Conceiving Christian America: Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics 9781479818648

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface: Staging Embryos
Introduction: Saving Embryos
Interlude: Coming to Terms
1. Life after IVF
2. Embryo Saviorism
3. Generation
4. Unselection
5. Making America Uterine Again
Conclusion: Life after Roe
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

Conceiving Christian America

Anthrop olo gies of American Medicine: Culture, P ower, and Practice General Editors: Paul Brodwin, Michele Rivkin-­Fish, and Susan Shaw Transnational Reproduction: Race, Kinship, and Commercial Surrogacy in India Daisy Deomampo Unequal Coverage: The Experience of Health Care Reform in the United States Edited by Jessica Mulligan and Heide Castañeda The New American Servitude: Political Belonging among African Immigrant Home Care Workers Cati Coe War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Edited by Catherine Lutz and Andrea Mazzarino Inequalities of Aging: Paradoxes of Independence in American Home Care Elana D. Buch Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth Dána-­Ain Davis Living on the Spectrum: Autism and Youth in Community Elizabeth Fein Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals Jill A. Fisher Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs Marcia C. Inhorn Violence that Never Heals: The Lifelong Effects of Intimate Partner Violence for Immigrant Women Allison Bloom Conceiving Christian America: Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics Risa Cromer

Conceiving Christian America Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics

Risa Cromer

NEW YORK UNIVERSIT Y PRESS New York

N EW YOR K U N I V ER SI T Y PR E S S New York www.nyupress.org © 2023 by New York University All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cromer, Risa, author. Title: Conceiving Christian America : embryo adoption and reproductive politics / Risa Cromer. Description: New York : New York University Press, [2023] | Series: Anthropologies of American medicine : culture, power, and practice | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022051825 | ISBN 9781479818587 (hardback) | ISBN 9781479818594 (paperback) | ISBN 9781479818617 (ebook) | ISBN 9781479818648 (ebook other) Subjects: LCSH: Frozen human embryos—Moral and ethical aspects. | Human reproductive technology—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Human embryo—Transplantation—Moral and ethical aspects. | Fertilization in vitro, Human. | Adoption—Religious aspects— Christianity. | Adoption—Moral and ethical aspects. Classification: LCC RG135 .C76 2023 | DDC 176—dc23/eng/20230228 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022051825 This book is printed on acid-­free paper, and its binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Also available as an ebook

For my parents

Contents

Preface: Staging Embryos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Introduction: Saving Embryos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Interlude: Coming to Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 1. Life after IVF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Interlude: Claiming Adoption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 2. Embryo Saviorism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Interlude: American Seed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 3. Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Interlude: Waiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 4. Unselection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129 Interlude: A Warm Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .163 5. Making America Uterine Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169 Interlude: Supreme Appeal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Conclusion: Life after Roe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .219 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .223 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .253 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .281 About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .295

Preface Staging Embryos

A few weeks after the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn half a century of federally protected rights to abortion, I received an e-­newsletter from Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency. The agency’s president penned a statement responding to the ruling. “As survivors of the abortion holocaust,” it began, “a reversal of Roe is the answer to a prayer we have prayed our entire lives in which we have seen one third of our generation perish.” Emboldened by the landmark victory, he used rhetoric common among pro-­life activists to praise the overturning of Roe v. Wade. This was a markedly different tone for a newsletter that did not typically discuss abortion but rather promoted “life” through the practice of embryo adoption.1 As it happened, 2022 marked a quarter of a century since the agency started the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program—­the world’s first of its kind. “Celebrate Snowflakes!” the same newsletter exclaimed. “25 years of frozen embryos brought to life!” It featured the story of a white donor couple, pictured holding their two children, promoting embryo adoption as a “blessing.” It also listed the names and photos of sixteen babies recently born—­tallied as a measure of the program’s “celebration of life.” In step with the newsletter’s usual tenor, the agency president praised its “strong pro-­life position” for having “pioneered the field of embryo adoption” and “advocated for the personhood of embryos.” The coinciding stories in Nightlight’s newsletter make clear that opposing abortion rights and celebrating the birth of once-­frozen embryos have become aligned efforts. The newsletter landed in my inbox because I had been ethnographically investigating the practice of embryo adoption for the past fifteen years. Embryo adoption is a family-­making process developed by white ix

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evangelicals that facilitates the donation of frozen embryos unused after in vitro fertilization (IVF). Promoted by eight programs in the United States, this practice relies on recipients who are willing to parent any children born from procedures that transfer thawed embryos into their uteruses. Embryo adoption shares many features with what is more commonly known as embryo donation—­a form of assisted reproduction also involving the legal transfer of embryos, classified as personal property, between fertility patients for procreative use—­but embryo adoption differs in consequential ways. It wields pro-­life rhetoric and the requirements common in Christian adoption to fulfill its expressed mission of “saving” embryos. Yet, a closer look inside the world of embryo adoption reveals how this novel form of family-­making advances the ambitions of the US Christian Right far beyond abortion rights and promotions of “life.” Understanding the political prayers of embryo adoption proponents, some of which were “answered” by the Dobbs decision, requires returning to one of the earliest moments when the practice of embryo adoption garnered national attention. *** I first encountered embryo adoption through media coverage in 2005, when then-­President George W. Bush put families forged through the practice on the national stage. On May 24, 2005, the president held a press conference featuring twenty-­one children born through the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program. During Bush’s presidency, he repeatedly gave embryo adoption—­its rhetoric, its advocates, and its goals—­the national spotlight. On that day in 2005, President Bush brought Snowflakes families to DC to dramatize his opposition to an embryonic stem cell funding bill that was gaining bipartisan support in Congress. The congressional bill arose out of mounting national enthusiasm for a pathbreaking technology that had captured the world’s attention in 1998. That year, biologist Dr. James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin led a team in establishing the first human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines made from donated IVF embryos.2 This historic feat was funded by a private biotech company because of a decades-­long ban on US federal funding for research involving the destruction of human embryos. Reports

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circulated quickly about hESCs’ tremendous potential to “save lives” by treating debilitating conditions like cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and spinal cord injuries.3 Harold Varmus, then-­director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), told the US Senate, “This research has the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine.”4 Science magazine declared stem cells the “breakthrough of the year.”5 Scientists lobbied the US government to lift the ban so that the nascent technology could realize its promises, while critics decried research on human embryos using taxpayer dollars. Thomson’s announcement arrived as the presidential election was ramping up, thrusting frozen embryos into the middle of high-­profile politics. Histories of this moment describe it as the “embryo wars.”6 In 1999, President Bill Clinton became the first president to officially earmark federal monies for research involving IVF embryos. When announcing new funding guidelines for hESC research with cell lines already created, Clinton commented on its “potentially staggering benefits”: “We cannot walk away from the potential to save lives and improve lives.”7 From the campaign trail, the next administration promised to chart a radically different course. Soon after taking office in 2001, President George W. Bush halted federal review of hESC grant applications and rescinded the funding guidelines. In his first presidential address in August of that year, he described hESC research as “one of the most profound [issues] of our time.”8 He expressed a commitment to saving lives, though believed it important to balance the lives of sick children and disabled adults with frozen embryos. He then announced an executive policy restricting federal funding—­though not state or private funds—­to a narrow set of a few dozen existing stem cell lines “where the life-­and-­death decision has already been made.” He argued that this approach would not “sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos,” which is necessary because each embryo, “like a snowflake . . . is unique, with the unique genetic potential of an individual human being.” On the morning of the anticipated House vote on legislation undermining President Bush’s position, he doubled down. The press conference was held in the East Room of the White House, where media, supportive legislators, and upwards of eighty embryo adoption advocates and their children—­who mobilized to be present within two weeks’ notice—­gathered in the audience.9 Behind the podium during President

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Bush’s remarks stood six white evangelical parents—­four mothers and two fathers—­holding their five white children. Other Snowflakes families and staff, including Ron Stoddart, the Christian lawyer who forged the first embryo adoption agreement, and Lori Maze, the program director, looked on from their seats. Children on stage sucked their thumbs, held fast to stuffed animals, clapped happily along during audience ovations, and fidgeted quietly near their parents’ legs. Some in the audience wore t-­shirts stating, “This embryo was not discarded,” or donned “Former Embryo” stickers. Intermittent sounds of children cooing and crying were audible throughout the president’s remarks. “I just met with twenty-­one remarkable families,” President Bush began, referring to a meet-­and-­greet held in the State Dining Room just prior to the press conference.10 “Each of them has answered the call to ensure that our society’s most vulnerable members are protected and defended at every stage of life.” He acknowledged the “grave moral issues at stake” in the “complex debate over embryonic stem cell research,” and framed his executive policy (which the congressional funding bill sought to override) as “advance[ing] stem cell research in a responsible way.” He commended Snowflakes donors and recipients for choosing a “life-­affirming” alternative to discarding or donating their embryos for scientific research, and explained the significance of his guests for the nation: “The children here today are reminders that every human life is a precious gift of matchless value . . . [and] that there is no such thing as a spare embryo.” In closing, he invited all attendees next door for cake to celebrate the birthdays of two “snowflake” children present that day. A year later, when officializing his first presidential veto of the congressionally approved funding bill for human embryonic stem cell research, Bush again invited Snowflakes families into the national spotlight to stand symbolically behind him and his historic pen stroke. *** I missed these press conferences when they aired live on national television. At the time, I was a novice community organizer for reproductive rights paying close attention to what was then called the Bush administration’s “war on women.”11 Part of my job involved talking with residents in politically conservative counties in the Pacific Northwest about the spate of local and federal activities hindering access to contraception and

