Do Men Have Any Rights Over Their Unborn Children?
An unusual situation has arisen in Australia involving an ethical complication arising out of IVF. A woman and her fiance` created embryos via IVF. She was impregnated but then died in an auto crash. Now the grandmother of the remaining embryos may sue to prevent the father from bringing his offspring to term. From the story:
A British woman whose pregnant daughter was killed in a car crash is considering legal action to stop her fiancé using her frozen embryos to have their child. Kay Stanley, 32, had undergone IVF treatment and had her eggs fertilised before she died.
Her mother Gwen Bates, a nurse from Rotherham, Yorkshire, claims her fiancé Brett Vogel, 34, may be considering using a female relative as a surrogate for the fertilised embryo. Mrs Bates, 59, insists Kay Stanley would have been opposed to such a move.
Even if that is true, even if the poor dead woman would not want her children gestated by another woman, so what? She is dead. The father is alive. His nascent children can still be born. Why should he be prevented from having his children--if that is his decision--and instead be forced to see them destroyed (or possibly experimented upon)?
Let's consider this: The law generally holds that a woman is entitled to an abortion--regardless of what the father might want--because it is her body that gestates the child. That biological symbiotic relationship fact is seen as trumping whatever rights the father might have in the matter. It is her body and if she doesn't want to gestate, she has the unfettered right, at least in the early months, to terminate the pregnancy.
But in this case, the mother is dead and so her body is not being used for anything. The father may want to have his children brought to birth. If the grandmother can legally prevent her grandchildren from being born, it means that fathers have no rights of any kind over their pre-born children. If so, that is utter sexism. I mean, if he had died, would his parents be able to prevent the fiance from having his children? I think not.
These are the kind of dilemmas that the IVF can of worms has opened. But that is water under the bridge. In this case, I can see no justification for the grandmother's claim. What would be good for the goose should also be good for the gander.
Labels: IVF. Father's Rights.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 5:18 PM
28 Comments
28 Comments:
I'd like to know how the potential grandmother knows that her daughter would not have wanted this. If she can prove it, it seems to me that the law is on her side; apart from that, that the daughter is dead seems to me a rather callous consideration. Both sides in this tragic situation are reeling from the emotional fallout of the death, we don't know why the grandmother has claimed that the daughter would not have wanted this, we don't know whether the daughter would have wanted it; there is too much unknown here.
Personally I don't consider an embryo a human being, magical though the wonders of conception can be considered to be, and that it is capable under the right circumstances of becoming a person notwithstanding. Not only is it too early in the process, but the means of conception were artificial, and not entirely different in principle from interbreeding a human with another species. IVF certainly is a can of worms, and one that I think never should have been created in the first place; look what happens when it gets opened, and it's bad enough even when it's in a closed state.
Yes the embryo belongs to the father too, but if the late potential mother wouldn't have wanted this, I think that that should be the end of it. I would not be surprised if the potential grandmother has good reasons, and if she does not, the embryo is still something that never should have been created in the first place. This madness has got to stop somewhere. If it doesn't, we ARE going to end up with chimpanzees sitting on boards of directors (not that that might not improve matters, but it's certainly not what human exceptionalism would like to see happen) and ourselves interbred with other species, which would be a very bad idea (and the other species have done nothing to deserve such an insult, which it would be in the first place, and an even worse one considering what idiots, and even worse, humans can be; the other species don't deserve to be degraded in that manner, in any sense).
It seems like a lovely idea, to carry on, in the way the father would like it to be carried on, the life of this young woman who died tragically young via the embryo she and her chosen breeding partner made (if that really was what she wanted), and the wishes of the potential father (I know, some are going to say that he is already the father, but in my view the embryo is an adventure in freak-land) and of perhaps also the relative willing to carry the embryo to term fulfilled, but in fact she IS dead, and unless this is what she would have wanted, that should be the end of it in this case.
All this messing with nature has got to stop.
