Donating our embryos through an open placement -- AMA

[Anonymous]

OP, I think what you and your family are doing is beautiful. It's an amazing gift to another couple, it's the potential gift of life for blastocysts that many others might discard, and it is a profound demonstration of a very giving, altruistic, and non-ego-centric nature.

Thank you for what you're doing.

I think that the way you have gone about this, and the attitudes you're demonstrating in the AMA, will go a VERY long way to ensuring at least some of the outcomes you desire (some level of contact with your recipient family, the ability for all the kids to be in contact, a group of kids growing up knowing just how badly they were wanted in this world by so many people, etc...)

Yay for you. And yay for all the parents who see beyond their fears to be open and honest with their kids, for all the people who donate sperm/eggs/blastocysts, for the science that makes these things possible, for the endless capacity of humans to love.

You rock.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:People are crazy about this kind of stuff, OP! Don’t let the DCUM negativity get to you.

I agree that being alive is better than being dead, and that giving these embryos a chance to be alive is on balance a good thing. You cannot guarantee them a perfect life but that is true of every baby born! Should we all stop having kids because they might someday experience negative emotions? It’s a part if life! You do what you can and you leave the rest up to fate/god/whatever.

I also agree that it is very different from adoption. With adoption, the baby already exists and then the parents opt out of parenting their kid. With embryo donation, this is the only way to offer the child a chance at existence and you have done so in a way that leave the door open for the child to know more about his/her genetic heritage should that need arise.

I think this is a great way to honor the struggle you had conceiving and the blessed result of your own three kids by giving another family a chance at having a child.

I find this question fascinating, and frankly the whole discussion.

If you believe an embryo is not a baby, then why wouldn't abortion be just as valid a decision? I am also curious as to OP's thoughts on abortion.

OP touched on the part where I feel it truly differs from traditional adoption. Carrying a baby term leaves indelible marks on both the baby and the mother. The baby has heard and felt and been fed by the mother. The mom has felt the baby move and hiccup and the baby is altering mom's body. I also believe this path mitigates the pain for both.

Because very few people statistically view the abortion debate in such black and white terms. Our political parties would like you to believe that ALL Republicans believe that every time a sperm hits and egg it immediately becomes a fully formed person with all the moral and legal standing that entails, and that ALL democrats believe that abortion is basically like cutting your hair and should be available on every streetcorner and paid for by the taxpayer. BUT, surveys that ask actual nuanced questions always show that most people are much more open and flyid in their thinking.

An human woman old enough to conceive a child is also old enough to weigh the many financial, physical and emotional health costs of carrying to term and of raising a subsequent child and in many cases is it morally allowable to terminate a pregnancy and a legal system that tries to take over that decision is guaranteed to do more harm than good, so abortion should probably be technically legal and available to those who need it, and statistically most people believe some version of that.

ALSO, an embryo at any stage of life is at minimum an independent genetic destiny and discarding it should be viewed and a weighty and sober decision, not to be entered into lightly. Statistically, most people also believe some version of that.

Therefore, OP is not abnormal in being able to simultaneously believe that these embryos are not her children, but also believe that they are of great worth BECAUSE THEY ARE A HUMAN LIFE on any level and that she is responsible to give them the best chance she can rather than throw them away because their existence might be emotionally complicated for her years from now.

I don't think so. By that theory, all eggs should be fertilized because they are also human life.

An embryo is potential human life. Especially a frozen embryo.

Purposefully donating a frozen embryo to someone else is basically the same thing as making a decision to conceive a child from an egg and sperm.

^^ basically what I'm saying is that OP is engaging in a cognitive error, based on the emotions she invests in the genetic material and process that created her **actual children.** Cognitive errors are fine and normal, but they should be seriously questioned when they lead to big decisions, such as this one.

my opinion is that donating frozen embryos because you feel morally beholden to "give them a chance at life" makes no sense, unless you also believe that you should never use birth control and should maximize childbirth. (Some people do believe this!)

what DOES make sense however is donating them to an infertile couple that couldn't afford to create an embryo otherwise.

OP here.

You raise an interesting point -- perhaps I am too emotionally invested in the embryos.

However, even if I were able to turn off my emotions, the analyst in me (I work in finance) would still opt to donate the embryos so that someone else can benefit from the enormous resources we poured into creating the embryos. Tens of thousands of dollars and countless tears went into producing the embryos, and it's wasteful (and super inefficient) not to do anything with them.

I don't feel similarly about my eggs because I have invested nothing in their creation. I was born with them. However, if I had banked a bunch of eggs -- spending time and cash to produce them -- I probably would donate them to avoid the waste.

From an emotional point of view, I don't mourn each non-fertilized egg when I get my period every month. In the same vein, my husband doesn't care about the bizillion sperm that he's made over the course of his lifetime. To me, there's a big difference between single cells -- egg and sperm -- and an embryo, which is the earliest form of human life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

OP here.

Let's suppose that a child created from our embryos feels the typical stresses that go along with a standard baby adoption. Except in unusual circumstances, that child is better off alive than hanging out in a petri dish, being thawed, being used for science, or undergoing a compassionate transfer.

Life is stressful, and frequently we don't get to choose the burdens we bear. If I could wave a magic wand, perhaps I'd take away a future kid's possible pain from knowing we donated him as an embryo. But I only have my inner guide that tells me that a future kid would appreciate being given a chance at life, even if that life involved some psychological discomfort.

In short: The donation may mean emotional pain for the future kid, and I'm OK with that because the kid will get a chance to live.

Am I getting to the heart of your question?

I'm an adoptive parent and as such, have read a lot about the pain some children who were adopted go through. It seems to be a minority viewpoint but I have read more than once about kids who felt they would rather have been aborted. In fact, I have a friend who was adopted who has such conflicting feelings she has said she wishes she'd never been born. Although she's an adoptive parent also so I truly don't understand exactly where she's coming from, but it's easy to see that the adoption (or rather, the relinquishment) has led to a lot of pain. She has recently (over 50 years old) learned about her birth family but has refused to contact them. It's tough. There are no easy answers. Don't know if this is at all analogous to donated embryos but it is quite facile to think you know how the future kids will fee.

I don't think your friend is typically. While many adopetees experience a lot of pain re their adoption, I don't think many would say they'd rather not have been born. And when you donate your embryos to science for the sole reason of preventing a child from feeling that pain, you are saying death is preferable to the pain of adoption. That is crazy.

And all this is predicated on the idea that a donated embryo is like an adopted baby. That makes little to me. Is a child born form a DE always searching for a birth mom. No.

[Anonymous]

OP: I just wanted to let you know that I think what you're doing is awesome. I have fairly similar intuitions on most of the ethical issues people raise that you do. Yeah, you don't know for sure how things will turn out, but most people would rather be alive than never have been born at all... and the odds are certainly better when you've "pre-screened" the family in some meaningful ways. Then there's the obviously amazing gift that you're giving to the parents. I think there's virtually no question here that more happiness will be created by your decision than the alternative even if everything doesn't go perfectly.