Experts propose guidelines to provide clarity for disputes over frozen embryos

Experts propose guidelines to provide clarity for disputes over frozen embryos -

In at least 11 cases over the past 24 years, including the call a Missouri case heard in June, US courts have grappled with difficult arguments between men and women and fertilized embryos were frozen together but disagreed on whether they should be in gestation and birth. The dispersed jurisprudence solved little, creating a need for common rules that could prevent these disputes.

In a new document, two experts discuss this story and propose five specific guidelines. The results could provide clarity for litigation on one of the estimated million or frozen embryos in the United States

"All these ad hoc individually addressed cases are not taking us anywhere or pointing us in a common direction, "said Dr. Eli Adashi, professor and former dean of medicine and biological sciences at Brown and co-author of the new paper in the Hastings Center Report . "But many of theses issues are preventable."

The cases usually occur because he does not know, once a couple has split, if one can compel the other to become a parent. In four of the 11 cases examined Adashi with co-author I. Glenn Cohen, a professor at Harvard Law School, there was no valid contract between the parties. Meanwhile, the courts have applied different legal criteria for case review. Often - but not always - they arrived at the decisions that have favored the party who did not want the result to be a child

In a case resolved in Illinois last year, Szafranski v Dunston the parties had an oral contract .. only. The court considered the case as both a contract dispute and in which the parties' interests must be balanced. Ultimately, it allowed the woman gestation of an embryo, despite opposition from the father, because the cancer had left her unable to reproduce otherwise.

In the case of Missouri heard on appeal in June, McQueen v. Gadberry, the initial decision favored the man who did not want an embryo used by his ex-wife. The case won a special mention when, in an unprecedented twist, the Thomas More Law Center intervened the argument that an embryo should be considered a child and that the court must consider the best interests of the child .

Five recommendations

By examining 11 previous cases, Cohen and Adashi discerned five ways that couples and fertility clinics could use to prevent disputes. The authors argue that these practices could become standard procedure at the time of the creation of embryos either because the parties agree simply because they become adopted as the clinic's policy, or because they have become devoted as federal law.

"There are a finite number of cases now," said Adashi. "We are trying here to really learn from the mistakes our proposal is all about avoiding the mistakes that have been committed.".

this is what they recommend:

• Do not mix contracts in other forms: When clinical combined the language of informed consent and the text for directing available embryos, they created confusion Clear, standardized contract language regarding what to do with the embryos must be presented separately
• Require a contract. .. clinics should not freeze embryos for possible future use without the parties fully execute a legally binding agreement
• the original agreement stands: what the parties agree when they sign the contract should serve as rules from there. If one party unilaterally changes his mind later, for example because of a divorce, this should not matter
• "legal parenting" mandatory :. Once the embryo is, man and woman are "genetic" parents, but if one party then uses an embryo against the desires of the other, non-consenting person should not have to . be the legal parent of the resulting child
• Anticipating tragedy nobody expects suddenly lose fertility - because of injury or illness, for example - but the parties should provide for the possibility of contract language. which provides for circumstances in which a party may want to use an embryo can provide both pre-agreed terms on what to do.

"people who embryo cryopreservation face a field uncertain and changing the variable state laws, with varying degrees of compliance with contract, and the case law that could produce different results depending on changes in the underlying structure is, "writes Cohen and Adashi in their conclusion. "A consistent approach across the country seems desirable."