I believe that there is life after death, and that there may be before life as we know it as well, which first manifests in a way that we can recognize it in an embryo. I also believe that not every potential life is meant to manifest, given the number of potential components of it that nature has designed to exist in our own as in other species. I think the wisest solution here would be for it not to be a matter for manmade law to decide, but to find some honest and capable psychic mediums, if they can be found to weigh in on this situation, and find out from them what the mother has to say from the dimension where her soul now resides. An enlightened court might even take that evidence into consideration; it wouldn't be the first time that something along that line has been considered by a judge who ruled in favor of the "occult," and in fact an embryo does rightly exist in an occult environment.
Further, perhaps the mother would not have wanted that particular relative to carry and bear her child. Perhaps the mother was not entirely enthusiastic about the embryo idea in the first place. Perhaps the father has problems the mother and grandmother know of and would not be a good father on his own, or be apt to make a good choice of mother to raise the child. I know, I know, it's a life, nevertheless. But it's not a life that nature intended in the first place. We don't know, either, why the couple created the embryo, whether both had fertility problems, or which one, and why. We don't even know whether the embryo would be viable, and while that's not a consideration in moral terms if it is a life, there is just too much unknown here for the matter to belong in court, where into the bargain all the facts may or may not emerge, or for others, to whom all the facts are not available, to form opinions about.
This is not what nature intended, and if we keep messing with nature we're going to keep encountering this kind of dilemma, and even worse problems. An embryo can't be created without two parents; we know what the father thinks; the grandmother's input is unnecessary if an answer can be obtained from the mother now by the means I mentioned. It's possible for that answer to be obtained in that manner for the same reason that an embryo contains life. But that doesn't mean that we should be creating embryos in any other manner than the way nature intended. There are religious and common-sense objections, on valid grounds, for not creating embryos and for not seeking an answer via a medium (in the latter case because one doesn't know what spirit might sneak in in disguise with a false and malicious answer), but things having come to this stage in this situation, that's the best shot we've got at finding the truth, one that wouldn't need to be found if this couple, along with science, had respected nature's boundaries in the first place. In the scenario I suggested, the embryo, of course, should be consulted, too; if it's a life, it has a spirit with wishes, desires, rights, a spiritual history, and opinions as well; if we can get an accurate answer from it, it should have the final say on the matter. Yes it's possible to find out, just as it was to create the embryo, and in fact the latter wouldn't have been possible unless the former were.
But these are things we should NOT be messing with. The twins who were the first i.v.f. babies were interviewed recently and said that they were grateful for their parents' etc. vision. Of course they are. But as with the new "miracle" pharmaceutical products, they haven't been around long enough, and we haven't seen enough generations of people who have "benefitted" from these miracles of science, to know what the long-term ramifications are. There are enough problems already with these things, and it's only common sense to consider that there may be far more in the future.
It just isn't a good idea, and it involves, as do other elements of the COD, the desire for people to have what they want because they want it, no matter what, and in that respect, the grandmother in this situation is on solid ground. If we shouldn't be messing with life at one end of the spectrum, via suicide, assisted suicide, euthanasia, etc., we shouldn't be messing with it at the other, either. If we're going to consider embryos created in a laboratory life, with rights to life, paradoxical though it seems, then it follows that we are entitled to end life at will as well. I don't endorse either. We can't have it both ways. The same selfishness and disrespect for life and nature are behind both i.v.f. and its market and assisted suicide and ITS market.
But then, I'm old-fashioned, and not sentimental; I think that non-traditional parenting, single parenting, etc. isn't a good idea, and that the proper solution to infertility problems is that the infertile should accept their status and adopt if they want to be a parent and, if both spouses are willing, or that the Old Testament solution should be employed if all parties are willing, or that the couple should divorce and the one who is not fertile remarry to someone who is. Sounds harsh, maybe, but healthier in the long run.
