Embryo Adoption in the News!

I have been pleased to see Embryo Adoption receiving increased media attention.

Recently, a bloggy friend of mine shared her EA Story on the Anderson Cooper Show. Todd and I and Matthew's genetic parents were interviewed for this show early on, and our initial impression was that they were looking for drama. I have not seen the entire show but from what Tracy posted, I was pleased to see that drama was not the direction that the AC Show decided to take the story. EA is perhaps technically "weird" to those who aren't familiar with it, but in day to day life, it's very drama-free!

As you know, our family was on our local news recently, in follow up to a story we did with them years ago. We were also interviewed in The Washington Times about the 2013 budget cuts. Life News did a story on the same news.

Today Moms featured a discussion on openness in Embryo Adoption. Conversations about reproduction and adoption are always different when discussed in a secular context versus a faith-based context, but I think this was a good start. But the comments remind me of how very far we have to go still, even in people's basic understanding of the process itself, not to mention ethics involved.

Recently, I was interviewed for an article in the Loveland Reporter Herald in Colorado.

If you are an EA family, please consider sharing your story. I love blogging for my own records, and to keep in touch with friends and family who are far away. But I also enjoy doing it because hopefully, when people see my sweet Matthew who started as a snowflake, they'll think twice about thinking of frozen embryos as just "some cells." I appreciate those reporters and editors who allow families like us to tell our EA stories, and who provide EA with more exposure than any of us could do on our own efforts.

If you have other recent news stories, please post them!

Embryo Adoption Grant Defunding-Articles

I had some people ask for links to articles about the defunding of the Embryo Adoption Awareness Grant. At the time I posted, my blog was a bit ahead of the news so I did not have any to post. However, the story has broken now in several outlets:

Washington Times: "Obama Defunds 'Snowflake Babies'" (This is the article for which I was interviewed).

LifeNews.com: "Obama: End Funding for Snowflake Embryo Adoption Program"

CNS News: "Report: Obama Defunds Frozen-Embryo Adoption Program"

Obama Administration Defunds Embryo Adoption Awareness Grant

President Bush, a staunch defender of innocent human life, signed a grant approved by Congress in 2002 to make funds available to promote awareness about Embryo Adoption (Grant #6EAAPA081009-03-01). The grant was used by organizations such as Nightlight, the NEDC, The Embryo Adoption Awareness Center, and other groups to make people aware of their choices when faced with excess frozen embryos. The grant was renewed each year of his presidency, and while the Obama Administration halved the amount, it continued through the first 3 years of President Obama's presidency. However, they have recently decided to eliminate the grant completely, citing the low number of applicants for the grant.

A reporter telephoned me today to ask me for my reaction to the defunding. I had to think for a moment, and my conclusion is that my reaction is multifold.

My gut reaction was, "There's a shocker!" President Obama refusing to protect innocent human life is nothing new. In fact, I've been more surprised that the grant continued at all in his presidency.

I know that America is in a budget crisis. And even if we weren't, I believe in small government with limited federal programs. I can concede that cutbacks are necessary everywhere and that we can't operate the same way we did in the more robust economy of the early Bush years. But if a government is going to spend money, the defense of innocent human life is a worthy priority.

It's hard to feel charitably toward compromise when the 2012 budget still includes tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, not to mention countless dollars spent to save the whales and the trees. Surely the allowance to Planned Parenthood could have spared that 2 million dollars that was taken from Embryo Adoption Awareness.

The reality is that the innocent human life is always going to fall dead last on Obama's priority list. I am grieved for our country that our current leadership has made the defense of sex and spotted owls a higher priority than the protection of its most innocent children and the education of the parents who will decide those children's fate.

I really don't think this will negatively impact prospective parents. People who want a child will turn over every stone in their quest. I believe that adopting parents can ultimately discover information Embryo Adoption with relative ease.

