Couple has abortion at 6 months (days before illegal) when they proved - contrary to claims of embryonic clinic - mother-to-be was carrying strangers' baby.

Infuriating from so many points of view.
Tortured too by anxiety about what became of their own embryos which went astray.

Advances in reproductive endocrinology/implantations lead to major snafu. Remember when the only mix-ups were handing over the wrong babies to two mothers whose infants hadn't been properly "labelled" and identified?

Now it's all microscopic.
And yet their babies (to be) had indeed been confused - an error only discovered deep into the mistaken pregnancy.

I wonder how late-term (six months) abortions like this are legally justified? There were no risks to the mother nor fetal abnormalities. One more instance of scientific advances preceding legal precedent.

It's really more a matter of ownership than anything. Yet the parents to be were quite right, that not only would they be parenting a different couple's baby but they risked a custody battle down the road, when/if the real biological parents laid claim to the baby fully gestated by this unrelated couple.

How terrible it must have been for that poor pregnant woman forced to "abort" (give birth to) a six-month old fetus with whom she'd bonded.

Fetuses born at that stage of gestation have survived as "preemies".

What do you think they should have done? Certainly that incompetent clinic should be in-line for a major lawsuit. And where ARE their lost fertilized embryos? Where were they implanted?

wrongful embryonic implantation -

the headline alone is infuriating. they didn't HAVE to abort the fetus. they chose to. why? because it might be someone else's child?

i'm sorry. i am as pro-choice as they come, but this story is sickening. not only did they deprive some other couple of the only child they might ever be able to have (the couple in question already has three! i guess they didn't really want a fourth all that badly!), but after six months, why should it make any difference if it isn't theirs biologically?

these are horrible, selfish, entitled human beings who don't deserve to have any children. they could have chosen to keep the child. they could have asked the clinic to find the biological parents and ask them if they want to take the child after it is born if they don't want to keep it. but to abort to avoid a custody battle? seriously? this is straight out of the tale of king solomon. the baby is better off dead than going to its biological parents? these are not real parents.

children are children. what is it with people having no capacity to love other people's children, even if they come out of their own womb? children are trophies, possessions to these people.

that's right, i couldn't possibly judge this couple more harshly, and i don't care!

i didn't read all the comments following the article. but of those i did read, this one resonated the most:

quote:

This is a bit different from a body autonomy issue. the person wanted a baby, wanted to be pregnant; paid a good deal of money for that to happen they wanted it so much. The baby was aborted because it did not tick the baby requirements list checkboxes. If you can only love and want a child who presents with an exacting preset list of requirements, you probably won't love your genetic offspring child either. This is more like sex selective abortions: they didn't want that baby, not they didn't want to be pregnant.

and this one:

quote:

Pro-choice as well. But I have a limit. That little girl could have lived had she been born at 6 months. Plus that was their fourth child, if I’m reading this article correctly. What a selfish horrid act. Find the biological parents. It can’t have been that hard given they were part of the fertility clinic’s client list. If you can’t do that, give the child up for adoption—I would say raise it yourself, but given the outcome these people chose, I don’t think that’s a great option for any child.

Imagine valuing your own genes so much that you’d say “kill it” rather than nurturing this baby that you must have adored until the point you found out its genetic material didn’t match your own. Imagine the gift they could have given the biological parents, as a surprise surrogate, especially if the other couple were not lucky enough to conceive. She only had 3 more months to go. 90 days and that little girl could have been united with her biological parents and both families could move on after. Clearly this mother could conceive. If having four children of their own genetic material was so important to them, she could have implanted another embroyo a few months after giving birth.

I just can’t fathom any couple going through fertility issues choosing to end a pregnancy, especially one at six months, just because the baby wasn’t “yours.” That baby WAS hers for 6 whole months. What a cold, brutal act, all for the crime of being someone else’s child. So sickening and devastating to read. They were not forced to do this. They chose to do it.

I’m pro choice as well but find this hard to reconcile… I think the bolded part below says a lot. Ugh. I’m not adopted but I would imagine this case would trigger pain for those who are.

Separate from that I wonder if there’s something missing in the details. Or maybe I should say, I hope there’s something missing in the details and that it’s not as bad as it seems from the details we have. That makes me naive, I suppose…

quote:

Originally posted by piqué:
and this one:

quote:

Pro-choice as well. But I have a limit. That little girl could have lived had she been born at 6 months. Plus that was their fourth child, if I’m reading this article correctly. What a selfish horrid act. Find the biological parents. It can’t have been that hard given they were part of the fertility clinic’s client list. If you can’t do that, give the child up for adoption—I would say raise it yourself, but given the outcome these people chose, I don’t think that’s a great option for any child.

