Many years ago, I discovered Sophie B. Hawkins; it was during the release of the Whaler album. I was fascinated by her music, it showed both femininity and assertiveness. She was on tour and came to the Seattle area. I know that I wanted to see her in concert to I cast a wide net and sent mail to many friends; I got one taker. The show was phenomenal, and she did not disappoint. However, this is not a post about music.
Hawkins is unconventional, though I didn’t know it at the time. She once came up in conversation with my cousin, who described her as a self-confessed ‘omnisexual’, which I eventually looked up. Years later, I remember reading and article where she was expecting a child, at the age of 50. That piqued my interest. When she was 31, she had the forethought to freeze fifteen of her embryos; she decided to thaw one and have a child. You can say what you will about her, but this woman is both unconventional and fascinating.
My fascination didn’t end there, I filed away the concept of freezing embryos, since I had not heard of any other instances.
They can freeze sperm and eggs too
Many were transfixed with the (then) heroic story of Lance Armstrong; I was not immune. As I watched a documentary about him, I remember when they spoke about his testicular cancer diagnosis. I distinctly remember how the doctors gave him direction that this disease must be treated immediately. However, the one element that took me by surprise was the very first instruction was to go to a clinic to give them a sperm sample, in case they wanted his own biological children. In retrospect, I credit the doctors; this advice makes sense. It’s simply not what would be in my mind in that particular moment.
I don’t know about the viability of cryogenics, but I’ll certainly keep my ears open for any interesting stories. From a medical technology perspective, you can freeze sperm, eggs, and embryos, this is pretty common now. Naturally, I looked up the rates. Common numbers are in the hundreds of dollars a year, less than the price that you’d pay for mobile or cable service.
Sophie B. Hawkins froze a number of her own embryos. While she carried the pregnancy herself, that need not be the case. Parents may elect to get a surrogate mother to carry the pregnancy.
Many reasons to freeze your embryos
People may freeze embryos for a wealth of reasons, though the prototypical reason is that couple is facing a health issue, like Lance Armstrong. Suppose that a young couple freeze a dozen embryos to account for such a condition. Months later, both tragically die in a car accident; they have no next of kin. I imagine that bills go unpaid, companies disconnect services like internet and power. The apartment complex evicts them from their apartment; they store or dispose all the contents of the apartment. Who pays for the tab for the frozen embryos? Like the remainder of the other bills, the storage company will likely destroy those embryos.
However, the Supreme Court recently reversed Roe v Wade, which pushed the practice of abortion back to the individual states. Some states passed restrictive bans on abortion. The most restrictive do not allow exceptions for rape or incest. Some assert that life begins at conception and oppose many forms of contraception.
If life begins at conception, what happens with these frozen embryos? If you live in a pro-life state, can you even legally destroy those embryos? What if the couple doesn’t die but merely fall upon hard times and lose their home? Can we legally compel them to pay the storage fee? If you truly believe that you have twelve babies in suspended animation, can you suggest an equitable resolution to this dilemma?
Save the unborn
I’ve seen a number of posts with pictures of couples, pleading the reader to not abort, that they will adopt your baby. These posts don’t sound genuine to me, mostly because there are many children in foster care that may be adopted. What is closer to the truth is they don’t care about actual kids suffering or even dying, they only care about the would-be aborted pregnancies. I also wonder how many would be this generous with a child of color. Though, I digress. However, we should take these couples at face value. We should believe them when they plead that they want to provide a home to these unborn children.
The solution to the frozen embryo problem is simple. These couples volunteer to provide a loving home to what would’ve been aborted children. It only makes sense that these women accept these frozen embryos into their own wombs, carry them to birth, and raise them. Problem solved. This is not any different than requiring a woman who doesn’t want a pregnancy to carry that pregnancy to birth.
What is even better? If you are the parents of three daughters of child-bearing years, they can each carry one of these twelve frozen embryos to birth… four times. If life begins at conception and “all life is precious”, it’s the least that they can do, right?
Isn’t saving life your civic duty?
Though, why ask for volunteers to host embryos? Why not make this a bit like the Hunger Games? If Ohio is about to destroy 300 frozen embryos, each a precious life, then simply take a lottery of all the women of child-bearing years in the state. Throw their names into a figurative hat and then draw 300 names. Each selected woman comes in for the procedure and hosts that embryo until birth. She has the option to keep the child, much like leasing a car. What if your eighteen-year-old daughter who just got a full-tuition scholarship to Stanford gets selected? Well, she does her civic duty; she should be proud to save a life.
You may think that we should not be subjecting you (or your wife or daughter) to a pregnancy. You should have a choice to host that pregnancy. You argue that you did nothing wrong and should have control over what happens with your body. Think about it, your fate is no different than if you had been raped and impregnated in Ohio, even if you were ten years old. Rape victims did nothing wrong, nor do they get body autonomy. Why is this different?
This seems random and barbaric. Do we think that our daughters should have more control over their lives? Do we believe that the government cannot impose such a life-changing event upon them at random? This is similar to what we did with young men and the draft for the Vietnam War.