However, assuming a genetic family is not going to birth their remaining embryos, the only other hope for those embryos to be given a chance to be born is if their genetic parents know that Embryo Adoption is an option and if they have a chance to really learn about it and decide if it is right for their family. I believe that many more people would choose it, if only they knew the option existed and had a chance to interact with it. Organizations like those mentioned above provided education on the process, on open and closed adoptions, and on the overall process. They facilitated the meetings of families with each other. They helped put stories and faces with this unique concept so that if a Genetic Parent wanted robust info, it was there for them. They worked to educate adoption agencies and medical clinics on the process, and offered help to clinics wanting to start their own in-house programs. But in the absence of programs specifically designed to champion these little ones, who will stand in the gap and advocate for these children, and educate their parents? The clinics have a vested interest in persuading patients to undergo their own IVFs. Adoption agencies will do what they can, but without this grant, they will have to rely on private donations, and most are already stretched thin in keeping their other adoption programs in tact. Nadya Suleman ("Octomom") underwent a Frozen Embryo Transfer of 6 embryos that placed her and her children in danger because she simply didn't know she had any other choices. For a woman to undergo any procedure of that magnitude (regardless of the number of Embryos) and not know all of her options is shameful (of her doctor, not her). A woman should never be put in that position. She lived in Southern California, a hub of information, cutting edge technology, top-notch medical care, and the very agency that invented Embryo Adoption, and still, as recently as 2008, she didn't know about an option that had existed for 10 years already.

There are many reasons that people choose NOT to place their remaining Embryos for adoption. Not knowing their choices should never be one of them. Caring for embryos is a life or death decision and parents need to know ALL of their options before making those decisions. I fear that in the absence of resources like this grant, opportunities to continue to educate people about this choice will dwindle, and the 600,000 frozen children in storage will suffer the consequences.

We can stand in the gap for these babies. Blogging is free, and you can speak freely and without edit. I encourage you to tell your story to your children, family, and friends. Talk to clinics in your area about it. Contact the local media about it when anything about frozen embryos or reproductive technology or life-issues pops up. Write to your local, state, and federal officials about Embryonic Stem Cell Research and therapies. If you're an EA mommy, tell people about the miracle of your child. Let your clinic or agency know that you're willing to talk to other interested families. Make your local pro-life agencies aware of Embryo Adoption and see if you can help them promote it. If you're not an EA mommy, perhaps consider becoming one. Above all, pray for these babies. Pray for the clinics who currently care for them. Pray for the parents who will make decisions for their futures. Pray for the people who will parent them.

My husband and I planned to adopt children long before we ever knew about our infertility. We've always had a heart for it, and honestly, the only reason I still occasionally wish for biological children is so that I could still adopt anyway, to serve as an example that you don't have to be childless to adopt. A major pet-peeve of mine is when adoption (of any kind) is treated as an infertility treatment. Adoption can't be and isn't just, or even mostly about infertile people who want children. There are always going to be more children who need homes than there are infertile people. If only infertile people consider adoption, we're always going to be playing catch up and children will continue waiting in vain. Adoption needs to be about the children. It needs to be about people advocating for them, about protecting them, about loving them. Love and advocacy don't depend on how many kids you have already or if your reproductive organs work. I'd encourage you to think about if there is room in your home, heart, and family, for a child in need. These children need us, now, more than ever!

Shifting (Rather, Expanding) Focus + New EA Resources

This blog has had a few identity-crises in its young life. It tends to wander as much as my thoughts do, covering everything from the mundane goings on of our life, to our progress in our adoption, and everything in between. It serves as a way to keep people we know updated on our life.

But, we also want to serve as a "picture" of embryo adoption. I get emails relatively regularly from people who find my blog in their own search for more information on it. Honestly, as much as I love telling our story to our friends and family, those are the emails I love the most, because I have such a heart for spreading the word about Embryo Adoption.

I want this to be a real picture of it. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the plain-old hard. But I also want it to be informative in terms of the process itself, relevant developments in research and law, the emergence of new resources, etc.

So, to that end, I will now be including more clinical type information on my blog. I will still be including our personal story, because I think that's as relevant to the picture as "the facts" but be forewarned that those of you who bore easily may be skipping an occasional post or two henceforth :)

So, I invite you to keep reading, as much or as little as you would like, and let me know if you ever have any questions about Embryo Adoption!

