Trump administration affirms adoptable embryos are 'human children'

The Trump administration's Department of Health and Human Services Office of Population Affairs (OPA) has issued revised funding guidelines specifying that embryos available for adoption are human children who deserve to be adopted by loving families.

Key Takeaways:

• The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Population Affairs has specified that embryos available for adoption are human children.

• In its funding notice, it says that each embryo is a "child already in existence." This marks a departure from the Biden administration's guidelines.

• The notice also prohibits grantees from discarding or destroying the embryos, from using the embryos for embryo-destructive research, and from using the embryos to create new embryos.

• It is estimated that over one million embryos are frozen in storage in the United States alone.

The Details:

As reported by the Daily Signal, the Office of Population Affairs issued a funding opportunity notice Wednesday seeking grant recipients in the embryo adoption process that would prioritize the embryo's best interests as human beings — a significant departure from the Biden administration's guidelines.

The funding notice states (emphasis added):

"Embryo adoption is distinct from infertility treatment. Rather than addressing the reproductive needs of prospective parents, it serves the needs of a child already in existence, offering that child the opportunity for life within a stable and loving family."

The notice also prohibits grantees from discarding or destroying the embryos, from using the embryos for embryo-destructive research, and from using the embryos to create new embryos.

Grantees will be required to “center the rights and long-term wellbeing of the child in all program design and service delivery,” including by assessing adoptive families through home visits and background checks.

Emma Waters, a Heritage Foundation family policy expert, told the Daily Signal the notice “refram[es] embryo adoption not as a treatment for infertility, but as an act of charity toward a child already in existence who is in need of a loving home.” 

“The uncomfortable truth is that our loose approach to IVF has left millions of human embryos in indefinite storage, many of whom are destined to be discarded,” she said.

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Zoom In:

The Embryo Adoption Awareness and Services Program under the OPA is defined as a program that "supports grants, cooperative agreements and/or contracts that aim to increase public awareness of embryo donation/adoption."

Established in 2002, the program facilitates a frozen embryo adoption awareness campaign and it may also fund projects that make embryo adoption an attainable option for infertile couples.

It is estimated that over one million embryos are frozen in storage in the United States alone. These are "surplus" embryos created through in-vitro fertilization (IVF), and then frozen indefinitely as couples become unsure what to do with them. Frozen embryos — which are each a unique and distinct human person in the earliest stages of development — are just one of the many moral and ethical issues related to IVF.

According to a report from Live Action News, "The total number of lives lost as a result of IVF is now surpassing the number of lives lost to induced, elective abortion each year."

The Bottom Line:

Recognition that each embryo is a child deserving of a loving family is a significant step in acknowledging that IVF creates human beings. It stands to follow, then, that the procedure which creates and subsequently destroys so many human beings — or leaves them in a frozen limbo — is inherently wrong.