Hey, wait a minute -- she was impregnated but then died in a an automobile accident and the father wants one of the other embryos used now. Well, well, well. If they had been a fertile couple that hadn't needed i.v.f. to conceive, there wouldn't BE the other embryos. Not only wouldn't they accept their infertility which nature had dictated, now the father doesn't want to accept death which nature dictated. What about the sanctity of the irreplaceability of the embryo-turned-foetus that died? This is an attempt to transcend nature and regard each individual and unique being as fungible. What had they been planning to do with the remaining embryos when she was implanted? All of a sudden now they -- one of them, anyway -- have the privilege of living, only courtesy of their predecessor in implantation having died unintentionally? If they had been planning to use all of them (knowing, of course, that some might not survive the attempt), one after another, to create a family, at least there would be a little more morality here, which would strengthen the husband's position, and maybe they did. Now is the relative willing to bear not just one, but all of them, either by carrying triplets or quads or whatever or spending year after year gestating them one after the other, according to whatever family plan the couple had devised before the fatal accident? The whole thing was utilitarian to start with, and even more now. If each embryo is a life, it's not right unless they all end up implanted. Now there's the scenario of the "default" offspring. Where did these infertile people get the nerve to believe that they have a right to reproduce whether they are able to or not, and where did fertility medicine get the nerve to "accommodate" them (while following its own agenda and making a lot of money)? The embryos -- lives -- are commodities from the get-go; their parents, who want a child the same way the children their ilk don't even know how to raise, ending every order to their kids with "ok?", just have to have the toy of the monent, bought and paid for them. The whole thing should be illegal just on those grounds, since persons are not property.
Ianthe, you've expressed a lot of thoughts there. Thanks for the paragraph breakage.
Here's my take: The mother is dead now. I don't think the dead should meddle with the living. It's tragic that she's gone, but it's for the living to work out what to do.
I do think that each embryo is a human life. These have one parent now and it's for him to decide what to do with them although ideally I'd like to see every created embryo given its chance. Don't make them if you're not going to transfer them. Actually, in cases like this I'd be OK with the courts leaning toward whichever party wants to give the embryos life.
What I see coming out of the artificial reproductive techniques is the idea that parents can and should have more control over their reproduction than nature intended. Wesley has reported on the movement of the eugenics debate from rejecting fetuses that have some incompatible-with-life anomaly to rejecting fetuses whose genes MIGHT make cancer more likely down the road, and the notion that parents can have their kids tested to see what sports they should pursue so that the PARENTS aren't frustrated.
I have every sympathy with infertile women. If I hadn't been able to become a mommy the old fashioned way I think I'd have lost my mind. If ART had been available a couple of decades ago, and I'd needed it and could afford it, you bet I would have done everything I could to have a baby. This trend of over-controlling, or of thinking we can and should control more than we do, still troubles me.
There are two interesting threads to this problem:
First is the issue of mother's desires. This suggests that and argument can be made that both parties have to consent to bring a child into the world. But fathers do not get currently to decided whether a child is born or not. In fact, a woman can bring into the world a child that the father doesn't want at all. And both parties there are alive.
(Not that I am saying this should not be the case; I think it is just fine.)
Second, and even more fascinating, is the idea that the mother would object to someone *else* carrying her offspring.
If this is the objection, and not the fact that they will be born at all, then it raises the question of whether that "housing" of a developing embryo is any more special, or different from, a non-living place such as a laboratory (which is not yet possible).
The first instinct is to say, yes, of course you would want consent of both parents to the use of a surrogate. It seems only natural. But as Wesley is pointing out, the use of bodies here is not an issue for the dead woman, whose body will not be used. Her ideas about what was right and wrong, or desireable in terms of gestation are just preferences, if IVF is ok.
Or are they?
To clarify: you would think that consenting to a surrogate AND the choice of WHICH surrogate are issues for both parties to agree on. But if one party is dead, is the issue of their beliefs, desires, and preferences still relevant? Or, is it only a matter of the living who choose to honor that or not?