Resources for the day:
•Governor Brewer (R-AZ), just signed SB1307 on Friday, which is a new bill that protects the dignity of the human embryo.  It bans embryonic stem-cell research, cloning, and combining human embryos with non-human cells or implanting them in non-human bodies. It also prevents the sale of human embryos.  This is wonderful news in the effort to restore and protect the dignity of these precious little lives.  It unfortunately does not prohibit the destruction of embryos; it simply says you cannot conduct research on them. While this bill does not pertain directly to Embryo Adoption, join me in praying that the people who once planned to donate their embryos to research would choose to give life to them, rather than their remaining alternatives of destroying them or leaving them frozen indefinitely.

•Canada now has its first Open Embryo Adoption/Donation program. Click here for more information.

•The Embryo Donation and Adoption Awareness Center has a list of all Embryo Adoption programs in the United States. There are countless additional donation programs, as many clinics offer private, anonymous options.

I think that's all for now, folks!

News Story

Our news story aired last night! The reporter emailed us in the day time while we were on the road home from California. My sweet brother came over to our house to turn on our recorder so that we could see it and I could post it here.



(direct link)

Overall, I was pleased with the story. I thought it portrayed Embryo Adoption in a positive light and I appreciated that it was more than a 30 second sound byte.

I had a few crtiques/corrections.

1) I hate that the camera adds 10 pounds.

2) I was discouraged that though I know they talked to Dr. Pomeroy (our Embryologist from our last cycle), they didn't show anything expert or relevant to his position as an Embryologist, and in fact, any person off the street could have said what he said. And what he said wasn't even that great-families choose Embryo Adoption for lots of reasons. Boiling it down to "desperation for a child" is such a narrow, insufficient description and I felt like it was said in a negative fashion.

3) Contrary to what the reporter said, we DO know what will happen to our embryos if we end up with a full house and still have embryos left. We actually even answered a question about what would happen so I'm not sure why she said what she did. We have already committed to returning them to the Genetic Parents in a situation like that. All Nightlight families make the same commitment.

4) The Anchor woman's synopsis about Embryo Adoption requiring a homestudy was correct. However, Embryo Adoption is not the only method for receiving donor embryos. Couples can go through clinic programs too (call Donor Embryo Programs), that are often anonymous and less invasive in to the Adoptive Family's background. I obviously prefer adoption over donor programs but realize that not every family (either Placing or Adopting) will choose it and yet their embryos need homes and a chance at life too, so I think it's also important for people to know that donor programs exist, if the adoption arrangement just won't work out for them.

5) I included Pop-Ups on points 3-4 on the youtube itself. I wish there was a way to correct it on the broadcast or from the news-end of it but in the absence of such an opportunity I just pray that no one got the wrong impression about #3 and our commitment to our babies, and that word quickly spreads about both opportunities described in #4.

All that being said however, I was still pretty pleased with the broadcast. I felt like it painted a positive and largely accurate picture. I am glad for the generous amount of time they gave it (the entire news broadcast itself was only 35 minutes including commercials) and mostly I'm grateful for the exposure it gave Embryo Adoption. May God use it to reach many more families!

Octomom and Obama

This blog post is a little bit outdated because the stories are now weeks or months old. I haven't blogged about either issue because they're both very upsetting. Every time I sit down to do it, I just can't bring myself to compose a really coherent post. But I am asked often about my thoughts on both and in fact, the question about my thoughts on Octomom is what led to the news interview.

I digress.

The two issues at hand are that of the woman in California who gave birth to Octuplets after a Frozen Embryo Transfer with 6 embryos (2 of which split), and the decision by President Obama to rescind the ban on the federal funding of Embryonic Stem Cell Research.

