Adopted at conception.
This news article came in my Facebook feed this morning. http://www.lifenews.com/2014/06/27/in-vitro-fallout-donor-ivf-teen-says-i-wish-i-had-never-been-born/ In it, a young woman laments her lack of genetic heritage; she was conceived in a petri dish as part of in-vitro fertilization, and implanted into a woman (not her mother) to be grown and born. In other words, she was adopted at conception. She worries about making a baby with a man to whom she may be related. By law, she is not permitted to know anything about her genetic origins. She says, “I wish I had never been born.”
Our minds and hearts struggle to keep up with the pace of technology. As many as 30 embryos may be conceived as part of an in-vitro process, leading to the question, “what to do with the ones that are not used?” Who could ever imagined such a situation? Starting in the late 1980s, a woman can earn money gestating an embryo for another family.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/us/baby-m-and-the-question-of-surrogate-motherhood.html. Grandmothers have carried their own grandchildren. Men and women unable to conceive can purchase spare embryos to grow their families.
A mother I know who did just that is suffering. On one hand, she would never have had her precious babies and known those joys. On the other hand, she wonders what and how to tell her children about their origins.
Because we can do these things, should we? And if we do them, must we tell those children?
What do you think?
