LIBERTY, Missouri - Lara and Justin Kruse, a Liberty couple, have been married for eight years now. Several years into their marriage they started trying to have a child. The Kruses say they were unsuccessful because of infertility problems.
However, their issues didn’t dampen their dream of one day having a family. Justin explains, “We just kind of told ourselves that God’s not giving us something that we wouldn’t handle.”
So, the couple tried a new avenue. They got well into the traditional adoption process twice only to have both fall through. Lara says it was devastating.
However, in 2007, the Kruse clan more than doubled. Lara was pregnant with twins: Lucy and Nora.
The girls were adopted as embryos, left over fertilized eggs from another couple’s attempt at in vitro fertilization. “Ours were a local family from the Kansas City area,” Justin said, “And they had three frozen embryos that they donated or put up for adoption. Those are the ones that we got.”
Adoption and Fertility Resources Director Kris Probasco introduced them to the process. The Kruses told NBC Action News’ Beth Vaughn that at that point they knew nothing about embryo adoption.
Probasco said, “The child is not going to cure their infertility, a child's going to give them an opportunity to become parents.”
In her eight years of working with embryo adoption, she’s placed about 100 embryos with local families. Probasco says some women want to be mothers and others want to be pregnant so this type of adoption offers both.
Lara had accepted the fact that she’d never get to experience pregnancy. She says, “I never expected to be pregnant after all of our infertility struggles so to be pregnant with twins was just such a blessing.”
Embryo Transfer
The Kruse’s embryos were thawed at Shawnee Mission Medical Center . Only two out of the three survived that process. Both were transferred to Lara’s uterus which was the start of their family.
Dr. Dan Stewart handled the medical side of the adoption. He says, "Once the embryos are out of my hand, literally and figuratively, my job is done. Mother Nature has to do all the other parts of the process."
Stewart says for many couples embryo adoption is a last resort. He says he works with many who have tried every type of fertility treatment but do not want to try IVF.
Plus, transferring embryos allows the adoptive mother some peace of mind, "With a donated embryo, you have direct control over how well you take care of yourself during the pregnancy."
According to Stewart, the viability of any donated embryo depends largely on the age of the genetic mother and how ago it was created. He adds, “How long can we keep an embryo frozen for is still unknown."
Probasco says only half of the embryos she’s placed have led to pregnancies.
Those risks and unanswered questions leave embryo adoptive parents with a number of unanswered questions.
The Questions
Bio-ethicist and UMKC professor Wayne Vaught says reproductive technologies are one of the most controversial issues in the world of ethics.
He says adoptive parents must make sure to have informed consent at the front of their minds, “They've been frozen for some period of time and then transferred so all of these things can impact the likelihood of achieving a pregnancy.”
A Call to Action
If unwanted embryos from IVF aren’t donated for adoption or research, Vaught says, they’re destroyed.
Those limited options have ignited pro-life advocates into action. Vaught explains, “For some, if you consider the moment of conception to be the point of time that you have a person, than IVF creates a moral dilemma because you're basically creating eight to twelve people, getting two and then destroying the rest.”
The Kruse family says that is a big part of why they like to share their story, “To let other people know about the possibility so other frozen embryos can have a chance at life."
Concerns
Probasco says there are currently about 500,000 frozen embryos. Only 10% of those are considered for donation and adoption.
Vaught says there are growing concerns about genetic identity. According to Dr. Stewart, there are embryos from one genetic family that have been used for adoptions in three different local families.
Vaught and Stewart agree that examples like this have raised questions about the risk for incest as adopted embryo children start dating.
However, Probasco’s organization and other adoption agencies are working to create a national registry that could help avoid that problem. At least six other countries have registries in place already. So far, nothing official has been set up in the U.S. but Probasco is hopeful a registry will be created soon.
Midwest couples, traditionally conservative, have been slow to donate so most donated embryos either come from the east or west coast. Embryos are oftentimes sent overnight by FedEx or UPS to where a hospital near where the adoptive parents live.
Who Can Adopt Embryos?
The option of embryo adoption isn't open to
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