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abortion. Of the issues I discussed with people, ranging from Supreme Court nominees to legislation conferring unprecedented status to fetuses, the so-­called embryo wars—­and embryo adoption specifically—­ were not among them. Admittedly, they seemed rather distant from the frontal assaults on reproductive rights that would earn Bush recognition as the nation’s “most pro-­life president.”12 Not long after these press conferences aired, I left field directing for field research through graduate training in cultural anthropology. My goal was to expand my professional skill set for advancing reproductive rights and justice, which remain deep commitments of mine.13 Learning how to think anthropologically has powerfully transformed my understanding of reproductive politics by revealing them to be far more complex than often construed in politics and media. From the outset, anthropological scholarship encouraged me to interrogate simple narratives, such as the typical representations of abortion in US politics that cast multidimensional figures and issues in black and white terms. In doing so, anthropology nurtured my curiosities about the spectrum of people’s lived experiences beyond binary narratives. Feminist anthropology, in particular, modeled how to approach reproduction as political, which means not merely as a biological process but as a material and metaphoric site constitutive of broad political processes through which we can trace how systems of power work and persist.14 This framework came through clearly for me in feminist analyses of abortion politics in the 1980s, when debates were framed through rhetoric about the status of fetal life. In talking to pro-­life and pro-­choice activists, feminist social scientists found that their underlying concerns were actually about changing gender roles in the context of neoliberalism and the shifting place of motherhood in society.15 Importantly, they showed how the politicization of abortion transformed it into a strategic symbol for a range of political beliefs, through which abortion became far more than a medical procedure.16 Uncoincidentally, I first noticed the figure of the frozen IVF embryo in the scholarship of a feminist anthropologist—­Marilyn Strathern—­ who took an interest in US divorce court proceedings that struggled to classify embryos as persons or personal property. Becoming curious about how embryos ended up in legal limbo, I delved deeper into the case law, where I encountered expert opinions from bioethicists,

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theologians, and fertility clinicians. I also read about the historical circumstances that led to the booming US fertility industry that flourished within a deregulatory environment known globally as the “Wild West” of assisted reproduction.17 Courts were burdened with classifying in vitro embryos through case law without legal guidance because the government’s distinctively deregulatory approach to IVF meant that state and federal regulations were largely non-­existent. I took all of this in with acute awareness that state-­based antiabortion lawmakers were successfully passing hundreds of bills granting personhood status to in utero fetuses. In such a social, legal, and political context, I wondered what the fates of frozen embryos might mean for reproductive rights and justice, especially as IVF embryos became embroiled in national dramas, as they did at the turn of the twenty-­first century. *** To explore this question, I launched an ethnographic research project spanning twenty-­seven non-­consecutive months over the course of 2008–­2014 that focused on the political afterlives of frozen embryos. This book presents a portion of that research, examining embryo adoption as it came to be practiced and promoted in the United States. Notably, this is the first book-­length work to give significant ethnographic attention to embryo adoption by considering the dynamic lives, hopes, and challenges of people who make and manage frozen embryo futures. Studying the afterlives of frozen embryos is invariably a multi-­sited affair. Embryo adoption programs served as the main research sites for this project, through which I traced flows of people, things, ideas, practices, and resources, as well as embryos. “Blossom” is a pseudonym I use in this book to describe a single program that bears qualities of multiple programs I encountered over years of research. Like Blossom, “West Fertility” is a pseudonym for a mixture of three fertility clinics where I conducted ethnographic research between 2011 and 2014. I represent Blossom and West Fertility through composite narratives that combine and present data from a variety of sources as if coming from a single source. The names of interlocutors who participated in the study are also pseudonyms. When citing publicly published data, such as quotes from newspaper articles, I maintain the names of professionals and or-

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ganizations who self-­identify in them. This approach allows me to include more complex, situated, and accessible stories based in evidentiary truths while helping to protect the anonymity of potentially identifiable organizations, professionals, and program participants.18 To learn about embryo adoption, I utilized three main research methods common to ethnographers: participant observation, qualitative interviews, and textual analysis. Ethnographic methods provided a robust glimpse inside the institutional spaces where professionals and program participants discursively produced IVF embryos, transformed them into contentious social subjects, and aligned their activities to ambitious political agendas. My initial entry into the world of embryo adoption was granted by one program’s director of Public Affairs. I called her in 2008 to introduce myself as an anthropology graduate student interested in embryo adoption and to discuss the possibility of conducting a pilot study in their program during summer 2008. She was delighted to learn of my interest and we began planning for my first six-­week visit. All ethnographers are subject to the goodwill of gatekeepers, as Marcia Inhorn writes about research in fertility clinics, and I am grateful for this director’s goodwill.19 There are a few reasons why I think I was welcomed at the outset and throughout the research period. In the wake of sizable national publicity for embryo adoption, staff had become accustomed to talking to journalists and researchers about their work. Even “bad press,” the Public Affairs director told me, had attracted new participants to their program. By the time I pitched my project, she had already helped a handful of other student-­researchers based at evangelical universities and a few MA-­and PhD-­level researchers, typically by posting survey or interview requests to their client listservs. Notably, none had conducted ethnographic research within the program, as I planned to do. Having an anthropologist show up each day to work alongside program staff was unprecedented at the agency, but, as I learned, embracing “outsiders” was not; it is fundamental to what evangelicals and adoption professionals do. As a US ethnographer studying “at home,” I was acutely aware of my insider status on some occasions and outsider status on others. Unlike most embryo adoption participants, I have not personally experienced infertility, used IVF, participated in adoption, or married. Nor do I, like

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most staff and participants, identify as Christian, evangelical, heterosexual, or pro-­life. I was prepared to discuss all of these positionalities, though none more so than the fact that I did not share their pro-­life commitments. Yet, when staff and program participants did not raise it for discussion, I followed suit. A couple of interlocutors made oblique queries about my leanings. Sitting at the dining table of the first embryo recipient I interviewed, she asked me if my dissertation committee would approve of my research. I replied that they were supportive of the project and would assess me based on my analyses, which seemed to satisfy her. I sense in her question that she perceived me as an “insider,” inferring that my interest in embryo adoption meant that I was like her—­politically supportive of pro-­life politics and evangelical values—­and wondered if my graduate advisors were supporters too. I suspect others perceived me as an “insider” for showing sincere interest in embryo adoption (a fact that made me suspicious to professionals at RESOLVE, an infertility advocacy organization, and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine), and for making significant efforts to mirror their language—­a topic I discuss in depth later. While both are common qualities of ethnographic research, I realized that in the context of highly politicized “embryo wars” involving intense semantic battles, my interest alone may have conveyed to embryo adoption advocates that I shared their worldviews. Monica, the Blossom program director who became my closest interlocutor, once told me that a new staff member asked her if I was pro-­life. I asked how she responded. She said she told him that she did not know if I was pro-­life but did assure him that program participants enjoyed connecting with me and that the staff welcomed my presence. When I asked if she wanted to know my views, she said no and we continued one of our regular post-­work walks together. I sense that she preferred not to discuss something potentially divisive or intrusive to our working relationship. Until that moment, I had felt ethically unsure about omitting my orientation to abortion politics when talking with embryo adoption proponents. At least with Monica, I came to see that leaving my pro-­ choice politics unannounced allowed for the possibility of genuine curiosity and conversation between political rivals. Monica surprised me in many ways and defied stereotypes of white pro-­life evangelical activists.

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I wonder if she, too, was surprised by some of what I felt were our shared values, interests, and social justice commitments. I suspect that most of the 150 participants in this study did not inquire about my positionalities because they did not matter to them or because I was perceived as sharing their views. I am certain that my whiteness, cisgender presentation, young age, college education, and citizenship status afforded me ease of access to their workplaces and ideas. These parts of my identity mirrored demographics of many program staff, which seemed to temper ways I stuck out as a non-­Christian and an anthropologist. More likely, I did not seem to pose a threat, a positionality that allowed me to conduct my research in those spaces during that period of time. No matter how I was viewed, I expect that all participants used their own perceptive knowledge and evaluations about me to inform how, when, and what they shared in our conversations. After my first summer visit, which involved dozens of interviews with program staff and participants, I coordinated to return a few years later for more extensive research that would take place over twenty-­seven non-­consecutive months. Monica became my main contact for the duration of field research. She and I worked out the practicalities of being on-­site for weeks at a time, such as what files I could access and where I should sit. She was responsible for my presence in the agency and was consistently generous with her time and ideas. I commuted to the office most weekdays and typed up field notes during the workday and at a café afterward while waiting for traffic to slow. I became a regular fixture in what I called the “engine room” of the Blossom program, a windowless office on the second floor of an adoption agency where three staff were stationed: the program manager Monica, the social worker Kathy, and one of a few program assistants. I sat at a table in the middle of the room, where I felt comfortable asking questions about files I was examining or pulling my chair over to look at someone’s computer screen with them. I worked alongside staff with my laptop open and documenting what occurred around me, which was intermixed with conversations and activities like team meetings, embryo matching sessions, and parenting education classes for receiving clients. Overhearing half of a phone conversation served as a prompt for asking about particular program rules. Advice that staff sought from

