AT Corporette, a website for feminist go-getters, an unmarried career woman describes the soulless process of freezing her eggs and fertilized embryos for future use. She admits that the procedure makes her momentarily “sad, lonely, depressed, desperate,” but does not consider the possibility that it might someday make her children “sad, lonely, depressed, desperate.” Instead of realizing that she has been lied to about everything, most of all about this, she enthusiastically recommends the same choice to others. She writes:

[I]n our first appointment, the doctor told me that frozen embryos are more viable children than frozen eggs alone. I hadn’t actually thought of freezing embryos, and my reaction to his suggestion surprised me. Although I have never believed that life starts at conception/fertilization (and still don’t), the thought of creating embryos, freezing them, and then possibly not using them, gave me pause. It just felt more personal, somehow, and like somehow it created the obligation for me to use all of them.

However, I thought it over, and made the decision to half and half: freeze some eggs, and freeze some embryos. This meant that I would need to choose a donor. While I have a good number of male friends, I didn’t want any of them to be the donor, for various reasons. My doctor recommended a great clinic they often work with, and I went through the process of looking for a donor pretty quickly (all the donor information was online). This was a very interesting process: at times, I would think it was great – I could choose a donor of a certain height, weight, eye color, and, most importantly, I could see their family’s medical history. Dad had a history of alcoholism? No thanks! On to the next. Then, of course, at other times I felt sad, lonely, depressed, desperate, and worried that I was destined to be an old pathetic spinster who couldn’t find a man to love her.

                                                          — Comments —

Leslie, who sent the above link, writes:

Fertilized embryos can be frozen? And all of them don’t have to be used?? How do you explain that to a child? “Oh well honey, one day I decided to make ice cube babies with a random sperm donor. You have four siblings in the fridge, in case of a rainy day.”

Jeff W. writes:

In a healthy society, a child is part of a family, which is part of an extended family, which is part of a community, which is part of a nation. All of these groups have purposes and histories. As children grow into adults, they accept responsibility for these groups. They try to improve on the work of their predecessors, and they try to turn what the past has given into a gift for future generations.

In our sick society, children are deprived of most of that, especially the feeling of being part of an important effort, and children whose fathers are sperm donors are the most deprived of all.

Laura writes:

Well said.

The idea of kinship, of a child being part of a larger biological network, has been lost in our atomistic world where even a human embryo is treated as a consumer product.

Kristor writes:

You write: 

The idea of kinship, of a child being part of a larger biological network, has been lost in our atomistic world where even a human embryo is treated as a consumer product. 

NB the close etymological relation between kinship and Kingship. “King” was once “kinning:” it was a title reserved for the patriarch of a house, back in the day when a “house” was not so much a building as a clan, as in House of Abraham or House of Windsor.

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