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  Conception technologies give rise to ethical concerns (Pt. 4) The number of embryos can be just as vexing a topic when they don't go into a woman as when they do. Tens of thousands are stored inside plastic straws in freezers of liquid nitrogen around the country because couples don't use them all during in vitro. If a woman has enough eggs to produce, say, eight seemingly healthy embryos with her husband, the couple would typically opt to implant half and freeze the rest. The leftovers can be a big help to a couple that either fails its first in vitro attempt or wants more than one child, but the embryos can become a battleground in custody disputes worthy of the new millenium. New Jersey and New York both have legal cases pending in which a divorcing couple is warring over the fate of embryos frozen during happier times. The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in the first such case publicized nationally that the ex-husband had a right to destroy the divorced couple's embryos so he could avoid becoming a father against his will. The embryo cases don't even begin to tell the potential legal complexities of advanced reproduction. Perhaps nothing illustrates those better than the story of little Jaycee Louise Buzzanca, born in 1995 in Orange County, California. John and Luanne Buzzanca hired a surrogate to carry and deliver Jaycee, who was conceived with anonymous donor sperm and eggs. Then the Buzzancas divorced before she was born. A court case arose from John Buzzanca's quest to be exempted from any child support payments for Jaycee, who lives with Luanne. The judge who first reviewed Jaycee's messy origins ruled she had no legal parents. She was a legal orphan whom five people helped create, a sad status rather unlike any of the billions of children born prior to her in history. An appeals court overruled the decision in March, declaring both Buzzancas became legal parents by hiring the surrogate who gave birth. John owes $386 a month in support. In other court cases, survivors of a dead man battled over the rights to his frozen sperm; and one couple tried to turn their deceased daughter into a deceased mother by hiring a surrogate to receive the embryos their daughter left behind, which only resulted in the surrogate's miscarriage. There are also cases of surrogates battling for custody of children with the parents who hired them. And in a disturbing twist in Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania three years ago, a bachelor paid a surrogate and clinic to provide him with a child, whom he killed within six weeks by beating and shaking. "It's striking that someone who wants to use a surrogate mother undergoes no evaluation, but a couple who wants to adopt a child has to prove its case to a judge in 49 states," observed Glenn McGee, director of the reproductive ethics program at the University of Pennsylvania. Most such thorny issues of new reproduction methods are being left to states to decide individually. Pennsylvania, like most, has yet to address them. The American Bar Association has a committee aiming this year to propose model legislation that could provide states with a better legal guide than they've had. The ABA, however, is no leader itself. Illinois attorney Joseph Gitlin, co-chairman of the human reproduction and genetics committee, noted that the national association took no action on previous recommendations to address surrogacy and frozen embryo disputes. "Anytime you get into reproduction and human life, you get into sensitive areas with a lot of religious and moral issues," Gitlin said, but they "need immediate attention because it is totally uncontrolled. "We used to say, 'Don't worry, trust good old doc,' but you can't do that. Good old doc may be a mad scientist."
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