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each other about a challenging client file allowed me to chime in with clarifying questions. Normal outbursts of surprise, worry, and joy were starting points for stories about their experiences with a particular client. Team members shared their opinions with me about shifts in agency leadership and personal feelings about their job satisfaction. What to them was the mundane stuff of an office illuminated for me how IVF embryos became savable subjects—­a task that involved a dedicated, full-­ time team—­and the broader political ambitions that embryo saviorism propelled. My presence became familiar to the Blossom team as well as other agency staff who would greet me with smiles and questions about how long my stay would be. At the end of lengthy research periods, staff occasionally sent me off with a farewell card. Beyond the office, I participated in community outreach events, such as tabling at fairs, attending annual summer picnics and winter galas, and visiting embryo donors and recipients at their homes scattered around the country. To stay abreast of the broader contexts for the practice of embryo adoption, I attended ten national and regional conferences that attracted professionals on abortion, infertility, adoption, Christian politics, and embryo donation. As I developed relationships with the Blossom team, I spent time with staff outside of work. Monica became a primary interlocutor with whom I spent the most time debriefing our days while taking long walks, cooking dinner with her husband, and occasionally going out dancing. Sarah, one of the program assistants, became an exceptional interlocutor who, unprompted, kept notes about topics from her day that she believed I would be excited to hear about. She and I kept up regular phone dates between my visits, during which she updated me about ongoing cases and programmatic shifts. As my conversations with embryo adoption professionals veered organically from work tasks to personal gripes or family drama, clarity about what was on and off the record was sometimes blurred. In writing this book, I have erred on the side of caution by excluding personal stories and opinions in an effort to avoid breaching the trust of interlocutors. Embryo adoption would not exist without donors and recipients willing to share embryos. In the second research method I employed, sixty-­ three recipients (representing 50 couples) and twenty-­seven donors (representing 23 couples) shared generously with me their experiences

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with embryo adoption through formal interviews. Their perspectives animate, as well as complicate, my observations within embryo adoption settings. I found program participants primarily through recommendations from staff, announcements to program listservs, word of mouth, and at community events. At the time of our interviews, participants were at various stages of the embryo adoption process, from completing the initial application; matching or re-­matching phase; awaiting embryo shipment, pregnancy tests, and delivery; to many years after donations were completed and children were—­and were not—­born. Participants lived around the country, which meant that most interviews were conducted over the phone, with the exception of about a dozen that were held in homes or nearby cafés. I especially enjoyed opportunities to visit people where they lived. A donor couple based in a high-­end neighborhood in Chicago cracked open a bottle of wine for our evening conversation. A recipient couple, one of whom was a frozen dough scientist, cooked a frozen pizza that we ate together while musing about the wonders of freezing human embryos. A recipient family in California vacationing at the beach invited me inside their fifth-­wheel trailer for a chat over late afternoon snacks. Such occasions helped me get to know people in the spaces and terms that made them feel comfortable. Formal interviews typically lasted at least an hour, though many continued for several more and were spaced over numerous days. Interview recordings captured sounds of life happening in the background: dishes being washed, babies crying, children roughhousing, car turn signals clicking. Participants shed tears while describing their infertility, pregnancy losses, disrupted adoptions, grief following donation, and, sometimes, answered prayers. I interviewed everyone who expressed interest in talking with me, even after reaching the ambiguous threshold that qualitative researchers call “saturation,” when core themes appear consistently in each subsequent account. It mattered to me to receive the stories they wanted to share, and I found each one to contain something unique. While some responded to questions in what felt like well-­rehearsed narratives, others were telling their story in full to another person for the first time. More than a few shuffled through filing boxes to jog their memories, sometimes emailing me copies of letters written to prospective donors or recipients or sending links to their personal blogs.

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I welcomed opportunities to connect with participants beyond formal interviews whenever possible. One couple who lived near me invited me along on their entire embryo adoption process, from completing requirements for a home study, contemplating matches with prospective donors, attending clinic appointments, participating in their first baby shower, to celebrating birthdays. I attended church with another recipient couple and their twelve children and joined in backyard BBQs. A friendly embryo recipient whom I met at an outreach event invited me to homemade dinners with her husband and son, as well as to her fertility clinic appointments for her upcoming frozen embryo transfer procedure. As a result of these informal yet intimate activities, I have been included on some interlocutors’ annual Christmas card lists for many years. Their cards often contain images of their families, Bible verses, and, occasionally, typed letters summarizing their past year. While I am not a contributor to Christmas card culture myself, I have always been touched to receive their annual missives. A final component of research for this book involved gathering documents of various kinds. I cast a wide net, starting with internal program materials (e.g., client files, program databases, legal forms, embryology reports, applications) and expanding to public-­facing promotional materials (e.g., brochures, websites, webinars, videos, props, newsletters, published articles, news coverage, books published by participants) and the words and writings of advocates (e.g., religious sermons, Bible study guides, legal arguments, medical research articles, speeches from elected officials). For ethnographers, documents are valuable intermediaries between systems of meaning and material practices.20 I came to think of frozen embryos in embryo adoption in much the same way—­as material and metaphorical intermediaries traversing diverse institutions and ideologies as they are transformed by, and transforming of, them. Together these conversations, observations, and documents provide the basis for analyses presented in this book. *** Over the course of my research, embryo adoption came into view as not simply a family-­making process or, as President Bush claimed, a pro-­life alternative to human embryonic stem cell research. Rather, I came to see the practice of embryo adoption as a strategic site for advancing the

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political goals of the Christian Right. This becomes clear by listening to what embryo adoption means to people involved in making and managing frozen embryo futures, and noticing connections between their ideas, activities, and aspirations with movements for conceiving a more Christian America. Coming to see embryo adoption in this light expanded my understanding of reproductive politics as more constitutive of social life, institutions of power, and systems of meaning than I had realized when I was a novice community organizer and early anthropologist. Invariably, I have also come to see my first impressions of embryo adoption with new eyes. Revisiting the moment when President Bush brought Snowflakes families to national attention makes more evident the visual and discursive strategies that are used to frame embryo adoption—­and the Christian “family values” it represents—­as saviors of the nation. In the president’s remarks, he cast the white heterosexually married couples standing behind him, holding children in their arms, as “responsible” users of assisted reproduction who brought parental compassion and protective vigilance to the “moral dilemma” of life after IVF. He symbolically aligned their dutiful care with rhetoric of respect, morality, protection, and dignity that he also used to describe his effort to walk, but not “violate,” an “ethical line.” Absent from view, yet outsized in rhetorical presence, was the unnamed figure around which all of these activities were organized: the frozen embryo. Described by the president as a “member of society” at “grave” risk of “destruction,” IVF embryos became figures of white innocence and stand-­ins for Christian America within Bush’s rhetoric, cast as valuable, vulnerable, and worth saving. Images of the Snowflakes families, along with the president’s words, conveyed a specific message to his political base of predominantly white pro-­life evangelicals: The fate of the nation, not merely its embryos, was at stake. To explain how saving embryos came to stand in for saving the potential of a politically righteous nation, this book directs attention away from frozen embryos as such and toward the social forces, historical conditions, and everyday practices that animate them by providing form, meaning, purpose, politics, and, sometimes, futures. ***

xxii | Preface

Without trying, every word printed on these pages has already been politicized. Before sending you deeper in, I am obliged to orient you to my relationship with words. In the opening pages of sociologist Kristin Luker’s classic study of abortion in the United States, she muses about the perils of writing about it: “In political movements, language becomes politicized: a choice of words is a choice of sides.”21 One of the very first insights I gleaned about embryo adoption is that researching and representing it requires navigating fraught discursive terrain. With language itself an active site of strategizing among my interlocutors, few, if any, neutral terms exist to describe what I have learned from them. When in people’s homes and places of work, or in mediated conversations over the phone or email, I strived to mirror their words as well as to inquire about what their words meant to them. In all formal interviews conducted, and many informal conversations, I asked people to explain to me the significance of their terms, like embryo, person, family, property, life, potential, and adoption. Consistent with trends in ethnographic research and writing, I take seriously my interlocutors’ ideas and their word choices. In this book, I foreground how people described their experiences, identities, and perspectives, and differentiate them from my descriptions and analyses. Words in quotations generally indicate that they were voiced by someone else. Sometimes I use quotations to draw analytic attention to language with particular rhetorical intention that seemed to have significance to the user or context. The main deviation from this approach is with “embryo adoption,” “pro-­life,” and “antiabortion,” which are rhetorically charged terms I encountered frequently in my research and writing. Even though I use quotation marks around them in other published materials, I have chosen not to here. Aesthetically, I wish to minimize quotational clutter in the prose, while intellectually and politically acknowledging that quotational defensiveness does not dampen their rhetorical effect. While I often use the terms “pro-­life” and “antiabortion” interchangeably, the practice of embryo adoption makes clear how they are aligned though not always synonymous. As for my descriptions and analyses, I use what I have come to think of as minimally polarizing terms, like embryo (rather than unborn, preborn, frozen baby, fertilized egg), remaining (rather than surplus, excess, leftover), and recipient (versus adopter, parent). I say minimally because

Preface | xxiii

these terms bothered some of my interlocutors and may bother readers. I describe paid employees of embryo adoption programs as either program staff or professionals. Those whom the Blossom program calls “adoptive parents” and “genetic parents,” I call recipients and donors, program participants, or clients. I sometimes jointly describe program staff and clients as advocates, supporters, proponents, and promoters. I reserve the terms mothers, fathers, and parents for people who are raising children who came into their care by various means. Gendered descriptions of people as women or men can be assumed cis, as none of my respondents identified to me as trans, genderqueer, or nonbinary. Racial and religious identities presented capture how people identified themselves to me in formal interviews or informal conversations. Researching and representing embryo adoption is, in this moment in history, unavoidably political and the words I have used thus far are already entangled in their politics. Like other feminist scholars of conservative social groups and movements, I am giving ink to political, moral, legal, and social views that I oftentimes do not share. Writing in this manner calls me to be “at risk” to the words and worlds under inquiry in this book. Being at risk, as feminist scholar Donna Haraway suggests, does not require taking sides in a predetermined way or dispensing with one’s political commitments. Rather, being at risk invites our “practical and theoretical attention” and commitment to “remaining mindful and accountable.”22 This is a mode I embraced in writing this book in anticipation of the United States becoming a post-­Roe nation, and is an invitation I extend to my readers as we consider these political landscapes together. Acknowledging the significance and limits of all language is one way we may be at risk with the reproductive politics of saving embryos—­and saviorism in all its forms—­within which no words are without politics.

