This is more than likely on the Times front page tomorrow, sans pics.
Peter Yates for The New York Times
From left; Niles, Julie, Randy, and Asa McClure, who is a product of a clinic embryo.
John Loomis for The New York Times
Angie Deacon with her children, Ely and Hannah, 5-year-old twins, donated 13 embryos.
ping
Interesting.
NYT refers to Mrs. McClure as Ms. McClure. How PC.
As for conservatives' political embrace of Snowflakes, Mr. Stoddart, who has sent state legislators a proposed embryo adoption bill, says that he is happy to oblige.
"The best way to increase awareness of embryo adoption is controversy," he said. "The embryonic stem cell research debate has done more to publicize this than anything. Nobody's going to put pictures of the president kissing a child in your paper just to publicize an adoption program."
Wise as serpents indeed!
I'm not criticizing the adoptive families here --- not at all. To the contrary, they are doing all that they can do, at a personal sacrifice, so that the children are saved, are loved, are re-accepted as children.
When I say that IVF is wrong, I mean that every child has a right --- in accord with his or her dignity as a human being and a child of God ---- to be conceived in the loving embrace of parents who are committed for the long term (married) and who accept the child as the fruit of love.
Many, many children, of course --- besides IVF children --- are conceived in a way that violates their dignity from the start. Children are conceived in acts of rape, of seduction, of adultery, of prostitution, acts of contraception tha went awry (the child as "contraceptive failure"), insemination by "donor" (actually vendor), and other demeaning situations.
This does not make the child less human or less valuable. But he was deliberately deprived of something that was his birthright: the knowledge that it was the sacred love of a man and a woman in the intimacy of their embrace which brought him --- like a miracle --- into being.
However well-intended, IVF is degrading to the dignity of the human being. The long-term consequences will be seen in the next steps: human cloning, the genetic engineering and assembly-line mass production of human embryos: the total depersonalization and dehumanization of human fertility. This is horrendous. It should not be legal. Its common precursor steps (like IVF) should not be allowed.
Shame on those who make embryos like commodities.
And God's blessings upon those who adopt these frozen embryos, these "snowflake babies," who carry them in the womb "with love beyond all telling," who give them their chance to live.
Ah, God bless these good and true people.