Breakpoint
Author: John Stonestreet and Dr. Timothy D. Padgett
In a recent exchange on X, Hannah Strege, “the world’s very first snowflake baby” was told by @RoryLS,
“There’s no such thing as ‘embryo adoption.’ Embryos are property, not people. You were not ‘adopted’ as an embryo, you were donated property. You might as well argue that a pebble has human rights.”
Hannah’s story as “Snowflake #1” has been told in various media outlets. She was born in December of 1998, but she had been conceived far earlier, deemed a “leftover” or “excess” embryo from an IVF process. Her parents, who were struggling with infertility, sought the counsel of Christian leaders about the ethics of adopting embryos and giving them a chance to be born and live life outside of the freezer.
As she put it in an article:
I was a frozen embryo, one of perhaps hundreds of thousands of them at the time, created via an in vitro fertilization industry unregulated and out of control. But I was fortunate. I was the first frozen embryo ever adopted. Before I had a name, I was assigned a number, not an identity.
In-Vitro Fertilization has created a moral crisis. There are now as many as 1.5 million frozen embryos in the U.S. alone. Many of these will remain frozen or simply tossed out. In the UK alone, an estimated 130,000 embryos have been thrown in the trash since 1991.
At the heart of the crisis, a crisis made worse by the normalization of IVF and other artificial reproductive technologies, is what Hannah Strege noted in her response to the X user:
And there it is. When your defense of IVF requires looking at a living human being and saying “you were property,” you may want to reconsider which side of the ethical argument you’re standing on. I was never property. I was somebody’s child.
Hannah has now dedicated her life to advocating for a truth that many have intentionally forgotten. As Dr. Seuss put it, “A person’s a person no matter how small.” Each and every human being carries unique value and priceless worth, from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. The denial of the humanity of the unborn lies at the root of much evil in our world, from abortion to calling people like Hannah “property” on social media.
Whenever someone claims that the unborn, including embryos, do not count as fully human, we must be prepared to challenge it. Ask the one who made the claim what difference there is between the person he or she is now and the embryo he or she once was that would justify killing it? Or in the case of IVF, locking the embryo in a freezer or donating the embryo to science.
The only differences there are do not change our value. Just remember “SLED,” an acronym that stands for Size, Level of development, Environment, and Degree of dependence. Our value is never dependent on our size or location. Humans are always developing and always dependent on others. The fact that an embryo is small, frozen, dependent and still developing makes it no less a baby and no less a human being.
IVF, as it is commonly practiced, dehumanizes more embryos than are born, by treating human beings as “excess” and “unwanted” property. We’ve heard that kind of thinking before. In fact, we hear it every time a tyrant or particular group of people wants to oppress or destroy another group of people. Once we push past the special pleading and sentimentality, we will find the same reasoning behind current IVF practices. For now, you can find that quiet part said out loud on X to Hannah Strege.
Thankfully, she knows better and is more than able to push back on the lies said about her. As she recently tweeted out:
The fertility industry once had the power to decide whether I stayed frozen, was discarded, or got a chance at life. I grew up. That frozen embryo has a voice now. And I intend to make the industry very uncomfortable with what she has to say.