

Email Updates
Enter your email address to receive occasional updates and previews from The New Atlantis.
Frozen Embryos
Articles
Embryos in Limbo
Spring 2009 • Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill on IVF and indecision about nascent life
Blog Posts
ART in the News
A new test for Down syndrome, frozen embryo laws, and more
October 10, 2008 •
- Is it wrong to want a deaf baby?
- Oregon court sees frozen embryos as property rights issue.
- The hidden health risks for the children of sperm donors.
- India: It’s time we had a law on surrogacy.
- How test tube babies changed the world.
- A new, safer test for Down syndrome.
- “Human evolution is only at the beginning!”
- Incest fears down under?
- Families in the making.
The Embryo Dilemma
October 6, 2008 •Los Angeles Times health reporter Shari Roan has a terrific series on “the politics of embryos.” (Bonus: One piece quotes The New Atlantis’s own Yuval Levin.)
ALSO IN THE LAT: How easy is it to donate embryos to research? Or for adoption? Embryo legislation, state by state.Six years of frustration and heartbreak. That’s how Gina Rathan recalls her attempts to become pregnant.
Finally, she and her husband, Cheddi, conceived a daughter, now 3, through in vitro fertilization. About a year later, she became pregnant with a second child, naturally. Their family was complete.Then, a year ago, the Fountain Valley couple received a bill reminding them that their infertility journey wasn’t quite over. They owed $750 to preserve three frozen embryos they’d created but hadn’t used....
Finally, the couple paid for three more years of cryopreservation.
“I think about the embryos every day,” Rathan says. “I am their mother. I see them as my own children. They are the DNA from my husband and I. It’s something I worry about, especially when the three years is over and I have to make a decision again.”
ART in the News
Clay Aiken: Gay Dad, Teen Pregnancy Barbie, and More
September 26, 2008 •
- Pregnancy on the rise, abortion rates lowest in 30 years.
- How to stay sane with multiples.
- Designing the $100,000 baby.
- Remote control male birth control.
- Clay Aiken has a gayby.
- Israeli women are coming to the U.S. to donate eggs.
- "I've become more conservative since carrying a baby to term, but not so conservative as to assume that a ball of cells is a person."
- Teen pregnancy Barbie.
- India's global surrogacy business: "Come as Couple ... Leave as Family."
ART in the News
Affordable IVF, Older Dads, and The World's Oldest Mother
July 9, 2008 •
- A new IVF technique gives hope to infertile men.
- Frozen embryo babies are just as healthy as fresh ones.
- Affordable IVF comes to Africa.
- “The little boy with three mums (and they're all sisters).”
- Men have a biological clock too. But who cares? They’ll just hit the snooze button anyway.
- Help! My biological clock isn’t loud enough!
- Are children with Down syndrome being “exterminated” in the womb? Or do we have an “obligation” to select the best children we can have?
- A 70-year-old Indian woman becomes the world’s oldest mother.
- The pregnant man gives birth.
- Uterus size can predict some premature deliveries.
ART in the News
Million-dollar babies, embryo adoption, and more
June 16, 2008 •
- Will same-sex marriage lead to a "brave new world?" Doug Kmiec says yes.
- Million-dollar babies: When is early intervention too early?
- Don't cry for my fertility.
- Cancer patients opt to preserve sperm and eggs.
- The British Fertility Society questions the efficacy of embryo screening.
- California halts genetic testing by 13 businesses.
- Egg shortage: Stem cell researchers want eggs and they want them now.
- Fertility tourism: Gay Israeli couples find surrogates in the U.S. and India.
- Carolin's babies: Patients throw a party for a fertility specialist who 'really seemed to care.'
- Catholic bishops condemn embryonic stem cell research, but might reconsider embryo adoption.