Deliver?
Monash IVF (in vitro fertilization), that operates across Australia, ran into big trouble the other day—its branch in Brisbane.
A couple (that had had an IVF baby earlier) requested their remaining embryos to be transferred to another IVF provider. That’s when the big trouble began. Monash IVF acknowledged in a statement that:
Instead of finding the expected number of embryos, an additional embryo remained in storage for the birth parents.”
Or, in other words, the woman had given birth to another person’s baby after Monash IVF mixed up their embryos.
The organization apologized, blaming the tragedy on human error. The birth parents were notified of the mistake within a week of the incident being discovered, and chief executive, Michael Knaap, asserted that the company would continue to support the patients.
All of us at Monash IVF are devastated and we apologize to everyone involved.”
The IVF provider asked Victorian senior counsel Fiona McLeod to investigate the incident and committed to implementing any recommendations in full. Besides, the incident was reported to the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee, the Queensland regulator of such matters.
In any case, the future of a child whose birth mother was mistakenly given a stranger’s embryo is a legal and ethical conundrum without precedent in Australian law, experts say. Shine Lawyers Queensland’s medical negligence practice leader Frances Bertram said determining the child’s parents was a family law matter:
It leads into all sorts of custody questions as well once you start looking at who then are the parents and whether the child is raised by the biological parents or by the parents who carried and gave birth to the child. It just becomes such a nightmare. From a legal point of view, the ongoing impact of this is almost incomprehensible as well; this is not something that somebody can simply make a claim for and potentially will get over. The biological families, the birth family, for the rest of their lives, every time something comes up like Mother’s Day or Christmas ….”
Dr. Hugh Breakey, senior research fellow in moral philosophy and the deputy director of the Griffith University Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law, in Queensland, said the situation amounted to an “incredible ethical tangle.”
It is one of those cases where we have two claims that are both on their face legitimate, but both cannot possibly be realized. Sometimes we have to rise above and say it’s not about what we are owed, it’s what this child is owed, and we have to do the best thing for them.”
What a mess!
But not with God, of whom it is said …
He will deliver the children of the needy.
Psalm 72:4
Talk about twisting Scripture. You have it right here. I couldn’t resist the connection: delivering children! It is actually talking about deliverance, and the children in this case are “children of the needy” or the “needy children,” those of God’s people in need.
He will judge the afflicted of the people,
He will deliver the children of the needy,
and He will crush the oppressor.
Psalm 72:4
Yes, God is the Father of his people, his children. He cares. He delivers.
In accordance with the compassion of a father upon children,
[so] Yahweh has had compassion upon those who fear Him. …
And the lovingkindness of Yahweh is from forever unto forever,
upon those who fear Him,
and His righteousness to the children’s children, to those who keep His covenant
and those who remember His precepts to do them.
Psalm 103:13, 17–18
SOURCE: The Guardian
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.