The most frustrating part of the story about Ms. Suleman is that there were options other than the one she chose that put both her and her babies in danger. Ms. Suleman says that she transferred 6 embryos at once because her only choice was to do that or to destroy them. That's simply not true. First, if they were her embryos (legally), then no one had the power to do anything with them except her. So they were in no danger of destruction unless she herself chose to destroy them. A clinic cannot destroy embryos without the legal "owner's" consent.

Second, she could have still gone on to transfer all the frozen embryos, but there is no reason that she had to transfer 6 at one time. She could have transferred 1, 2 or 3 at a time, and left the others in frozen storage and then come back and transferred more a later time for future pregnancies. Frozen embryo storage is actually very reasonable in cost: $300-$500 per year--a small price to pay for increased safety for you and your children. There is just no reason she should have put herself and all the children at risk. A pregnancy of 8 is not healthy for anyone, as evidenced by the fact that she could not carry to term and the children were born in to NICU.

Third, if for whatever reason she couldn't have come back in the future for additional transfers, she could have placed her remaining embryos for adoption. There would have been no cost to her, and she could have determined what she wanted in terms of openness or closedness and in the characteristics of the receiving family. Of course it would have been a difficult decision, but it would not have resulted in the destruction of her embryos, which is what she said she feared and why she said she chose to do what she did.

It frustrates me that she made such a risky decision without all the facts about her options. Her doctor should have taken better measures to educate her about her choices. No one should be backed in to a corner and forced to make a decision sheerly out of lack of information.

We ourselves could have suffered a similar fate, because no one really told us that Embryo Adoption was one of our choices. By God's providence alone we went to college 6 miles from the agency that invented it and 10 years ago he tucked news snippets about this new thing called Embryo Adoption in our heads and hearts, and brought them to the forefront when it was time to reveal that plan to us, all these years later. But at no point did any doctor or fertility clinic offer that as one of our options, nor did many of the numerous books I sought out. This issue needs more exposure, period. Families on both sides of the coin need to be educated that this is one of their options. The amount of agencies and clinics that offer it needs to be expanded. Public awareness needs to be raised.

I'm also angry that her doctor would even agree to transfer that many embryos. It was hugely irresponsible. A pregnancy of that many babies isn't good for anyone-the mother, or the children, not to mention the children Ms. Suleman already had who were placed at risk of losing their mother to illness or death. Ms. Suleman said she would carry whatever embryos implanted and for the sake of the lives of the babies, I am grateful that she did not choose a selective abortion (aborting some of the babies to "make room" for the rest). The doctor absolutely should not have agreed to transfer more embryos than could be carried in a healthy pregnancy if all "took" (which they did in this case, and then some!)

I do commend Ms. Suleman for refusing the temptation to abort some of her children. Despite the bad decisions that created the situation to begin with, I am grateful that she chose life for all of her children. I am sure the decision had to be difficult especially because she was carrying 8, so I think that makes her decision that much more remarkable. Well done in this regard, Ms. Suleman.

But back to the doctors. Sheila (our Genetic Mom) and I were talking recently about our clinics and we've come to the conclusion that they hold an inordinate amount of power. Ms. Suleman should have been educated on all her choices. She made a very dangerous decision out of a position of ignorance, and I fault her clinic/doctor for that.

Beyond that, clinics need to assume more responsibility for educating their patients and take less power in the decision making process. In both Sheila and my contracts, the default language for embryo creation, transfer and destruction is "When in doubt, the clinic decides." Language is often vague and technical. Unless a client really pours over it and understands it backwards and forwards, and understands all of the nuances and implications, and exercises his or her right to alter the contract, he or she could be setting him or herself up to allow something he/she morally wouldn't, without even realizing it. I really believe contracts need to be written with the default power in the hands of the client or even with language "when in doubt, we'll stop and ask."

In no other medical situation would a patient just resign himself to "whatever the doctor decides." Sure, if you're on the table and a split second decision is the difference between life and death, the doctor is not going to wake you up to consult you. But in the majority of cases, embryo transfer protocol included, the majority of decisions and decisions about "what ifs" can be made well in advance, and along the way, with input from the patient. If you needed treatment for an ailment, a doctor would review all your different options with you and then you would explore them and make a decision together. There's no reason Embryo Transfer procedures shouldn't be the same.