Introduction Saving Embryos

Western medical wisdom suggests that embryos are biological entities created through fertilization—­a physiological process that joins eggs and sperm to form a genetically unique entity that may develop into a fetus or born child. For most of human history fertilization has occurred within bodies bearing uteruses, though the advent of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) nearly half a century ago expanded embryo-­making to include the location of the laboratory. There, experts use techniques to transform fertilization into a stepwise process involving the skilled manipulation of in vitro cells in highly controlled environments. Pairing in vitro fertilization (IVF) with cryopreservation—­a technology that preserves cellular life in extremely cold temperatures—­a llows for lab-­made embryos to be held in cold storage for potential future use. A countless number of human embryos currently exist in freezers across the United States—­out of bodies, in extreme cold, between temporalities, beyond social categorization, and, sometimes, embedded in political controversy.1 By the late 1980s, IVF and cryopreservation became mainstream offerings in the rapidly growing US fertility market that is now one of the most well-­established, loosely regulated, and highly lucrative fertility industries in the world. Embryos made in vitro and amassed without further plans for personal procreative use attracted unprecedented public attention in 1998 following pathbreaking news about human embryonic stem cell lines derived from donated IVF embryos.2 Weeks later, in December 1998, pro-­life Christians celebrated the birth of the first child through the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program. Soon after these coinciding events, a widely cited report estimating 400,000 embryos in cryo-­storage across the nation made discussions more urgent about what should happen with these 1

2 | Introduction

rapidly accumulating entities. By the turn of the twenty-­first century, the fates of frozen embryos had become the subject of a heated public debate in which embryo adoption advocates came to play a central role. While supporters promote embryo adoption as a solution to the growing accumulation of frozen embryos, this book explores how it advances more ambitious political goals for expanding the influence of conservative Christian values and power. I begin by following feminist scholars in considering how human embryos—­whether created in uteruses or petri dishes, and existing in warm wombs or cold storage—­are not simply biological entities but dynamic cultural figures shaped by the contexts through which they come to exist.3 Because embryos bear diverse social meanings across place and over time, it is difficult to speak of them as singular or stable.4 Instead, I explore how they become socially constructed figures by drawing attention to the discursive strategies wielded in churches, courtrooms, labs, legislatures, and beyond that determine how embryos are socially recognized, if at all. In the “embryo wars” of the twenty-­first century dominated by bioethicists, lawyers, theologians, scientists, clinicians, and lawmakers, debates focused intensely on the social status of embryos: Are they persons, personal property, something deserving special respect, or something else entirely? Excepting the last five decades of activity within the US antiabortion movement, such categorical concerns had not animated popular discussions about embryos earlier in history or elsewhere in the world. A century ago, for instance, scientific knowledge about human embryos featured prominently in US debates about immigration reform, the teaching of evolution in classrooms, and racial politics—­none of which were expressly concerned with the legal categorization of human embryos as property or persons.5 During the same period, scientific efforts to transform aborted embryos into research specimens were uncontroversial and miscarried embryos were not memorialized in the ways pregnancy loss has been scripted as child loss in recent decades.6 In this historical light, fixations on classifying frozen embryos as property or persons make this century’s embryo wars ethnographically curious and ripe for further investigation. Given the various significances embryos bear around the world and over time, feminist scholars emphasize the persistent need to “examine

Introduction | 3

the social dramas to which embryos are made to speak today.”7 I take up their provocation in this book by considering how frozen embryos became a potent figure in recent decades through the practice of embryo adoption. Conceived as a social movement by its advocates, embryo adoption mobilizes elements of white evangelicalism, antiabortion politics, assisted reproductive technologies, and adoption around saving embryos from a society that, it is claimed, has left them literally and figuratively in the cold. The stated goal of embryo adoption programs is to “save” embryos from freezers by finding them “homes,” or receptive uteruses, so that God may realize his plan for each one. Drawing heavily upon white savior rhetoric common in US adoption that construes other people’s children as imperiled innocents without parents or homes, embryo adoption professionals advance a form of embryo saviorism that transforms unused IVF embryos into what they call frozen orphans.8 While “orphan” is not a stable or cross-­culturally salient category, in Western legal contexts the common definition is a child who has lost both parents through death, disappearance, or abandonment. Christian adoption advocates often wield a much looser definition to promote the perception of a growing global orphan crisis and have developed an orphan theology that regards adoption as biblically mandated.9 Embryo adoption advocates employ this strategy when trying to convince participants and broader publics to “adopt” IVF embryos they describe as socially valuable, existentially vulnerable, and deserving of protection, topics I examine at length in chapters 2 and 3.10 An illustrative example comes from testimony to the US Congress during the 2001 hearings about federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. JoAnn Davidson, the first program manager for the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program, described the accrual of embryos in fertility clinics as a tragedy for orphans: These children [embryos] are not a product of some wonderful medical research. They’re a product of the fact that a huge problem exists, that too many embryos have been created. . . . It’s no different than an orphanage, an orphanage that has never been really looked at as a really neat opportunity for somebody to add children to their families. It’s been seen as a travesty that these children [embryos] are not being parented.11

4 | Introduction

JoAnn closed her appeal to legislators with a call for moral action: “We can and ought to save every embryo.” Cast as the nation’s “youngest children,” advocates stage frozen embryos as central actors in political dramas requiring the altruistic care of saviors. Yet ethnographic research within these programs complicates a simple understanding about what “saving embryos” is really about. I frequently encountered the word “saving” in conversations with embryo adoption advocates explaining their work and motivations. “Saving” is generally understood to mean the preservation of something considered valuable.12 The earliest meaning of saving comes from fourth-­century notions of heroic healing efforts that delayed death and protected bodies from disease. In the tenth century, saving evoked Christian themes of rescuing souls from threats of evil, to be welcomed into God’s salvation. By the sixteenth century, saving took on an economic tone, concerning the preservation of financial resources for future use. At base, saving is about protecting something construed as valuable as well as vulnerable. While “saving” bears connotations of nostalgia, stasis, and preservation of the status quo, in embryo adoption it signifies a process of transformation focused on realizing latent potential. This distinction is important for understanding the role of saviorism in embryo adoption, which animates religious nationalist discourses about protecting the US nation from imagined threats while reconfiguring the social order around putatively Christian values. Commentators on this century’s embryo wars have made related observations by suggesting that debates about embryos have acted as “proxies,” “surrogates,” “stand-­ins,” “epiphenomena,” and “symbols” of deep social disagreements in the United States.13 The social issues enlivening embryonic stem cell debates at the turn of the twenty-­first century emphasized gender roles, regional and economic tensions, and the meaning of the individual in society. Embryo saviorism by contrast, brings into view a different set of phenomena that amplifies conservative Christians’ concerns about the nation’s moral order. More than a practical response to America’s frozen embryo supply, embryo adoption operates as a family-­making process focused on conceiving a Christian nation.

Introduction | 5

Blossom At the turn of the twenty-­first century, white pro-­life evangelicals created embryo adoption to forge families using assisted reproduction while promoting the recognition of embryos as rights-­bearing persons. The Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program, the first of its kind, modeled the embryo donation process on domestic adoption to attribute status to embryos as children as well as to allow donors and recipients to play an active role in selecting each other. Soon after its inception, some embryo adoption programs began receiving federal funding to promote their services to US and international clientele. The two largest programs, Snowflakes and the National Embryo Donation Center, have together facilitated the exchange of thousands of frozen embryos and the birth of more than two thousand children to recipient families. This book focuses on activities coordinated in and through the Blossom embryo adoption program, a pseudonymous composite featuring qualities of a handful of programs in which I conducted research. Tim, Blossom’s founder and the director of Evangelical Christian Adoptions agency (ECA, another pseudonym), where Blossom is based, designed the program as a solution to a perceived “problem of valuing life less.” During one of our first conversations in 2008, he said: I think one of the symptoms of that is 500,000 embryos frozen that we, as a society, have commodified because it’s more economical. There’s an attitude in IVF that as long as you are doing it, you might as well make it by the dozen. But life isn’t cheaper by the dozen. Embryo adoption is a movement to remind people that life begins at conception.

