Medical Advances Provide for New Ethical Dilemmas. Frozen Embryos Between Ex-Couple Ends Up in Court
Her last chance for a baby. His fight against forced fatherhood.
Karla Dunston, learned there was a tumor growing behind her breastbone. Chemotherapy would have to begin immediately. Though it could save her life, it would also leave her infertile.
She reached out to her boyfriend, Jacob Szafranski agreed to help her create frozen embryos -- or, more accurately, pre-embryos, an egg fertilized by a sperm but not yet implanted in a womans body. The pre-embryos were created using Szafranskis sperm in March 2010. Dunston underwent chemo a month later. By May, Szafranski had broken things off. He didn't want Dunston to use the pre-embryos they had created. Dunston said she would fight him on it.
The former couple is now embroiled in a lengthy court battle.
With advancements in assisted reproduction -- procedures like in vitro fertilization, embryo freezing and egg donation -- throughout the past 40 years, conception can increasingly be equal parts miracle and legal minefield. According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, the use of this technology has doubled in just the past decade. Yet despite the increase, fewer than a dozen states have weighed in on legal disputes that arise from the creation, destruction or use of frozen embryos.
"Those embryos mean everything to me," Dunston wrote in a 2010 email to Szafranski, court records show. "And I will fight this to the bitter end."
According to his testimony , Szafranski agreed to help Dunston, now 43 and in remission, after dashing into a bathroom at work to take a call about her diagnosis.
The following day, they visited both a fertility clinic and a reproductive rights attorney. At the clinic, they signed an informed consent document that stated the risks of the procedure and that No use can be made of these embryos without the consent of both partners (if applicable).
"We came to all of these decisions in a weeks time," Szafranski told HuffPost. He said the sense of urgency was was spurred by the possibility that Dunston, who declined to comment for this story, would not survive her cancer.
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Perhaps, if they both signed some kind of document where the embryos, if implanted and resulting in a child, would never have any claim, or right to the "boy friend", it could work out. What a mess!
Once again, technology has out-paced our degree of civilization...
In this case it has outpaced the law . The courts have just not kept up with technology let alone the social ramifications of these changes .
It seems to me that the changing nature of modern marriage and parenthood has a lot to do with the fact that the law has not kept up . You can't establish laws without social mores ...