If the grandmother were to win it would have a lot of interesting implications for the law and the wishes of the dead.
Laura: I wish I always remembered to paragraph; glad I did this time. I agree that every embryo that has the capacity of life within it should be given the chance to grow into a full-fledged life. Part of the overall problem with i.v.f. is that they all don't get an equal chance. I just don't think that they should have been "created" in the first place; it's too much messing with nature. I do understand and empathize with how women who cannot bear a child feel and what they go through and why they take the fertility treatment route, but the consequences of the existence of this technology just pose too many problems, morally and otherwise. Among other things, the long-term physical effects on both the mother and the offspring are not yet fully known, while even now some of the negative ones are already known. The mother may be willing to endure the ordeal and any future consequences, but the offspring will be helpless victims if such consequences arise for them, and lives should not fall into the category of the "experimental." Life is still better than no life, and that there may be consequences in terms of weaker immune systems (one thing that's already been discovered) in i.v.f. babies is not enough reason to deny life, but I still don't think that we should mess with what nature has been able to do well enough for long enough since time immemorial, all on its own, and I still think that when we start disrepecting nature in this way at one end of the life process, we end up disrespecting it throughout the rest of it and at the other end. As for respecting whatever the wishes of the deceased mother were, if they can be determined by whatever means, absolutely. A society that does not respect those who, for whatever reason, cannot speak for themselves currently is a society that is on the way to being swallowed up by the culture of death, which is what we all want not to see happen.
Holyterror: I do think that the wishes of the now dead deserve consideration. This whole thing is based on her intention to have the child while she was still alive, and I think that when we stop respecting someone's wishes and intentions just because they are dead, we stop respecting their life, and when we do that, we begin to stop respecting the sovereignty of the person, and that of life in general. If the law respects the intentions expressed in last wills and testaments, there is reason for it to respect other intentions of the now-dead, even if they were not expressed in documents for which there was no common context at the time. Moreover, I've noticed that the genre of attorneys who choose to practice elder law in an unethical manner for mercenary reasons and try to rig and manipulate things so that the client's wishes as expressed in the last will and testament end up not being respected are the same ones who take advantage of and help to foment the mechanisms made available by the culture of death itself; that's an example of not respecting the wishes of the deceased right there, and of its significance; we can't afford to be casual about the issue of the wishes of the deceased in any respect. Had this mother made a will before she died that stated exactly what she would want to happen in this situation, it would be a much simpler situation, of course, but it is not a widely instituted custom for 32-year-old expectant mothers to make such wills, and there is little precedent in this kind of situation, in view of the relative recent existence of i.v.f. as a societal phenomenon and the relative infrequency of pregnant 32-year-old expectant mothers dying, or having made wills; her focus, as was natural, was on future life, not imminent death, and that conforms to a societal norm.
There wouldn't be these embryos without her intention, and of course they wouldn't exist without the father either, and the intentions of both have to be considered. Just because the mother is dead doesn't mean that the embryo no longer exists and wasn't half her creation that of her intention. (I know, this situation seems to require the intervention of Solomon.) There have been cases where the embryo's father has died and the embryo's mother wanted to carry them to term, and the courts have ruled in the mother's favor; I don't know of any in which it is known that the father wouldn't have wanted that or anyone maintained that the father wouldn't have wanted it, but if there are any, they are relevant precedent. It can be argued that that the mother customarily having had more say in these matters is even further persuasive precedent for her wishes being respected, even after she is dead.
Complicating matters is that we don't know for certain whether the now-late mother ever even contemplated this exact situation, or why the grandmother is saying what she is saying. As for preferring that a certain person, in this case the willing relative, not carry her child, families and people being what they are, that is a possibility that is reasonable to consider. All sorts of things are not known about this situation that may possibly be relevant, and more relevant than what has been reported indicates.