The program’s mission of “saving embryos” endeavors, as Tim explained, to “turn the tide” politically in the United States toward “revaluing life.” Advocates like Tim maintain that embryo adoption is a necessary alternative to other options that fertility patients with unused embryos are often presented with after IVF—­discard, long-­term storage, and donation to research—­which advocates say harm embryos through destruction or neglect. Blossom operates from ECA, one of the numerous evangelical adoption agencies in the United States that coordinate conventional

6 | Introduction

adoptions through domestic, international, and foster care. ECA is committed to a “biblically-­driven Christian ministry,” according to Nathan, Tim’s successor, which he described as “uniquely pro-­life.” The agency embraces an “evangelical Christian heritage” by orienting itself around “a biblical definition of family, God’s priority of the family as an image of Himself, and the sanctity of life beginning at conception,” according to its Statement of Faith web page. ECA’s mission is “to share God’s love” by realizing five main goals: (1) help children find loving homes, (2) assist birth parents and embryo donors in making plans for their “children’s” futures, (3) secure permanency for children in foster care, (4) prepare adoptive families, and (5) recognize and advocate for the personhood of “pre-­born children.” The Blossom program exemplifies the fifth goal and puts into practice the agency’s pro-­life politics, or, as Nathan put it: “The embryo adoption program is beyond a mission statement; it’s pro-­life work.” Blossom staff actively enshrine pro-­life politics in their everyday activities. The program’s legal contract, for instance, uses pro-­life language to define frozen embryos as “pre-­born children who are endowed by God with unique characteristics and are entitled to the rights and protection accorded to all children, legally and morally.” Further, it describes donors as “genetic parents” who “become responsible for the lives of pre-­born children in the embryonic stage” and the recipients as “adoptive parents” who “desire to accept the full moral and legal responsibility for parenting the embryos adopted hereunder and the child(ren) born therefrom.” By using familial language in a contract that functions as a legal transfer of property, Blossom imbues participants with parental statuses and responsibilities toward embryos rendered as pre-­born children. Pro-­life politics are also evident in Blossom’s loose criteria for donated embryos when compared to strict quality requirements (e.g., stage, quality, date frozen, freezing method, genetic screening status) for embryos donated through clinic-­based programs. “We consider that every embryo is a potential continued life,” said Kathy, Blossom’s social worker. “We want to give them all a chance.” Blossom accepts all frozen embryos into its program based on the pro-­life premise that all lives are deserving, which means that staff work to match recipients with a variety of embryos representing different developmental stages, clinical

Introduction | 7

grades, and amounts; frozen recently and long ago using different cryopreservation methods; made with egg and sperm donors; commissioned by couples young and old; from donors with communicable diseases and potentially inheritable health conditions, etcetera. “We’re not looking at the embryology report saying, ‘Oh this one’s not really worth saving.’ That’s just horrible to us,” Kathy said. Yet, as we will see in chapter 4, the program’s pro-­life principles of valuing all forms of life fall short in practice when clients approach embryo selection as “shoppers.” Blossom also borrows heavily from adoption discourse by identifying as “child-­centered” in focusing on “finding homes for embryos.” In contrast to anonymous embryo donation programs that, in Tim’s view, invite people to “drop your kids in a black hole,” embryo adoption “recognizes the needs of the donor family, the adoptive family, and of the child in the future.” We use adoption terminology because we think that it is more child-­ focused. Children in the long run are going to do better with adoption language surrounding their birth. We have no problem with using donation language with the donor family, whether it’s “donor family,” “placing family,” “genetic family.” Whatever they are comfortable calling themselves, we’re fine with that. The adopting parents—­if they want to be called the “receiving parents,” “recipient parents,” or “adopting parents,” we’re fine with that. But the child is the one that [sic] is going to have to deal with the circumstances of their conception and birth and we strongly believe in adoption language as it has developed over the years. For instance, a birth mother doesn’t “give up” her baby; she “places” her baby. So all of the things that we [professionals in adoption] have learned that are better for the people and parties involved, we try to emphasize in our program.

“Finding homes for frozen orphans,” as Blossom staff say, involves an enormous amount of work that requires a full-­time team. During my period of research, the Blossom program was staffed by a few key professionals: Monica, the program manager; Kathy, a social worker; and fluctuating program assistants—­all of whom identified as white, college-­educated, evangelical women ranging in age from early twenties to mid-­forties. Born and raised within an hour of ECA, Monica came to

8 | Introduction

the agency soon after college to work the front desk and quickly rose in rank and responsibility. Inspired to work in international adoption after a stint abroad as an au pair for a couple with an adopted daughter from China, Monica agreed to assist with the growing Blossom program. Her program knowledge and professionalism made her the obvious choice as successor when the previous Blossom manager left. Kathy led a robust career as a licensed clinical social worker before coming to ECA, including as the state director of the National Right to Life Committee. A mother and primary caretaker for her toddler, Kathy worked part-­time, initially with birth mothers making placement plans and then with the Blossom program. The agency changed locations during my research, but staff made sure signature decorations from the single-­room office were taken along in the moves. The program office was speckled with images of newborns photographed by Anne Geddes, angel figurines, and flower iconography. A placard gifted to the staff from a client, stating, “Life is fragile, handle with prayer,” rested on a bookshelf. Holiday cards from clients featuring family photos and biblical verses were displayed on the office door every winter. A bright movie poster of Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who hung over the main workstations, with the tagline in bold letters: “A person’s a person no matter how small.” Sarah, a program assistant, maintained a cork board featuring family photos of donating clients to assist the team with weekly matching sessions. Large metal filing cabinets lining the walls contain hundreds of Blossom client files, each brimming with personal letters, family photos, health histories, and matching preferences. Blossom staff serve a clientele from all over the United States and some foreign countries.14 Embryo donors and recipients—­unlike birth and adoptive parents, or donors and fertility patients in other third-­ party reproduction arrangements—­share notable qualities in common. Most have experienced infertility in some way and, due to relatively high socioeconomic status, were able to try IVF or embryo donation to create their families. Most, though not all, are attracted to the “Christian” in the agency’s name and to the program’s explicit pro-­life mission. And most, though not all, identify as white pro-­life evangelicals. Since “white evangelical” describes the bulk of the people I encountered, it is important to briefly address the aspects of this demographic that are most crucial for this research. Notably, white evangelicals have

Introduction | 9

garnered significant scholarly attention in recent decades as one of the most politically influential religious demographics in the United States.15 Once comprising a quarter of the electorate, they experienced a decline in numbers over the past twenty years yet, arguably, a concomitant rise in political influence through the presidential administrations of George W. Bush and Donald Trump.16 Demographically, white evangelicals affiliate heavily with the Republican Party, live in highest concentrations in the US South and lower Midwest, and are the oldest religious group in the nation, with a median age of fifty-­six.17 They congregate in a range of denominational churches mentioned throughout the book, such as Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Assemblies of God, and Lutheran, as well as nondenominational churches. Evangelicals are known for showing high respect for the Bible’s authority, believing in the importance of converting others to their faith, and working to share their faith with others. Socially and politically, white evangelicals differ significantly from other religious demographics in the United States.18 They are more likely to own a gun and support gun rights, view immigration and immigrants negatively, support anti-­refugee and Islamophobic policies, embrace authoritarianism, hold religious leaders in high regard, and oppose legal abortion and LGBTQ rights.19 As we will see, not all who identify as white evangelicals agree with each other or practice their faith in the same ways. Spending time within the Blossom program revealed some of these variations. Recipients are a rather homogenous group due, in part, to strict program criteria requiring applicants to be heterosexually married for at least three years (or to be a single woman), to agree to transfer the embryos into their own or a surrogate’s uterus, and to parent any children born. I witnessed these requirements loosen during my period of research from only heterosexually married couples with working uteruses, but resist loosening further to include gay and lesbian recipients. Recipients are not required to identify as Christian, even though Blossom is based in an evangelical adoption agency, but the application assumes religiosity by requesting information about church affiliations and religious preferences for matching. According to staff, the vast majority of recipients identified as white evangelicals, which was also true of the sixty-­three recipients (representing 50 couples) whom I interviewed. Donors, of which the Blossom program often had many more approved for matching than recipients, are a more diverse bunch, rang-

10 | Introduction

ing more in terms of religious affiliations, racial and ethnic identities, marital statuses, and sexual orientations. Of the twenty-­seven donors I interviewed, for instance, slightly more identified as Hispanic or Catholic than among recipients. Yet spending time with Blossom staff during team meetings, discussing calls with clients, and participating in embryo matching sessions complicated the picture further. I encountered stories about recipients of varying racial and ethnic identities, like the Huangs, a Vietnamese couple who gave birth to a child from embryos received from white donors, and Julie, a single Ethiopian woman open to matching with donors of any racial or ethnic identity. Program staff and I mused about who might be matched with the gay white Catholic couple’s high-­quality embryos, and wondered how a Jewish couple would feel about donating to Mormons. While embryo adoption participants do not exclusively identify as white pro-­life evangelicals, the practice promotes the political ideals of white evangelicalism—­a term describing the juggernaut of racial and religious politics most closely aligned with the Christian Right’s nationalist ambitions. I elaborate on my use of this term later in the introduction, in the section “Reproductive Politics of the Religious Right.” Rather than a “frozen orphanage” where staff manage a physical inventory of donated embryos, Blossom is more like a brokerage firm or clearinghouse that facilitates matches between embryo donors and recipients, and coordinates the shipment of their embryos between clinics located around the country.20 Like most embryo adoption programs, Blossom uses domestic adoption as a model for matching embryo donors with recipients. Donors enter the Blossom program by completing a detailed application and family profile, and submitting health records required by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—­t he government agency overseeing the handling of human tissues, including IVF embryos.21 Sarah, one of Blossom’s program assistants, helped new donors complete applications, after which they spoke with Kathy, the program’s social worker, about matching preferences for qualities desired in recipients.22 During the pre-­matching conversation, Kathy filled out the “Fact Sheet for Embryo Placing Family,” which is a one-­page summary of donor preferences that condenses client information from a dozen application pages to particular criteria helpful for matching. She entered these matching criteria into a digital

