I graduated from high school in 1994. That year, Thaddeus Daniel Pierce was frozen.
He wasn’t known as Thaddeus then. He was an excess embryo from in vitro fertilization. Three decades later, he was born to Lindsey and Tim Pierce, who had adopted him as an embryo.
Back in the Nineties, Linda Archerd and her husband were suffering from infertility. They had one of the embryos implanted, and Linda gave birth to a daughter (who is now raising a ten-year-old herself). The other three embryos created in the IVF process were put on ice. Linda and her husband later divorced, and she got custody of the “extra” children.
According to The Guardian:
She then found out about embryo “adoption”, a type of embryo donation in which both donors and recipients have a say in who receives the embryos.
Archerd had a preference for her embryo to be “adopted” by a white, Christian married couple, leading to the Pierces adopting the embryo.
Archerd was awarded custody of the embryos after divorcing her husband. She then found out about embryo “adoption”, a type of embryo donation in which both donors and recipients have a say in who receives the embryos.
Archerd had a preference for her embryo to be “adopted” by a white, Christian married couple, leading to the Pierces adopting the embryo.
The fertility clinic that transferred the embryo is run by John Gordon, a reproductive endocrinologist and Reformed Presbyterian who is working to reduce the number of embryos in storage.
Speaking of the embryo transfer, Gordon said: “We have certain guiding principles, and they’re coming from our faith. Every embryo deserves a chance at life and that the only embryo that cannot result in a healthy baby is the embryo not given the opportunity to be transferred into a patient.”
No word about the other two embryos. Lindsay said she had no plans to make history — Thaddeus is the oldest baby ever born. She just wanted a baby. Because of scientific advancements, wanting a baby might now create situations that we are probably not meant to create.
Ericka Andersen talked with me last week about what it’s like to struggle with infertility, take advantage of IVF, and then realize, after the fact, the full impact of what IVF entails.
She and her husband are paying for the monthly frozen storage of children they will likely never raise.
Ericka talked honestly about the pain — and warned that the existence of embryo adoption is not a moral pass for IVF or an act of charity. It’s something she’s grateful for, however.
As Ericka and I discussed, faith gives us the confidence that God writes straight with crooked lines. But Thaddeus didn’t just come to be last week, or even when he was adopted. He had been frozen for three decades. And whatever is happening or has happened with those other two embryos — we are talking about human lives.
I’ve lived three decades worth of failures and successes — things I have been surprised and delighted by and things I wish I could have skipped over or could undo — since those unnamed embryos were created. Thanks be to God now that little Thaddeus has been born and will get his chance at life. Not all embryos — maybe not even two of his siblings — will.