Imagine valuing your own genes so much that you’d say “kill it” rather than nurturing this baby that you must have adored until the point you found out its genetic material didn’t match your own. Imagine the gift they could have given the biological parents, as a surprise surrogate, especially if the other couple were not lucky enough to conceive. She only had 3 more months to go. 90 days and that little girl could have been united with her biological parents and both families could move on after. Clearly this mother could conceive. If having four children of their own genetic material was so important to them, she could have implanted another embroyo a few months after giving birth.

I just can’t fathom any couple going through fertility issues choosing to end a pregnancy, especially one at six months, just because the baby wasn’t “yours.” That baby WAS hers for 6 whole months. What a cold, brutal act, all for the crime of being someone else’s child. So sickening and devastating to read. They were not forced to do this. They chose to do it.

Separate from turn to the parents, I think the clinic is clearly in the wrong.

At the same time, it brings up all the problems with this kind of fertility treatment and biomedical ethics etc.

This is mostly directed to pique's comments and excerpted comments from others.

I am in agreement with some of them, not with others.

First, I admit I did have reservations about quoting the article's title, which stated flatly that the couple written about had been "forced" to have an abortion. That was allegedly owing to their Clinic's gross and negligent error in the incorrect implantation.

They were NOT "forced" nor was the procedure really an abortion per se (hence later on, I amplified calling it a "delivery"). I was uncomfortable (as it so often is, in such discussions) choosing whether to refer to the product of fertilization as an embryo or a "baby" - or even a fetus - so I switched back and forth.

That said, however, I think both pique and the comments she quoted to make their points, made statements that were questionable or outright untrue.

For example, that the "abortive" parents could have conceived a replacement baby within months of the birth of the baby they elected to terminate. Preparing for IVF is a lengthy and uncertain process, involving priming the mother's body with powerful hormones so that she can produce extra ova. It's a very disruptive process, emotionally and physically with an uncertain outcome in terms of a successful "in vitro" - outside of the human body - fertilization. At best, it causes great wear and tear on her mind and body, and with only uncertain success.

That's not even considering that the father's sperm may have problems fertilizing such an ova even under ideal "natural" circumstances.

Without picking out every such oversimplification and falsification cherry-picked by the furious commentators to damn the abortive parents to hell, this single example suffices IMO to illustrate the injustice of their reasoning - why these allegedly selfish (and downright evil) parents were sinners in arriving at what was doubtless a very difficult decision.

I can certainly see reasons to find fault with both their reasoning and that of the journalist recounting the story, but it's NOT as cut and dried as presented.

The possibility of becoming embroiled in a custody battle over the baby if brought to term is far from far-fetched. Furthermore, it's NOT true that the couple written about, could have just "kept" the baby if they had so desired.

In effect, the mother would have been agreeing to be an unpaid surrogate with much trauma associated with her unchosen role - and without even knowing her rights or being guaranteed the right to force a thorough search for her own (genetically) fertilized ova.

As I said at one point, it seems by inference that the rights of the parents (all involved) were that of ownership - oddly biblical in flavor. (Having not long ago reviewed in a synagogue service, ancient Jewish laws regarding recompense for injury - including maiming or death - of a family member, including slaves, by a stranger whether on purpose or by accident.)

(Likewise, valuable animal chattel injured or stolen.)

It seems fertilized embryos are legally treated the same as full-fledged humans - infuriating especially for females who are regarded as valuable not only for their lives, but for their virginity and otherwise calculated market-value for being intact in various ways. Pretty much what pro-lifers contend in arguing for the rights of the unborn, regardless of the stage of gestation.

I certainly agree that a six-month gestated fetus ought be regarded differently from an earlier one (since six month old fetuses are nowadays not uncommonly brought to viability after being expelled from the mother's body) either through spontaneous delivery or medical induction. But just what that difference is, no one can agree, about the slippery slope of pregnancy.

However, it's more than interesting to me that several women quoted (including pique) highlight first off their being "pro-choice" before going on to advocate for the "rights" of the unborn ahead that of the gestating mother - precisely the kind of debate that's gone on for Millennia about just when the unborn reach a stage of personhood or soul-hood. (Whether the cutoff point is reached when the unborn baby/embryo is said to "quicken" in the mother, to have a heartbeat, or to reach a stage of gestation which according to current science, has been shown to be viable even if born at a premature age - changing so rapidly!).

And here we are debating personhood according to all the same concepts, criteria and terminology ("baby" versus "fetus" or "embryo") as divide the pro-life and pro-choice "camps". Likewise, we could argue about the importance of the presence or absence of a brain, as anencephalic unborns are the subject of heated debate, nowadays. (Ought they be considered as fully human or rather as sub or non-human when deciding whether they can be aborted at later stages of pregnancy or even used as the source of organ harvesting for needy infants who DO have brains? I'll bet in China such niceties are quite ignored!)