Plus, as things now stand, every embryo does not have the legal right to be implanted, in whoever, and brought to term, and that's yet another problem that just goes back to the whole i.v.f. thing being morally as well as logistically problematic in the first place. On top of which there is the question of the status of embryos as property v. persons. It's just too much of a mare's nest, and meanwhile, the mother, without whom, and without whose intentions, whatever they were, the embryos would not exist, and her memory, deserve to be respected just as much as the father's wishes do. A society that says so and so is dead and their wishes no longer matter is only a step away from saying so and so's wishes don't matter because they should be dead anyway.
You're right that the precedent set here may turn out to be very influential. The way I think that this problem, which is going to keep recurring otherwise, should be solved is for i.v.f. to be stopped forever right now, every case involving it now before a court now be resolved, everybody who has created embryos make a plan for them, and parents be be found for each already-existent embryo left over, and then stop this madness once and for all. That's what I think. It's one thing for humans to make a mistake, recognize it, and solve the problem as best as possible; it's another to continue making the mistake and compounding the problem. The embryos, all of which have a right to life, that don't get to grow up don't get to grow up because humans refuse to.
It's also possible that the grandmother is the mother from hell and is lying, of course. It's also possible that she does not understand what the daughter would want now. It's also possible that the mother really did say when alive that she wouldn't want what the husband wants now, and in fact didn't want it, but that now, from the other side, she would like the husband's current desire to be carried out, because after crossing over, people remain themselves, but also often have different perspectives on what is going on here than they did when they were here. For all these reasons, I say, call in the mediums. There are plenty of them in England, where there is a whole long tradition of their being trained, working with trumpets (I don't understand the trumpet part, and thus I can't explain it here, but they do some pretty impressive work), etc. Life being as sacred as it is, it's no surprise that it continues in another dimension and that those who have crossed over do continue to have concern and opinions about what goes on here, and even participate as best they can at times; might as well ask them, especially in a situation like this. A lot less expensive and stressful than a courtroom procedure, which into the bargain might set a precedent that causes further problems down the line, as well. Just because we don't know all about something doesn't mean that we should dismiss it.
It's also possible that the grandmother is the mother from hell and is lying, of course. It's also possible that she does not understand what the daughter would want now. It's also possible that the mother really did say when alive that she wouldn't want what the husband wants now, and in fact didn't want it, but that now, from the other side, she would like the husband's current desire to be carried out, because after crossing over, people remain themselves, but also often have different perspectives on what is going on here than they did when they were here. For all these reasons, I say, call in the mediums. There are plenty of them in England, where there is a whole long tradition of their being trained, working with trumpets (I don't understand the trumpet part, and thus I can't explain it here, but they do some pretty impressive work), etc. Life being as sacred as it is, it's no surprise that it continues in another dimension and that those who have crossed over do continue to have concern and opinions about what goes on here, and even participate as best they can at times; might as well ask them, especially in a situation like this. A lot less expensive and stressful than a courtroom procedure, which into the bargain might set a precedent that causes further problems down the line, as well. Just because we don't know all about something yet doesn't mean that we should dismiss it.
If about 2042 years when Jesus The Christ was born is but a moment for The Blessed Trinity as I've deeply felt in the pass.
What I'm trying to say is that humanity should stop trying to educate Mother Nature but even more humanity must stop trying to play God.
True that we were made in God's Image but we're trying to rush it just like our animal friends in paradise tried to do by getting Eve to taste of "The Fruit of Mother Marie womb” which was The Fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Of course we know that Adam was so much in love with Eve that He went along with it cause she was literally part of him. God sent us another Adam, His Only begotten Son Jesus who was always there in the first place because He's full of Love so let's try asking for His help.
Let's not rush "IT" cause we're all children of God and we'll all get our chance and by mis using our cells now by convincing Mother Nature that there's nothing wrong with it because she's getting tired of Jack Frost is still wrong not to respect her. It's true that most would probably consider me to be green but then is not "Green a way of life nowadays?