So while I am frustrated that Ms. Suleman seems to be so glib about what could have been a fatal situation, I place the majority of blame with her doctor/clinic for failing to educate her that she had other life-affirming options.

The other issue assaulting embryos has been President Obama's decision to rescind the ban on federal funding of Embryonic Stem Cell Research. In ESCR, cells are harvested from days-old embryos, thus killing the embryos. Under the Bush administration, federal funds could be used to research on on colonies of cells that had already been established for research, but funding could not be used to create or expand new lines. To clarify a common misconception, Embryonic Stem Cell Research was never banned-it just could not be federally funded. It has persisted in the private sector for many years.

I can't even begin to describe to you the feeling that comes with being told that basically, were it up to the President, your children would be dead in some laboratory somewhere, having been put there against your wishes and using your own money to do so.

It is patently wicked for one person to kill another, and the government has now compounded its own wickedness (can there be degrees of wicked?) by not only allowing the killing, but funding the massacre. The amount of children who die in laboratories will now increase, and my tax dollars are helping that process, and there's not a damn (word not profane-this really is evil, from the pit of hell) thing I can do about it. It makes me ill. Shame on you, President Obama. May God have mercy on you, on us as a country, and on those precious babies.

Beyond the life issue however, Embryonic Stem Cell Research is also a colossal waste of money. It has existed for many years and has never produced a single cure or treatment for any disease. At any time, but especially during a recession, it is fiscally irresponsible to spend so much money on "research" that has no promise. If ESCR were all its cracked up to be, investors in the private sector would be clamoring for their piece of the pie and the ESCR researchers wouldn't have to begging at the door of the Federal Government for handouts. The lack of interest from the private sector is very revealing.

Meanwhile, Adult Stem Cell Research, Cord Blood Stem Cell Research and Pluripotent Stem Cell Research has all been exceptionally promising and none of these methods are fatal to the cell donors. Adult Stem Cell Research has already yielded treatments for dozens of diseases including Type-1 Diabetes, spinal cord injury and Parkinson's Disease. And in fact, in some cases, Embryonic Stem Cell Research has been damaging-even causing tumor growth and cell mutations in some test patients!

The President has forged ahead with his morally and fiscally irresponsible insistence on the pursuit of life-ending and financially wasteful Embryonic Stem Cell Research and the reasons for it are beyond my comprehension.

Moves like President Obama's are exactly why patients need to be educated about their choices (they can do more besides just donate their embryos to science!) and why families (both placing and adopting) need to know about adoption. Especially because the Government will not protect these precious preborn children, we must.

EA Awareness Video

A few more videos were released today.

I have to confess that these videos don't really resonate with me. I find them a tad too "cutesy" and cliche and even a little hokey. (I feel really guilty saying that because I have really developed a love for the organization that created them!)

BUT, I appreciate them for what they are as vehicles to raise EA Awareness. I think the videos are sincere and endearing in their efforts and I pray that they are successful in their venture to expand awareness.

So, without further ado, here is one of 3 newly released videos. It explains a little about where the embryos come from. We've been asked on occasion if the embryos are created for us. The answer is yes, and no. Yes, insofar as we believe that God has chosen specific embryos for us, but no, in that these embryos were not created by the lab and their genetic parents specifically for us. We didn't call up and say "we'd like 3 embryos please-get to working on it!" What we love about Embryo Adoption is that it is a life-saving measure for embryos (little lives!) that have already been created and would otherwise have little chance at survival.

Embryo Adoption Awareness

The Nightlight Christian Adoptions and the Embryo Adoption Awareness Campaign have released some videos to raise Embryo Adoption Awareness. Please click the "Play" button in the middle of each video to watch it. Each video is about 2 minutes long.


Video 1: "Special Moments"
See pictures of many of the Snowflake children already born!


Video 2: "Embryos Become Babies"


Video 3: "Difficult Decisions"
Hear from a genetic family about their decision to place embryos through Embryo Adoption