Today all over Facebook, there have been links to articles about what Newt Gingrich will do about IVF, if he gets elected as president. He wants more monitoring, and wants to make it illegal to use "leftover" frozen embryos for research. I have mixed feelings about this. It saddens me to think about all of the embryos left in limbo....with possibly no chance of ever being born. And I understand that this is why so many churches have a problem with IVF.
It is difficult to think about what we will do if we ever get to that point, where we have the number of children that we feel completes our family, yet we still have embryos. We are nowhere near that point, and are dealing with the uncertainty that we will ever even have children. It is something that I think about though. With four frozen snowflakes from November's cycle I already care about them. I worry that something might happen to them...power outages, etc. I also worry though with doing a fresh cycle this time, we could end up with more embryos than we can ever use ourselves.
Embryo adoption is such a great option for this situation, but I know in my heart that I couldn't donate my embabies to another couple. I already feel like my four snowflakes are my kids, and I would feel like I was giving away a piece of myself. I am amazed at the generosity of the couples that do choose this option. And maybe when I get to that point, where I really don't want a bigger family, maybe I will feel like giving them life in another family is better than staying frozen forever, or being donated to science...or worse yet, just being discarded.
That is the great thing about the freedoms that we have in America though. We currently have these choices. I have always been prolife. I feel that life begins at conception. I do sometimes struggle with this as we do IVF. I could never choose to donate our embabies to science, and I don't agree with embryonic stem cell research. However, as I hear politicians starting to say that they are going to regulate IVF more, it scares me. With pushes for legislation deciding that life begins with conception, opens doors to making it illegal to freeze embryos at all. And then what happens to the ones already frozen?!?! But then that also opens the door to more embryos being destroyed, before they are ever even given a chance. Doctors will face the decision then of destroying viable embryos, valuable lives, or transfer too many. This legislation plain out scares me!
As I said, I am prolife. I see value and life in my four frozen babies. I plan on giving them their best chance at life, God willing. I also plan to give our embryos from this cycle their best chance at life too. And I pray that we don't end up with more kids than we can handle because of this plan. I don't envy the people who have more embryos than they can handle, and I know they face a difficult decision every time they pay the storage bill for their snowflakes. It is troublesome that there are so many lives left in a bit of limbo, however what to do with them is not my decision, and should not be the decision of a politician.
As crazy as this sounds I don't feel that this makes me prochoice. I do not agree with abortion. I also do not agree with donating embryos to science. They are lives, that deserve the chance to survive. Is there a right answer in all of this, I am not sure. There are a lot of embryos that never get a chance at life, with the way things are currently. I think that this will stay that way until legislation makes laws against the creation of these embryos, or doctors find a way to not create more than can be used in one cycle. No matter what, the world of IVF is a scary place. If you haven't had to make these tough choices about fertility and growing your family, you are in no place to judge someone's choices. Leave all that to God! This all is my opinion, that I am free to have on my blog. You don't have to agree with it. That is why it is great that we live in America...we are free to have our own opinion!
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