Introduction | 11

database for quick sorting of the donor pool by characteristics (e.g., Catholic, donor egg, slow-­freeze embryos, Caucasian) and preferences offered by the program (e.g., no single mother, stay-­at-­home parent, openness to “special circumstances” embryos).23 Patterned preferences for white racial identities, nuclear family compositions, and single-­ income households were indicative of conservative Christian values guiding what participants in embryo adoption mutually selected for when conceiving their families. Prospective recipients fill out a similar application and profile, complete a home study with an adoption agency, send a letter from a physician stating no contraindications to pregnancy (or intentions to use a surrogate), and sign a $500 check to start their file. They rank matching preferences for donors and embryos, such as desired race or ethnicity of gamete donors and openness to embryos created with donor egg or sperm. When applications are approved, they pay another $500 to proceed with matching. The overall cost for recipients averages $13,000–­ 17,000, which includes all of the $9,000 program fees to be matched with and receive a set of embryos, an official home study ($2,000–­3,000), and frozen embryo transfers ($2,000–­5,000 each).24 Clients with completed applications enter the matching pool, which is an organized database that Blossom staff designed and use to search for possible matches based on program rules, client preferences, and, as they told me, “a little bit of God.”25 Blossom staff recommend “matches” between giving and receiving applicants via email, who must mutually agree on the match before contracts are signed and embryos are shipped from the donor’s storage facility to the recipient’s fertility clinic. Much like in open adoption arrangements, matched embryo donors and recipients agree upon desired levels of contact, which range from none to annual letters to meeting regularly in person. The program facilitates communications between clients by forwarding information, such as calling with birth updates and mailing holiday cards. Until a successful match is made, donors pay embryo cryo-­storage fees and wait.26 The Blossom program was a financial boon for the adoption agency. Program fees paid for by recipients covered staff expenses, and also helped make up for less lucrative domestic, international, and foster programs. My field research coincided with a period of severe economic devastation in the United States that saw the bankrupting of many busi-

12 | Introduction

nesses, including adoption agencies. As agencies around the country reduced program offerings or were shuttered completely, ECA, by contrast, absorbed struggling agencies and expanded its programming and payroll to multiple states. In the midst of the economic turmoil of the recession, staff noted that the Blossom program was the agency’s financial saving grace. According to Nathan, “Blossom kept us in a good position” through the recession. At the same time, ECA was a regular recipient of federal grant monies to promote the Blossom program, which it used to create various media, such as online videos, webinars, promotional materials, and print and video advertisements. Twenty-­five years after the first birth through embryo adoption, the Snowflakes program celebrated the birth of a thousand children to hundreds of recipient families. The National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC), which began in 2002, has supported the birth of more than twelve hundred children through embryo adoption. Based on research conducted by NEDC clinicians, which indicates that each frozen embryo transferred into a uterus has, on average, a 12 percent chance of successful thaw, implantation, gestation, and birth, these programs have likely facilitated the exchange of more than twenty thousand embryos.27

The Person Is Political Understanding the broad-­reaching political implications of embryo adoption first requires considering its role in advancing the personhood agenda of the US antiabortion movement.28 Anthropologists have long maintained that personhood is a dynamic site of cultural activity.29 Rather than a status intrinsic to any being, as embryo adoption proponents claim, personhood emerges through social relations and connotes varying cultural meanings. “Who or what is called person is, among other things, a highly contingent historical formation,” reminds feminist scholar Valerie Hartouni. “It is both the site and source of ongoing cultural contests and always under construction as a self-­evident fact of nature.”30 While the idea of embryos-­as-­persons has become a central concern for US antiabortion activists, this notion is not universally agreed upon cross-­culturally, nor is the ontological status of embryos a concern for all people.31 For this reason, efforts to confer personhood status to IVF embryos are ripe for anthropological attention.

Introduction | 13

It is no coincidence that much of the scholarship on embryo and fetal personhood focuses on phenomena in the United States and emphasizes the distinctly Euro-­American fixations with the political, visual, public, and individuated figure of the so-­called unborn. A common theme in this literature is how embryos and fetuses become socially “recognized,” and the effects of this recognition. Political scientist Rosalind Petchesky observed in the 1980s how US antiabortion activists used visual technologies to establish and naturalize fetal personhood as a biological state by incorporating medical images into their political propaganda—­a practice that remains a centerpiece of antiabortion activism.32 She and others challenge the discursive untethering of embryos from pregnant bodies within law, medicine, politics, and social discourse, processes through which the “unborn” become seemingly autonomous entities.33 Social pressures to “recognize” liminal beings by conferring them personhood status occur in a range of cultural practices, from specialized care for neonates to material culture among bereaved parents, among other life-­ and-­death thresholds.34 Essential to understanding personhood as a sociohistorical category in the United States is the underlying work of racist and religious constructs in its formation. Enlightenment narratives of personhood that are prominent in US social and legal discourses affiliate it with principles of liberty and justice, and define persons as self-­possessing, self-­ aware individuals connected to others through social contract.35 These narratives rely on what philosopher Charles Mills calls the “universalist and colorless language of personhood” that obscures how the modern concept of race is fundamental to social practices for recognizing persons.36 Notably, the “founders” of the United States excluded all but Anglo-­Saxon, landowning men from full legal recognition as persons—­ illustrating the intersections of gender and class in racist constructs of personhood.37 Western notions of personhood further rely on Christian formulations of the individual as an elemental feature of the Protestant subject.38 In other words, when we talk about who or what is a person in the United States, we are talking about the intersecting legacies of white supremacy and Christianity.39 Antiabortion activists have been focused on expanding the legal definition of “person” for decades and have won legislative successes conferring social status to fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses.40 The Roe v.

14 | Introduction

Wade decision of 1973 legalizing abortion was a watershed for personhood advocacy. The majority Roe opinion addressed the question of the status of the fetus as “person” that was raised during oral argument by stating “the word ‘person’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment does not include the unborn.” The Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution is a reconstruction-­era amendment adopted in 1868 to extend citizenship and due process to all persons—­African American people specifically—­born or naturalized in the United States. Yet the opinion noted a veritable loophole: “If this suggestion of [fetal] personhood is established, [Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed.” Antiabortion strategists responded quickly to this legal Achilles’ heel that could dismantle Roe.41 Efforts to establish the personhood of fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses launched a week after the Roe decision when a US congressman first proposed the Human Life Amendment, which sought to amend the constitutional definition of person as including “every stage of their biological development.”42 While similar amendments have been introduced numerous times since at state and federal levels, the Dobbs decision made way for unprecedented legal gains.43 The twenty-­first century “embryo wars” presented abortion foes with another critical opportunity for securing embryo personhood. As noted in President Bush’s memoir Decision Points, leaders from National Right to Life—­the nation’s largest antiabortion advocacy organization—­first introduced him to the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program when lobbying against research with human embryos. It is notable that an antiabortion group petitioned the president on biotechnology, a field distant from those explicitly concerned with established pregnancies. They did so because the life-­saving potential of human embryonic stem cell research posed a political pickle for abortion foes, who saw it as destructive of embryonic “life.” Following several decades of incremental successes for embryo and fetal personhood policies, favorable public responses to embryonic stem cell research challenged the antiabortion movement’s core assertion that embryos are persons by recasting them instead as invaluable resources for curing intractable human diseases. Antiabortion activists opposing stem cell research with embryo personhood arguments faced formidable opponents featuring stories of sick children, ailing adults, grieving caretakers, and well-­known Hollywood

Introduction | 15

stars, like Christopher Reeve and Michael J. Fox. At the same time, antiabortion lawmakers, like Republican Senators Orrin Hatch of Kansas and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, came out in strong support of embryo research as “pro-­life and pro-­family,” reflecting a new diversity of pro-­life perspectives on the status of the embryo.44 Public support mounted as bipartisan majorities in US Congress advanced unprecedented legislation that would expand federal funding to a broader set of embryonic stem cell lines. Meanwhile, lawmakers in states like California, Connecticut, and New York took matters into their own hands by investing millions of public dollars in basic and translational human embryonic stem cell research.45 The stem cell wars meant abortion foes could lose ground on the issue of embryo personhood. Personhood activists did not rest. The same year that President Bush put Snowflakes families on stage as the “faces” of embryo personhood, white Christian activists in Mississippi and Michigan introduced the first state personhood constitutional amendments, followed in 2007 by a Georgia state legislator. The next year, twenty-­one-­year-­old white woman Kristi Burton brought the issue of embryo personhood directly to voters by leading an effort to put the “Colorado Definition of Person” initiative on the ballot. The goal of the initiative was to secure the constitutional rights and protections of persons “at the beginning of biological development.” Although voters defeated the constitutional amendment by a three-­to-­one margin, Burton’s cause helped inspire the formation of new personhood organizations that successfully advanced personhood agendas in local government municipalities as well as in other countries even though state and federal efforts continued to fail.46 At this point in time, prominent bioethicists claimed that the embryo wars were waning, though the religious politics animating them continued to rage.47 Over the last two decades, antiabortion strategists successfully recruited prominent US political figures, such as President Bush, to give a national platform to the personhood agenda. Former governor of Arkansas and political commentator Mike Huckabee is a regular champion of the personhood cause; he carries a picture in his wallet of Elisha Lancaster, a white child born through embryo adoption, that he uses to remind others about the “value of life.”48 During the 2012 presidential primaries, five Republican candidates signed Personhood USA’s “Per-

16 | Introduction

sonhood Republican Presidential Candidate Pledge” proclaiming their belief that “every human being at every stage of development must be recognized as a person possessing the right to life in federal and state laws without exception and without compromise.”49 That same year, the Republican National Committee incorporated personhood language in the revised party platform, affirming “that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed” and supporting “a human life amendment to the Constitution and endors[ing] legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”50 Former Vice President Mike Pence and former US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan gave voice to the radical tenets of the personhood cause during their political careers, raising concerns among reproductive justice advocates about the direction antiabortion activism could take at the highest level of national politics. The appointment to the US Supreme Court of Judges Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett, who were endorsed by major antiabortion organizations, compounded concerns among supporters of reproductive rights about whether, when, and how the new ultraconservative majority on the Court might respond to cases concerning embryo personhood.

