An Original Investment

Comes the story in the news of an American woman who, along with her husband, decided to make use of the last of their frozen embryos. She and her husband had used in-vitro fertilization, resulting in a year-and-half-old child. They have also two older children. She is now 40 years old, and this couple felt this would be a timely choice to bring their remaining embryo to fruition. And so it was implanted to produce their fourth child.

And when they were informed that the procedure had been successful, and that Mrs. Savage was indeed pregnant as a result of the implantation, they were also given other news. The first flush of pleasure, learning of her pregnancy, was followed by disbelieving dismay when Carolyn Savage and her husband Sean, were further informed by a representative of the fertility clinic that the wrong embryo had been implanted.

And that the foetus growing in her uterus belonged to another couple. One might think it would take the wisdom of Solomon to arrive at a solution to this very particular dilemma. A child is a child is a child, and the living human laboratory that brought life and maturity from the embryo to a foetus and then a child, should, logically, be presumed to be the mother for biological-procedure purposes.

Yet, at 35 weeks of pregnancy, having carried what has turned out to be another couple's embryo to maturity, this couple has had to resign themselves to the inevitability of surrendering the child at birth to the 'rightful owners' of the embryo. "The hardest part is going to be the delivery", Mrs. Savage has said. "We want a moment to say hello, and goodbye."

Mrs. Savage admits to feelings of denial and resentment: "In a way, I felt violated", she has said. Little wonder. The violation is evident, in fact. That she would be expected - after having physically, at the most elemental biological level, nurtured an embryo into foetal stage, then delivered a baby - to have to observe a legality requiring its surrender.

The fertility clinic offered them two options; to terminate the early pregnancy - which they found difficult to contemplate because of their religious beliefs - or to accept that if they saw the pregnancy to finalization, they would have to give up the resulting child. For them there was no happy medium, but to agree to continue the pregnancy with a view to surrendering the child.

"Of course we will wonder a bout this child every day for the rest of our lives. We have hopes for him, but they're his parents, and we'll defer to their judgement on when and if they ever tell him what happened and any contact that is afforded us. We just want to know he's healthy and happy."

This represents an inhumane outcome for a pair of trusting and decent people. It illustrates the misapplication of the laws of possession and ownership; observing the letter of the law as it applies to ownership of an object, as opposed to the treasured possession of a living human being nourished within a woman's body.

This is a parody of justice. Solomon would not have been impressed.