I'll close by saying that I've always been against Invetro Fertilization and any form of messing with cells for humanities goodness but I'm only one man and what could I do back then. God has it on record that I did what I could and if sinner vic does get this world, I'll see what I can do to support all of Mother Natures followers who respected her and her God.
I could go on and on in a circle but what good would it really do.
God Bless,
Peace
On top of everything else, women have been having to bear children whether they wanted to or not at men's insistence and with no other option for their survival than to comply with the agenda of a man's world for millenia, and still do in many parts of the world. Now that men have less say over things than they have been used to having they are going on about men's rights, father's rights, etc., as if they have become women, despite women having had to do all the work of child-rearing up until recently, and most of the time still now too, on top of being expected to work outside the home, whic they didn't used to be. My guess is that she would want the child thing to go forward now (how could she have even known that she was going to be killed in a car accident?), but if she wouldn't, respect for her wishes is the least she deserves, alive and even more if she is dead. That's totally apart from all the embryos' right to life, which we don't know if she ever intended to honor in the first place.
An embryo is a human organism.
No matter the source of that human organism, I believe they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Even the children of rape shouldn't be abandoned on a hillside.
The grandmother wouldn't get custody of the kids without proving the father is 1) unfit, and 2) she's better, so what the grandmother says shouldn't matter.
I think that since the father fertilized these embryos, they are half his, not his fiance's mothers, and that he should have more say in what happens to them than she does, regardless of whether or not the embryo is a human being.
But what about the other half? Is the grandmother the legal heir/beneficiary even executrix/administratrix of the daughter's estate? Are they property? If both parents created them and they are property an argument can be made that they are all his now by right of remaindership. What if they are not property?
As I said-- the grandmother wouldn't have an automatic say with born children, she shouldn't have a say with those who are not yet born.
Making the unspeakably abhorrent assumption that the children are now "property," they'd now be the property of the husband-- just as the woman's car, their joint accounts and their house are now his.
As I understand it, Anglo-Saxon law generally requires that someone have a direct stake in an outcome to be able to file suit, that is, have standing to sue. Presumably this principle holds in Australia as here in the US.
Therefore, I fail to see what the grandmother's stake here is. The embryoes aren't hers, nor did she have anything to do with their creation. Her daughter was presumably a consenting adult when the embryoes were created. Grandma has no more standing to stop the embryoes' use than the neighbor up the road.
In short, to put it bluntly, the whole situation is none of the grandmother's business. She is simply compounding the tragedy of her daughter's death. But I agree 100% with Wesley and Ianthe that having IVF and other fertility treatments instead of accepting infertility and (say) adopting instead has led to such horrific legal messes.
Foxfier: That's the point -- it is an unspeakably abhorrent assumption. But the parents' having purchased them by paying for the i.v.f. procedures that "created" them could be considered to have made them property, as could their lack of legal right to be given a chance to live and grow, every single one of them. That assumption has been partly in the mix from the very beginning, and as far as I'm concerned, the whole institution of fertility treatment is unspeakably abhorrent.
I agree with K-Man's logic, but I think there is more involved and that the grandmother may have a stake. We don't know all the facts, which may make it impossible to draw a correct conclusion. We don't know if the father intends to raise the child or to have the grandmother raise it, for example. We don't know whether the grandmother has reason to know or fear that the father is unstable, incapable of being a good parent, etc. We don't know if the mother had discovered that to be the case and had reservations after the fact and mentioned it to her mother. We don't know what the relationship is with the other female relative, and why. There is just too much unknown here for the outside world to be coming to conclusions based on what's been reported, and that's generally the way it is when situations like this get into the news.
