Embryo adoption, frozen children waiting for parents

One of the unconventional alternatives for women who have difficulty conceiving is embryo adoption. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported in 2010 that 6.7 million American women between the ages of 15 and 44 had difficulty conceiving and have used fertility services that have resulted in approximately 600,000 embryos currently being frozen, looking for parents to adopt them. There’s currently no legislation regarding embryo adoption, but it has been established that the cost is much lower when compared to alternative methods such as in vitro fertilization and child adoption. Being the most economical method to conceive, embryo adoption allows the woman to experience a pregnancy as the embryo is implanted and the child is carried in the womb of the adoptive mother.

There are agencies dedicated to find families for these “children in a frozen state.” The situation of surplus frozen embryos lacking mothers, arises since women with problems conceiving undergo fertility treatments in which they begin to produce several eggs or ovules that are later fertilized with the husband’s sperm, occasionally when performing the implant, the embryo does not develop, that’s why several embryos are kept,  in case the pregnancy is unsuccessful. Once the woman becomes pregnant, the couple has the option of deciding what to do with the remaining embryos, whether it is keeping them frozen for future pregnancies, destroying them, donating them for studies and, the last alternative, giving them up for adoption to couples who don’t have the possibility of get pregnant.

This alternative arose after a couple visited a fertility specialist to make a pregnancy possible and following  the treatment, the woman was able to produce two dozen eggs that were extracted and fertilized, creating 18 embryos of which 4 were implanted in the woman’s womb, resulting in two losses and the birth of non-identical twins. Days before the birth of the twins, the clinic where the treatment was carried out, called the parents to ask what they were doing with the remaining 14 frozen embryos and the parents decided that based on the fact that they had carried out the procedure to create life, they were not going to destroy the embryos or donate them for studies, but if they were going to give them up for adoption under the condition that they could choose the parents for the remaining embryos.

Since then, controversial embryo adoptions have been established in the United States that promise to be safer and cheaper than adoptions of children with potential problems due to possible irresponsible behavior of mothers, whom in most cases, may have used drugs or alcohol during pregnancy resulting in “fetal distress” or conditions that cannot be detected until the child is older. The approximate cost to adopt an embryo is between $7,000 and $20,000 dollars.

Renting a womb, also offers a possibility…

When the mother is not capable of carrying a pregnancy, there’s the alternative of “renting a womb” or a person who will carry the embryo until the day of delivery. In this alternative, the embryos are transferred to a healthy uterus that allows the pregnancy to take place. There are two types of surrogacy, the traditional one in which the “volunteer” in addition to carrying the embryo for nine months donates the eggs for its fertilization and in which there are genetic ties that unite her to the baby creating potential legal problems; or the gestational,  which is performed through in vitro fertilization after the embryo develops and  a transfer is made to the carrier or “rented womb”  in which there are no genetic ties of any kind of ties with the surrogate mother. Through this process, parents have the option of choosing the sex of the baby they wish to bring into the world, which can sometimes contribute to a family balance. The approximate cost of this method ranges between $90 thousand and $130 thousand dollars.

The classical method, the adoption…

In the United States there are 112,000 children eligible for adoption in the foster care system. The process is long and tedious, but with perseverance and good communication with the social worker, it is possible to achieve the dream of becoming parents. To qualify, a social worker will be assigned to carry out a home study and make recommendations to identify if the child or children are the best option for the potential parents taking into consideration the needs of the children.  An adoption of this type is worth in between $0 to $3 thousand dollars approximately.

There are also private adoption agencies that, although more expensive, open the possibility of adopting children from abroad. The approximate cost of an adoption of this type, depending on the country of origin of the child, ranges from $20,000 to $40,000 dollars.

It is obvious that when a woman wants to become a mother and has the resources, she will spare no effort and sacrifice to achieve her goal no matter how expensive it may seem to the rest of humanity. For some women, achieving their dream of having a baby in their arms that will give her the most important title of her life by becoming a mother, is priceless!