New Embryo Donation Center Will Save Lives, Offer Ethical Choices
by Bill Fancher and Jenni Parker
November 25, 2003
(AgapePress) - The tiniest of human beings, once earmarked for death, may now have a chance to live a full life thanks to the creation of a center to receive donated embryos.Reproductive technology has helped numerous couples who have had difficulty conceiving, but left many with a troubling dilemma. After conceiving through in vitro fertilization, couples are often faced with the issue of what to do with the frozen embryos that will not be implanted and birthed.
Dr. David Stevens of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations says because of this issue, life-honoring doctors have considered it vital to find the means to provide "a high-quality, scientifically and ethically sound way to help ensure a loving home for these embryos, who have inestimable value in God's sight."
With that end in mind, the Christian Medical Association initiated the development of the National Embryo Donation Center, which is to be under the direction of the Southeastern Fertility Center and located on the campus of Baptist Hospital for Women in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Stevens believes the new center will meet a growing need. He says fewer than half of the hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos currently in storage in the United States will be implanted, and until now, the choices for parents of such embryos have been limited.
"Parents have really not had many options -- many have just let their embryos stay in frozen storage until they perish," the doctor says, "while others have donated them for research and destroyed their embryos."
But the new donation center will offer many more choices -- ethical choices -- not only to couples with unwanted frozen embryos, but also to childless couples who want children. While previously there have been very few life-honoring alternatives for couples who have had embryos harvested that they cannot use or do not want, the new center will allow such couples to give their embryos to other couples who want them and would be able to give them birth.
According to Stevens, the center will be a sort of "turnkey operation," receiving, storing and implanting embryos, as well as offering comprehensive services to would-be parents. "We'll not only be accepting the embryos but also helping couples that are infertile and desire to have a child to go through a home study. We'll make sure that they have a good home to place this child in, and then handle all the technical end of actually implanting those embryos and following that pregnancy," he says.
According to the CMDA president, there are currently more than 400 thousand frozen human embryos in the United States, and only half that number will have a chance at life without the donation center's involvement. Stevens says the National Embryo Donation Center is the first step in making sure embryos have a chance to be born and to be raised in loving homes.