Or, the grandmother may not want a particular genetic defect she knows to run in the father's or in her own family to be passed on, or, as a nurse, she may understand that i.v.f. children tend to have weakened immune systems, or, she just may be against the whole idea of i.v.f. and would like the court system to intervene. It's her grandchild, it's the child of her daughter, she's a nurse and has some medical understanding into the bargain, and I don't think it's entirely not her business. For all we know the female relative may be griefstricken and putting herself at medical risk by bearing the child and the grandmother doesn't want her to; we don't even know who the female relative is; it could be the sister of the embryo's mother and the grandmother doesn't want to risk losing another daughter. Any number of circumstances could be in the mix and relevant. Or the grandmother could be just being a witch about it for whatever reason. We just don't know all the facts.
Lanth-
No children of that age have a legal right to grow and live. This case just makes it a bit clearer, more obvious.
I don't like IVF, because it tends to result in some pretty horrific actions because the embryos don't look like adult humans. I've got some gripes about how often it seems to me, as a ranch kid, that the reason some of these folks couldn't bring a child to term is because the baby wasn't viable. It's sad, but it happens.
Treating a woman as an incubator so that someone can have the children he wants is rather repugnant, too, but not as repugnant as leaving your children to slowly "frost burn" away....
I assume that the IVF process used the fiance's sperm and not that of an anonymous donor. If that were the case the fiance could probably assert a property right in the embryos that trumps that of the woman's mother. It is questionable that the woman's wish that the fertilized ova not be implanted elsewhere, even if it could be proven, could be enforced at all now that she's dead. A case can be made that enforcement of such a request is contrary to public policy. If I were a betting man I'd bet on the fiance's winning this.
There is a doctrine, overwhelmingly influential, in family law, I can't remember the name of it, but it dictates basically that the kid stays with the mother. That too is relevant here. Yes the mother is dead but the embryos are still half hers, especially if her eggs helped create them. And who paid for the fertility treatment? Even in estate law if there is no will the state makes provisions for the distribution of their property that reflect the circumstances of their life at least to a certain extent. (e.g. if they had a spouse who still lives, spouse gets x, if children, they get x, then other relatives considered, etc.) Yes she's dead but that doesn't mean that she never existed and that her having existed and had intentions, whatever those intentions were, isn't the cause of the situation at hand and should not be considered relevant now.
Only applies if the mother is alive.
With born children, even if the couple is divorced, if the parent with custody dies the kids go to the other parent, no matter what the intent of the dead parent was. (barring complications that are binding-- abuse, etc)
With property, jointly held property defaults to the survivor.
So, if we consider the embryos property or people, the grandmother still has no standing....
Well let's hope they're not considered property anyway. And if they're considered life then no one who doesn't want them to live to have standing. But are they considered either, or are they in total legal limbo as far as their status and definition as life, persons, property, or (what else would they be considered?) is concerned? That's a whole issue in itself. I'd still like to know what the grandmother's reason is.
Ugly as this is, it might force people to start thinking-- to answer exactly the question you just posed, and face what exactly they're saying.
It'd take one heck of a mental gymnast to defend the statement "oh, these embryos have the same value as a dog/ a bank account/ the china set/ an infant" against the other statements.... especially when, in not too many years, there are going to be a lot of folks who were IVF babies themselves.
If they were willing to face anything they'd have faced that nature had rendered them infertile and that if they went this route they were going to have to be responsible for all the lives created, not just the one were trying to get out of the grab bag. It's like watching a child (or an adult) trash a box of candy and go only for the pieces with the shiny wrapping or that have the filling s/he wants.
It sure would take a mental gymnast, and it sure will be interesting when there are more and more people who came into life that way. I'm not sure they are all going to be healthy by then, or that their children will; one certainly hopes they will but heck why worry they were bought and paid for by those who just had to have what they wanted and won't have to bear he consequences in the way that they might have to, God forbid, but we don't know yet how things will turn out for them.
But did anyone tell the parents this was an experiment? I doubt it. They got told you want a baby we'll make you a baby yes it's expensive but you really want it you'll pay for it. And they did.
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