The ART of Antiabortion Activism A major contribution of this book is investigating how the pro-­life movement gained traction by interfacing with assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) through the practice of embryo adoption. Embryo adoption is an exemplary site for considering how white conservative Christians, who make up the vast majority of pro-­life activists and religious right-­wing proponents in the United States, engage with ARTs through in vitro fertilization (how embryos are made), cryopreservation (how embryos are preserved), embryo donation (how embryos are exchanged), and frozen embryo transfers (how embryos are implanted).51 Ethnographic attention on the everyday activities of embryo adoption demonstrates how advocates leverage a niche family-­ making process for realizing the potential for a conservative Christian country. Some rightfully find it puzzling that ARTs have not been the target of sustained antiabortion hostility in the United States. Activists who

Introduction | 17

oppose abortion and human embryonic stem cell research as destructive of human life could easily challenge IVF on similar grounds as ­a practice responsible for making, amassing, and imperiling embryos. Yet antiabortion activists have largely left IVF politically untouched.52 This puzzle appears pronounced in the practice of embryo adoption, which relies on ARTs to fulfill its mission even while critiquing the overproduction of human embryos. For advocates, embryos in need of saving are made and amassed through IVF and cryopreservation, yet can only be “saved,” in program parlance, through embryo donation and frozen embryo transfer. While the necessary engagement with ARTs in embryo adoption has garnered criticism from some Christians, this book shows how white evangelicalism embraces ARTs for political advantage.53 One reason antiabortion activists likely leave ARTs unchallenged is because it remains tacitly endorsed by Protestant religious leaders—­ mainline and evangelical—­who have not taken a clear stance on them. By contrast, the Catholic Church opposes all forms of assisted reproduction, whereas leaders in Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and other world religions have expressed formal views accepting ARTs, to some degree.54 Religious people who engage with ARTs in diverse parts of the world often find ways to “embrace” them to “fulfill devotional, vocational ends that are integral to their religious traditions as they understand and practice them.”55 Very little is currently known about Protestant, and especially evangelical, engagements with ARTs.56 A look inside the world of embryo adoption provides some answers. Another reason antiabortion activists have not forcefully opposed ARTs is the social significance that the fertility clinic—­as compared to the abortion clinic—­has come to bear in US history as a site for promoting procreation.57 Notably, IVF in the United States remains accessible chiefly to social elites, often heterosexually married couples bearing white children. This demographic overlaps with the kinds of families promoted in embryo adoption imagery, discourse, and program requirements, and closely reflects the participants in this study. Stratified access to IVF in the United States aligns with the procreative roles and expectations of conservative Christians, allowing ARTs to become strategically enrolled in right-­wing religious agendas rather than opposed. Feminists were among the first to draw attention to the political utility of IVF embryos for antiabortion advocacy. Mother Jones journalist

18 | Introduction

Liza Mundy voiced this concern following one of President Bush’s press conferences with Snowflakes families: “Embryos have emerged as another tool for truly hardline conservatives looking for new ways to beat back abortion rights. Like ‘fetal rights’ laws that seemingly protect unborn children from acts of homicide, ‘embryo rights’ are being waved about as a weapon in the assault on abortion rights, as anti-­abortion lawmakers talk about seizing control over frozen embryo stores; limiting the creation of new embryos; or both.”58 Suspicions about embryo adoption serving as a “backdoor attack on abortion rights” arose in a national context where state and federal legislative chambers have seen hundreds of policies introduced that champion recognition for the “unborn” as autonomous, rights-­bearing persons at the same time that pregnant people have experienced increased state surveillance, including the arrest, detainment, and prosecution of hundreds for “child endangerment.”59 As lawmakers ascribed social, legal, and medical status to fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses as rights-­bearing subjects, they actively eroded the reproductive freedoms of those who bear them. “There is no way to add fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses to the constitution without subtracting women,” argues Lynn Paltrow, then-leader of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, in the documentary, Personhood: Policing Pregnant Women in America, which traces the repercussions of personhood policies on pregnant people. In such a context, it is reasonable to suspect that there would be major social implications of redefining IVF embryos as persons with rights and protections equivalent to those of the embryologists who handle them, the patients who make decisions about their fates, and the people who receive them into their uteruses. The range of potential impacts of such policies is wide-­reaching for reproductive and sexual health care (e.g., abortion, contraception, miscarriage, infertility, IVF, third-­party reproduction, prenatal and postpartum care). Personhood policies affect arenas even further afield, like privacy rights, definitions of bodily property, life science research, tax code, and cryo-­storage infrastructures, among countless others. This book examines how embryo adoption programs advance pro-­ life politics in ARTs with implications for a wide spectrum of social issues. While embryo adoption does not directly intersect with abortion care, abortion occupies an “unspoken omnipresence” within the practice

Introduction | 19

through discourses focused on “celebrating life.”60 Recall the pro-­life discourse of the newsletter featured in the preface and how Nathan, ECA’s director, described embryo adoption as “more than a mission statement; it’s pro-­life work.” Advocates also use activist strategies that mirror those common to abortion foes.61 Such strategies construe embryo adoption as a rhetorical and practical counterpart to abortion because it enacts what absolutists in the pro-­life movement want to see in the world, which is the treatment of embryos and fetuses as persons.62 In turn, embryo adoption generates useful material for pro-­life advocacy. Treated as the “faces” of embryo personhood, children born through embryo adoption are featured in antiabortion activism as evidence of life beginning “at fertilization.” Embryo adoption teaches us that pregnancy is not a necessary condition for pro-­life politics to flourish.63 This is an important insight for reproductive rights and justice activists in our post-­Roe world where abortion foes are actively seeking new arenas for expanding their stronghold. In my research, abortion’s unspoken omnipresence in embryo adoption took shape in sometimes unexpected ways. Professionals and participants I talked to brought up pro-­life discourses and identities frequently and without me prompting them. All but one person I interviewed identified as pro-­life—­there was a Canadian embryo donor who described herself as pro-­choice. Many situated their pro-­life identities in religious convictions and described participation in embryo adoption as a pro-­life act. A smaller number identified as pro-­life activists who joined annual prayer chains outside abortion clinics, attended antiabortion rallies, and lobbied elected officials on abortion-­related policies. I asked all program participants I interviewed about their gestational histories and only one embryo donor told me about her abortion, which was a “selective reduction” after receiving news of a triplet pregnancy from IVF. Program staff members, who were consistent supporters of embryo adoption’s mission, sometimes struggled to fully embrace the antiabortion principles undergirding the practice. When introduced to embryo adoption as a “spiritual battlefield” to “save every embryo,” one program director opted to “not adhere to the pro-­life mission too much” because it overwhelmed her. Memorably, staff and I debriefed after a phone call from a pregnant recipient who received a fetal diagnosis that was incom-

20 | Introduction

patible with life after birth. She had called to ask if the program contract, which disallowed abortion for pregnancies established through embryo adoption, would allow her to terminate. The program manager told her no. Staff assured me that the clause in the contract was not legally binding, due to privacy protections in Roe v. Wade, but noted that it was included to signify the pro-­life “spirit” of the agreement. After hanging up the phone, the program manager expressed feeling terrible about the interaction and lamented not being able to extend more “grace” to clients with cases such as this. The program’s strict antiabortion policy left her feeling conflicted when having to enforce the “spirit” of it. Notably, a few spokespersons maintained that the idea of embryo adoption as a backdoor assault on abortion was a media invention. John Strege, the first father through the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program, made this claim in a memoir he wrote: “Not once throughout this entire process, from its inception in 1997 to President Bush’s veto in 2006, had we ever heard anyone on the embryo adoptions side—­ publicly or privately, public figures or private citizens—­ever suggest that overturning Roe v. Wade was the endgame or even a means by which to weaken the abortion industry. This was a fabrication by the media.”64 Yet, in 2021, John, his wife Marlene, and their daughter Hannah used their position as the first “Snowflakes” family to appeal to the US Supreme Court in support of an abortion ban in the case that overturned Roe v. Wade. We will consider the details of their appeal and its implications in “Supreme Appeal,” one of the interludes in this book. Tim, introduced earlier as the founder of the Blossom embryo adoption program, also rejected theories that embryo adoption poses a threat to abortion rights. During a 2008 interview with me, he described embryo adoption as “a movement to remind people that life begins at conception” but insisted that it was not a “devious plan by the far right, the Christian radicals, to overturn Roe v. Wade.” Those who think we’re using adoption language because we think it will form the foundation that will overturn Roe v. Wade, or that it is going to help somebody in some state pass a personhood amendment, isn’t dealing with reality. In terms of a court case that could overturn Roe v. Wade, or ballot initiatives or personhood amendments, who cares what you call an embryo or an exchange of embryos from one family to another?

