by Kelli
UPDATE, 1/6/14: An adoptive family appears to have been found.
Angel Watts and her husband, who have six “leftover” embryos after IVF, are using Facebook in the hopes of finding a family who would want to adopt all six embryos so the siblings don’t have to be split up (click below for video):
Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.
[HT: Susie Allen]
Violations will be deleted and you may be banned.
Threats will be immediately reported to authorities.
Following these rules will make everyone's experience visiting JillStanek.com better.
Our volunteer moderators make prudent judgment calls to provide an open forum to discuss these issues. They reserve the right to remove any comment for any reason. Jill's decisions on such moderations are final.
Go to gravatar.com to create your avatar.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
http://www.wusa9.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/02/mom-turns-to-facebook-to-find-family-for-6-embryos/21186037/
This USA story gives some more detail. It seems like the wish is not only for one family to adopt all six, they wish to have a relationship with them as well. What that looks like is not clearly defined. Further it appears that the wife’s eggs could not be used so they purchased eggs from a 20 year old donor and used hubby’s sperm in the lab. So technically speaking she is not biologically related. She states that she carried them in her womb. that is correct but would not be correct for the ones that are adopted.
Many commentors are bringing up issues with this arrangement that they feel will only bring trouble. They have a point. However, I am glad she is giving them a chance at life. I hope she loosens her requirements a bit so as not to leave them in frozen limbo for long.
“About 10 years ago, the Wattses were up-and-coming professionals who postponed having children. It made sense to have kids later in life, once they were established in their careers, as many couples do. It made sense, that is, until Angel was 38 and the couple were given some hard news: Angel’s eggs were old and there were issues with Jeff’s sperm.”
This couple postponed having children to further what they believed was in their own best interests. Now there are six little humans in limbo because others made self-serving decisions.
I am also glad these parents are looking for others to help the six children in limbo. However, I also hope this couple comes to the conclusion that the choices they made were egotistical ones and that they will become vocal about recommending to others to not do as they have done.
Humans should never be a commodity.
Ugh.
I wish her the best of luck with this. But honestly, it seems the probability of finding one couple to adopt all six is pretty low. I mean, how many families even have six or more children these days, anyway?
This giant can of worms is why I have no problem accepting the Catholic Church’s prohibition of IVF. What a mess, tragic on all sides, and no tidy solution anywhere.
I can’t watch the video right now. Does it say why this couple doesn’t simply give life to these embryos themselves, since they want them to be born, grow up together, and maintain a relationship with the couple?
I know quite a few JDC.
But maybe there aren’t many in comparison to those with 1 child.
How does that figure into them finding someone? I pray that they do.
“I know quite a few JDC.”
I’m glad to hear it.
“But maybe there aren’t many in comparison to those with 1 child.”
Probably.
“How does that figure into them finding someone?”
Well, in factors in in so far as if only a small percentage of the population prefers a family that size, there’s probably only an even smaller number of people wanting a family that size and seking to adopt embryos.
“I pray that they do.”
Thankfully, it seems they have.
I’m happy a couple stepped up to the plate to adopt these children. I hope the younger couple get it in writing and make it very clear to the educated woman in the video that they will call the shots about when the children will spend time with her and her non-speaking husband.
After watching the video, my gut tells me if papers aren’t drawn up just the way Angel Watts wants them to be, the children will remain in limbo.
From Angel’s FB: “There is no way to realistically to find forever homes for embryo’s unless we put ourselves out there, or just play the waiting game for the placement agency which could take years. There is over 300 sets of embryo’s we are competing against.”
Competing for some children to live over other children. Sounds like a horror movie.
” I hope the younger couple get it in writing and make it very clear to the educated woman in the video that they will call the shots about when the children will spend time with her and her non-speaking husband.”
This was my immediate thought, Praxedes. It sounds almost like the couple want a full-time from-implantation-till-college nanny for their kids. But I admit I didn’t even see the video so that is a harsh and rash judgment.
Honestly the first thing that came to my mind when I saw this was the exchange in Downton Abbey where one character expresses surprise that Maggie Smith’s character was an involved mother in her day. The other woman says, “I’d imagined your children surrounded by nannies and governesses, being starched and ironed to spend an hour with you after tea,” and Maggie Smith’s character responds, in a withering and weary tone, “Yes, but it was an hour EVERY DAY.”
“Yes, but it was an hour EVERY DAY.”
LOL
This reminds me of when my ex showed up to one of our daughter’s soccer games. Part of one soccer game – in four years – for her senior parent night and talked to others like he actually knew what was going on in her life.
He asked me to take some (posed) photos with his camera of him and her. In the pics he’s giving her a kiss and she’s giving him a plant that all attending parents received.
Imo, he needed some up-to-date photos to show his new, blast-from-the-past girlfriend that he was Father of the Year.
In spite of her father only seeing her a handful of times in years (he lives 1/2 hour away), and then only when she or her siblings took the initiative, our daughter put some of these soccer photos of her and her dad up on her dorm wall.
Gotta laugh or else I’d cry.
I found this 2011 article on embryo adoption which alludes to the many, varied moral issues that surround this topic.
I really hope and pray that both couple involved in this case will become vocal about the evils surrounding IVF and work towards making it an unacceptable practice to deal with infertility.
I wonder if these folks have ever heard of Sophie’s Choice? Or maybe they are just too educated to think that much about it.
http://www.lifenews.com/2011/06/29/what-is-the-pro-life-catholic-view-of-human-embryo-adoption/
Praxedes, I am so sorry that your daughter’s father hasn’t been more involved in her life when she so clearly would have welcomed him. At the same time I am sort of bittersweetly happy that she clung to those pictures the way she did. It’s a sucky set of options, but I think that it is even sadder to hate a parent than it is to love a parent who doesn’t deserve it. Both options are heartbreaking, but one is corrosive to the soul as well.
I know that I am speaking from a different experience – with the active borderline-abuse my father has taken to in recent years, after he was so involved and wonderful throughout my childhood – but in some ways it is perhaps similar. I went through a period where I legitimately hated him and only recently have been able to settle on feeling love for him as he once was – basically acting as though he died. He was a wonderful father who later became a terrible person; to me, the man who was my father is dead and has been for some years now, but that does not stop me from remembering him fondly. It is very hard for people, especially those closest to me, to understand the paradox – how I can speak lovingly of him, and put up pictures of us together, etc, even as I refuse to let him find out my new address, refuse to speak to him, refuse to open any gifts or communications he manages to get to me via other people, etc. It seems – and I guess it is – a form of dissociation. But I know what it feels like to be consumed with hatred for my own father, and it feels a lot worse than loving him and being heartbroken that he doesn’t love me back. The hard part is accepting that he doesn’t – not in the real sense of the word. It took a very long time before pictures of my father did not make me unbearably sad, did not simply remind me of what I’d lost. I know it isn’t totally the same for your daughter but I have hope that rather than reading meaning into those pictures that isn’t there, she is instead able to find and enjoy whatever meaning IS there, and find happiness in that.
“I think that it is even sadder to hate a parent than it is to love a parent who doesn’t deserve it. Both options are heartbreaking, but one is corrosive to the soul as well.”
This. Thanks.
Thinking of you and the heartbreak you are going through, Alexandra. I hope that someday you and your dad will be able to reconnect on some level.