I think we can all agree that donating embryos is an incredibly personal and emotionally loaded decision. But what are you supposed to do when the people you trusted with that gift turn hostile, threaten your family, and still expect you to give such a generous opportunity?
Several years ago, this woman and her husband had a baby through a surrogate. Following the birth of their child, they still had five top-grade embryos left.
Since they only wanted one baby, they made the generous decision to gift their remaining embryos to a couple with whom they were close friends.
“We are open about our experience with surrogacy, which is as close to a textbook case of perfection as IFV can come. We are extremely thankful, and we realize this is an outlier (decision for IVF to a healthy birth was only 15 months, which included everything, including surrogate search and vetting),” she explained.
“While having no previous relationship, the surrogate and her family and our family have become very close. We stated that we would like to gift the embryos to a couple who would otherwise be unable to have a family.”
The couple in question, Greg and Karen, were excited to have their embryos, but they did not make any kind of commitment to them.
Their lawyers advised them to record all interactions for protection, and they only used the words that were cleared by their legal team while discussing the embryos.
They did tell Greg and Karen to seek lawyers to represent them, and to have those people reach out to their legal team in order to complete the agreement.
Since they were so busy with their new baby, they didn’t really spend much time with Greg and Karen following that conversation.
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She and her husband later learned that Greg and Karen are pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum from them regarding their political beliefs.
“Greg and Karen began telling people the deal was finalized, they had begun appointments at a fertility clinic, and Karen was taking IVF hormones,” she said.
“Even more surprising, they were telling people they are glad the deal was finalized so they would never have to [see] us again, stating we were horrible people who don’t deserve a child because of our political beliefs, but were glad to get free embryos.”
“We had multiple friends who recorded rants on several occasions and provided them to us. One rant suggested they should make an anonymous tip to child protective services so our child could be taken away, and even if that didn’t make it that far, we would be extremely inconvenienced.”
She and her husband spoke to their lawyers and came to the conclusion that it was better to destroy their embryos in lieu of gifting them to Greg and Karen, considering how hateful they were being.
They wasted no time filing out the necessary paperwork, and they jumpstarted to process. Not long after, Greg and Karen’s lawyers contacted theirs about finalizing the agreement, and were told the embryos had been destroyed.
She and her husband anticipated they would quit hearing from Greg and Karen after that, and they moved to cut contact with them as well. Next, they ended up moving pretty far away.
As soon as their moving truck was ready to pull out of the driveway and they were completing the walkthrough, they shockingly got a court summons from Greg and Karen, who are suing them.
“They are suing us for breach of contract, theft/destruction of their property (claiming we had an oral contract and the embryos were theirs), loss of wages due to fertility treatments, medical costs for fertility treatments, pain and suffering/emotional distress, and punitive damages,” she continued.
“We presented the filing information to our legal counsel, along with recorded evidence and the contact information of friends who notified us of those incidents (who were more than happy to help us), and our legal counsel believes there is no case, but it will cost a lot to litigate, and advised us to countersue, otherwise we’d be on the hook for our own legal costs. Also, without embryos in their possession, Karen should not have started hormone treatments for IVF.”
She’s pretty positive that the law is on her side, but she’s left wondering if she’s a jerk for destroying the embryos after Greg and Karen went around insulting them.
Yeah, no, she’s not a jerk at all, but Karen and Greg sure are. She and her husband were doing something incredibly generous in gifting this couple embryos in the first place, and I can’t believe that Greg and Karen would go around insulting her and threatening to get CPS to remove her child.
It’s sad to say that Greg and Karen seemed to have only been using her and her husband in order to get free embryos out of them.
What do you think?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
