This week, the Georgia state House of Representatives voted 96-66 to adopt a bill allowing for people to legally adopt as parents embryos that can be implanted in in vitro fertilization procedures. The legislation is defended by Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel of Americans United for Life, as responsive to “the need to humanize the embryonic human at a time when at the federal level embryonic stem cell research is being promoted.”
There has been an effort to recognize embryos as separate living beings as part of a pro-life agenda. Colorado recently moved to declare fertilized eggs as people.
It is not clear what one gets for a newly adoptive couple of a frozen embryo. Travel coolers and hot ice are possible options.
For the legislation, click here.
For the full story, click here.
I find it exceptionally humorous that the legislation is named for its supporters — “Snowflakes Adoption Act of 2009.” Flakes indeed!
And this is perhaps in response to the repeal of the ban on Federal funds for stem cell research? Do the adoptive parents have to pay the storage fees? Can I adopt, demand ‘my’ embryos and turn them over to a research institution that wants to create new stem cell lines? Will I be charged with child abandonment if I fall behind in my storage fees or murder if I don’t pay the fees and the embryos are destroyed? It seems from reading the scanty bit of legislation passed that they’ve opened up a big can of worms as well as a big can-o-crazy.
lottakatz:
did you like Sweeny Todd? That had to be one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. Is the avatar an homage or just somehting that hits the spot?
Remind me to add Georgia to my list of states to avoid. Along with Florida and Texas, these three states are prime taliban government supporter territory. The Bible will give them all the answers and they will return to the middle ages. Mespo,
You are right, flakes is an apt description.
Bron98,
I haven’t seen the movie with Depp all the way through yet- I didn’t like the musical interludes. I’m a great fan of the Sweeny Todd story though. It’s about personal and social justice, of which I’m a great fan. I’ve seen it as play or on tv once and years and years ago as a movie and I enjoyed it. The avatar is more an homage to justice than the movie. I surveyed a couple of my image folders for something appropriate for ‘justice’ and kept coming back to Sweeny Todd and the symbolism of the story. And really, it’s Johnny Depp looking beautiful in a crazy sort of way, how could I resist
over in ND we’re facing legislation to define life as anything with a human genome.
I have to roll my eyes…
http://torted.blogspot.com/2008/12/more-pro-choice-arguments.html
Shameless plug: in the above post, I go through the problems of labeling unborn fetuses or embryos as humans. A few: getting social security numbers for them would be problematic, especially if they later separate into multiples. Do you backdate their date of humanity to conception, if they didn’t exist until separation? If parents have rights over them, would there be higher monetary awards for damaging them if the woman has a history of multiples and therefore expected them to become two children? What if she planned to have an abortion?