Several years ago I did an interview with a friend shortly after his wife gave birth to a ‘snowflake baby’- an affectionate and mildly tragic moniker given to children created in a lab who were frozen and then thawed before being implanted and ultimately born.
Their baby was conceived and fertilized several years ago, but was abandoned by his parents, He was placed in a laboratory freezer where for nearly a decade he wasted away with his siblings, the same fate as an estimated 600,000 more precious souls.
My friend and his wife sacrificed much to rescue him through an “embryo adoption”, where they saved the child from certain death and implanted the embryo in her womb, bringing forth renewed life after years of frozen purgatory.
It garnered much interest, and many people contacted me with poignant stories and pointed questions. Some folk were extremely grieved, having friends and family who had participated in IVF and now were waking up to the horror of realizing that their loved ones had abandoned their babies to be killed- that they had discarded their nieces and nephews in this unholy pursuit.
One woman spoke of how her daughter-in-law had created a child using IVF, leaving the rest of their babies in limbo. She asked if we knew anyone who would consider an embryo adoption so she could see her grandchildren one day. She lamented that she would give birth to these herself if she could, but being in her 50s it was no longer possible, and her helplessness was palpable.
Still, others were incensed. They were upset that I would dare hint that they had done anything wrong and vigorously protested the notion that their embryos were real human beings with souls. These were professing Christian women, specifically, and they refused to acknowledge the weight of what they had done.
— Protestia, The Christian Art Of Adopting Frozen Babies- And Why You Might Want to Consider It, October 23, 2022
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I cannot wrap my mind around the stupidity of this group of people. Some can express themselves eloquently and with conviction, yet lack the understanding of simple biology. How can relatively intelligent people be so gullible and ignorant?
Lacy its the same way they can justify god being pro- life yet also causing a worldwide flood and the deaths of the firstborn of egypt. Ignorance is bliss and the mental gymnastics in their minds run on cruise control.
When fundy, I read avidly the blog of an american mom who did a quiverful of rescue adoptions from poor countries and seemed so holy to me back then – my best friend had just adopted from abroad and this blogger assured us all that was needed to have the perfect little x-tian rescued-from-islam baby was PRAYER and MORE PRAYER. Then this super-mom blogger announced the lawd was telling her and hubby to have a snowflake baby. My jaw dropped, she described the hormone injections etc that could cause damage to her body – she was 40ish – had the embryo implanted and it failed, apparently the success rate is low. She said little more on the topic, though continued to enthuse and gush about her perfect quiverful. Odd how the lawd told her to have that baby…and then must have changed his mind and let her miscarry. (She was white and the mom who asked her to carry her snowflake baby was a poor woman of colour apparently….what a horrible mess the whole idea was.) And, like many adoption agencies, I’m pretty sure a lot of $$$$$ were involved – which the blogger mom PRAYED in of course!
Sweet Lord this is stupid. I have a good friend who grew up in Poland, immigrated with her family as a college student, and is now a naturalized US Citizen. Her family are Catholic as were her in-laws – she and her husband eloped and were hounded to DEATH to have a Catholicass wedding. 4-5 years after they were actually married, they gave in and did the mass even though they didn’t want to (my friend is an agnostic leaning toward atheism). She has PCOS which made getting pregnant nearly impossible, so she went through IVF and after one miscarriage has successfully had 2 pregnancies and 3 kids. Other than telling her mother, she kept IVF a secret for a decade because she didn’t want to deal with the judgy Catholic relatives who view IVF as a grotesque sin. She and her husband also didn’t see any reason to keep paying fir storage of the unused zygotes because they didn’t want to have more children, so they ordered those to be discarded. Also, no big deal to my friend, but not something she can tell her judgy Catholic relatives.
I have another set of friends who are devout evangelicals who also went through IVF and had 2 sets of twins. They “donated” their unused zygote, but I don’t know if they had any takers. Personally, I think it would be a potential problem – what if one of their known children ends up with one of their donated children unknowingly so that sister and brother end up procreation? The chances are slim, but what if?
People have some weird ideas about zygotes. To think that a clump of cells is a person is just not scientifically supported!
Ignorance and mental gymnastics is one of the most tragic combinations. What else can, as Trenton says, offer a rationale for doing everything possible to save a clump of cells yet kill countless fully-formed yet innocent human beings?
That combination of ignorance and mental gymanstics is, unfortunately, guiding too many who influence, or even make, our laws and policies.
I’m confused. I thought the fundies think of science as the tool of satan. Thus satan is using IVF to create little demons. Or maybe I’m just thinking of some bad late night D-list horror flick…