have disagreed on whether these contracts are binding or not.

Charo says, "This decision continues this trend we've seen in other state courts ... of holding that there is no constitutional obligation or entitlement to use an extra-uterine embryo for reproduction."

The decision, Charo explains, may damage arguments against the cloning of human embryos for research purposes. Some have argued that human embryos, once created, should be allowed under "common law" to develop into babies.

In deciding last week to only fund federal research using stem cells already cultivated from embryos, President Bush argued that taxpayers should not fund studies that require the further destruction of "potential" human life. Bush said, "Like a snowflake, each of these embryos is unique, with the unique genetic potential of an individual human being."

Tipton tells WebMD, "A frozen embryo is suddenly a little bit more interesting now than it was six months ago to a lot of people."

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