No one has decided these things to date, and yet the six month point of gestation is apparently deeply moving even the self-declared "pro-choice". So much is assumed about that unborn's "rights" on the basis of viability.

In any case, while seeing a potential argument for its greater "right" to life (either on behalf of the unborn child or its biological parents, however unaware), it is fascinating that the varying demarcation points are overlapping to a striking degree between pro-lifers and pro-choicers.

The truly guilty in this sad drama are the dishonest clinic employees - and it sounds like many levels of responsibility are involved in the wrong-doing: The mix-ups (physical) and the lies that gushed forth after the error was recognized (denying that the wrongly implanted embryo was actually genetically different. "Mosaicism" - talk about grasping at straws!).

Clearly, it strikes many as repulsive, even immoral, that a couple could claim (and be granted) the right to terminate a potentially viable life on grounds of THEIR rights - primarily inconvenience. But "inconvenience" in all caps!
(Potential lawsuits and the physical and emotional stress on the forced surrogate and - real - psychological stress on their pre-existing children - are non-trivial).

I agree that the claim that the parents were "forced" to abort is quite a leap (if indeed, that is the suitable verb). However, to ignore their real losses is unfair and ignorant too, IMO - especially on the grounds of so many facile assumptions about the relative ease of their decision, risks and losses (including legal ones).

In a real sense, that mother can be viewed as having been raped into motherhood according to the bargain she and her husband believed they were making - and surrogacy IS a bargain. There are similar traumas and injustices suffered by many in the making of a baby, whereby one or both parent can be seen as unfairly deprived of their rights: a woman who allows herself to become pregnant while claiming to be practicing birth control can be regarded as "raping" a man into fatherhood with all the financial and emotional aspects of that cheat. So many painful forced roles can be engendered in the process of baby-making, all the more now that there are so many variations on the methodology (a child who is conceived by two consenting parents, and gestated by a surrogate to birth. Who IS the legally binding parent(s)?)

It IS somehow repellent to vet a woman's right to "abort" a viable fetus on grounds of its unacceptable DNA, but to assume she is obligated to bear a child and suffer all the emotional confusion of attachment (and more), because of someone else's mistake seems patently unjust. In such instances, time is of the essence (so the dishonesty of the Clinic is all the more reprehensible), and in other instances too. It makes it all the clearer that nine months is scarcely enough under the best of circumstances, to make all the decisions required about a life to be - especially now when that period is becoming ever shorter thanks to medical advances.

I certainly do not agree to demonize those parents for their decision to reject the "accidental child" considering how little time they had to investigate their options, thanks to the dishonesty with which they were treated. It's easy to wave away the difficulties they would be faced with on the grounds of facile and unknowable "workarounds". Like the ease with which that woman could identify (and negotiate with) its biological parents, the ease with which she could conceive a replacement child (why were they paying so much for IVF procedures, physiologically and financially if it were a breeze for them?), and the assumption she could elect to keep that present child just because her body gestated it.

And more.

I am amazed at the degree of rage with which they are regarded by people who will never be faced with such horrendous choices.

Good points, Amanda, and lots of food for thought here….

I keep going back and forth about what I think about this…

And it’s too close to bedtime for me to try to articulate much…

For me this is not about putting the unborn child's rights above the parents'. They had the right to do what they did; that is not the argument. It's not about what is legal. It is what it says about these people as human beings.

If they don't want the child then there is no custody battle. They give the child to the biological parents. Maybe they do and maybe they don't try again. Their options and chances on that score are the same whether they abort or not.

If they *do* want the child, then why abort? Because there might be a custody battle for the child they do want? This makes no sense. There may never be a custody battle. And they may never be able to get pregnant again. And if they love the child and want it, they would rather kill it than let another couple have it? So that makes no sense either.

The only thing that makes sense from their actions is that they only want a child if it is theirs biologically. And they'd rather any other child die than carry it 3 more months and give it up. A healthy child. That has biological parents that want her. Somewhere.

This means they don't give a rats ass about anyone except themselves and their own convenience. It's one thing to be shocked and angry (justifiably so) at the clinic. To be upset that the baby you are looking forward to doesn't have your genes. All understandable. But to then conclude that the solution is to abort?

There is no escaping what this says about them as human beings. So for 3 months she is a surrogate. BFD. She wanted to be pregnant. She wanted to give birth a fourth time. She doesn't want *this* baby. So she can give it up and try again.

I think what offends me most is that they would kill the unborn child simply because it isn't theirs. That is what wolves do, not real human beings.