Introduction | 21

Tim, as we will see, cared quite a bit. He and other advocates engaged earnestly in semantic battles waged over IVF embryos because, as he told me early on, “what we call things matters.” On this point, Tim and feminists concerned about the prospect of “embryo rights” agree completely: Who or what is called a person is always political.65

Reproductive Politics of the Religious Right Feminists maintain that reproduction is also always political. While conventionally treated as a biological process, reproduction is better understood as a site of political activity with varying meanings, uses, and effects.66 A core tenet of scholarship in this tradition is that reproductive processes and idioms are wielded by diverse political agents as material and metaphoric resources. This has led historian Laura Briggs to argue that all politics in the United States have become reproductive politics, even when that fact is obscured.67 For decades, reproductive politics have shaped the activist strategies of white Christian nationalists in the United States striving to realize a more righteous nation. Embryo adoption helps us see how assisted reproduction became enrolled in religious right-­wing efforts to conceive a Christian America. Rooted in a politics of reproduction framework, the word “conceive” here refers to its dual meanings as the biological process of becoming pregnant as well as the conceptual process of developing a plan or idea. “Conceiving Christian America” thus brings attention to the ideological work of religious nationalism by enrolling reproductive rhetoric, biological processes, and cultural imaginaries in its political activity. Through this framework, embryo adoption comes to light as a family-­making process that facilitates literal births through particular family forms and norms that help to “conceive” a more Christian country by reproducing the saviorist ideals of Christian nationalism, such as hypervaluations of whiteness, asymmetrical gender roles, compulsory heterosexuality, among others. In tracing these features of embryo adoption, we come to see how the practice advances the broader political ambitions of the US religious right.68 Christian nationalism is a powerful force in US politics that has made opposing abortion foremost among the social issues regarded as threats to the nation’s moral foundation. Strongly correlated with

22 | Introduction

white evangelicalism and political conservatism, Christian nationalism is a political ideology maintaining that the United States was founded on Christian principles that are under attack.69 Adherents idealize a range of issues—­nativism, white supremacy, patriarchal authority, anti-­LGBTQ rights, pro-­g un policies, authoritarian rule, strong man militancy—­t hough arguably none more so than outlawing abortion, which they deem essential for transforming the United States into a Christian nation. Much of the scholarship on US Christian nationalism emphasizes the dominant roles of reproductive politics, like abortion, and white evangelicalism in the movement. In this book, I approach white evangelicalism not as a clearly definable religious demographic or theological tradition but as a dynamic political project that advances putatively Christian ideals aimed at transforming the social order through saviorism.70 For this reason, this book should not be read as an ethnography of white evangelicals per se, as others have done brilliantly elsewhere, but as a critical look inside a family-­making practice that is shaped by, and in turn shapes, white evangelicalism’s influence in the United States.71 While I take sincere interest in the theological views voiced by embryo adoption supporters, I also actively trace their political significances. As an analytic term, I use white evangelicalism interchangeably with religious nationalism, Christian Right, and conservative Christianity. Like other ideological projects, white evangelicalism is not supported exclusively by people who identify as white evangelicals but instead by a diverse set of actors who benefit from affiliation with whiteness, Christianity, and political conservatism. This is true for embryo adoption proponents too. While the vast majority of professionals, participants, and supporters of embryo adoption who contributed to this study identified as white, pro-­life, and evangelical, some identified as people of color, Catholics, and non-­Christians. We will meet embryo adoption proponents with diverse identities who voice full-­throated support for the tenets of white Christian nationalism and others who relate to it more tenuously, or reject some facets. A strength of ethnography is being able to account for a spectrum of perspectives and identities among those involved in the practice of embryo adoption while analyzing the historical legacies, political forces, and social stakes that propel the practice’s ideological foundations and effects.

Introduction | 23

Christian nationalism has roots in Western Europe and bears diverse expression around the world. In the United States, it has been a dominant force in shaping conservative Christian politics domestically and internationally over the course of the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries.72 According to historian Daniel K. Williams, Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals have held fast to “the vision of reclaiming America’s Christian identity through politics” for at least a century.73 Starting in the 1940s, evangelical leaders innovated ways to broaden their reach through Christian media and broadcasting networks, through which popular figures like Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson had gained massive followings by the 1960s. Religious leaders used these platforms to foment political concern about threats to Christian values while making strategic inroads in the Republican Party. The looming threat of communism during the Cold War and social change entailed in the civil rights and feminist movements became grist for Christian nationalist narratives about keeping the United States righteous and its families strong.74 Religious nationalist activity surged in the 1970s when a motley crew of conservative Christians and right-­wing strategists allied to form the influential political bloc known as the Christian Right.75 Concerned broadly with threats to white middle-­class Christianity and US capitalism, this alliance organized strategically around protecting what they call “family values”—­a moniker for issues linking sex, gender, race, religion, nation, and the economy, often through idioms of reproduction. The Christian Right has launched various crusades under this banner, from defending religious freedom, patriarchal authority, and the sanctity of fetal life to opposing gun control, immigration, feminism, and LGBTQ rights. The referential power of the Christian Right’s family-­ focused politics has created what feminist anthropologists Sarah Franklin and Faye Ginsburg call a “familiar grammar” that links disparate issues into an “established syntax of national belonging under threat.”76 In effect, discourse about “family values” serves as a dog whistle for the extreme ambitions of Christian nationalists.77 Opposing abortion became a central mobilizing force for the religious right from the 1980s onward, though it is not what sparked Christian nationalism’s resurgence fifty years ago. Historians instead locate the instigator in the threat of rescinding tax benefits to religious schools that

24 | Introduction

refused to desegregate. White Christian resistance to integrating private religious schools, which earned them the nickname “segregation academies,” exemplifies the deep roots of anti-­Black racism in white Christianity as well as the long-­standing ties between racial and reproductive politics in the United States.78 Despite common lore, abortion would not become a matter of concern for religious nationalists until many years after the Roe decision. When abortion was federally legalized in 1973, political parties and Christian denominations were largely split on the issue. Some evangelical congregations and prominent Republicans were in support of “therapeutic” abortion, or for reasons deemed medically necessary, while Catholics and some Democrats opposed it. Right-­wing nationalists eventually foregrounded abortion for pragmatic reasons: It helped align the historically divergent interests of white evangelicals, Catholics, and neoconservatives into a powerful political bloc. By the 1980s, conservative strategists succeeded in inventing abortion as the cornerstone of the Christian Right by making it partisan as well as an offense to God.79 In doing so, abortion has come to symbolize the premier threat to a Christian moral order and stands in for a spectrum of fervent beliefs allied under the banner of “family values.” At the turn of this century, embryo adoption presented an opportunity for promoting the Christian Right’s political agenda. Notably, embryo adoption owes its existence to the institutions and political leaders with well-­established roles in the Christian nationalist cause. Chief among them is Dr. James Dobson, leader of the evangelical advocacy organization, Focus on the Family, and founder of the Family Research Council. Dobson was an early endorser of embryo adoption who promoted the practice to millions of listeners who tuned in to his influential radio program. In fact, many of the participants in this study told me that they learned about embryo adoption from Dobson’s promotions. Other agents of the Christian Right helped launch embryo adoption into national politics. Strategists from the Christian Legal Society and antiabortion spokespersons for National Right to Life brought embryo adoption to Washington, DC, coaching Snowflakes families and staff on testimony for US Congress and introducing former President George W. Bush to the practice. These are just some of the material links maintained between embryo adoption and the right-­wing religious agendas it extends.

Introduction | 25

Ethnography affords a look inside the world of embryo adoption where we see how advocates align everyday elements of assisted reproduction with the political ambitions of white conservative Christianity. An illustrative example discussed in chapter 5 describes how embryo adoption advocates politicize uteruses. In assisted reproduction, embryo donation involves placing thawed embryos in a readied uterus through the clinical procedure called frozen embryo transfer for a chance at pregnancy. In Christian theology, uteruses are regarded as spaces of divine agency where God actively works to realize his unique plan for each person. Embryo adoption proponents cast uteruses as warm “homes” for “orphan” embryos, which they contrast to the threatening cold of cryopreservation tanks, clinics, and a social order indifferent to the fates of frozen embryos. Uteruses in embryo adoption come to bear nurturing and protective qualities that advocates call all Christians to embrace, not only for “saving embryos” but for transforming society into a “home” for Christian ideals. In these ways, uteruses in embryo adoption become a proxy for the imagined Christian nation—­a place governed by God that nurtures and protects the ideals of Christian conservativism. Saviorism, as we are seeing, is elemental to making the “familiar grammar” of Christian nationalism legible in the context of ARTs.80 Uteruses become material and metaphoric “saving spaces” through saviorist rhetoric that requires critical attention in order to understand how saving embryos signifies and supports right-­wing religious efforts to save the US nation.

Wariness of Saviorism Feminist anthropologists are wary of saviorism, and for good reason: Beneath its do-­gooding veneer, saviorism causes untold harm. In asking “Do Muslim women really need saving?” Lila Abu-­Lughod drew attention to the violences of saviorism that propelled the post–­September 11th “war on terror” during President George W. Bush’s administration.81 Uncoincidentally, Bush wielded saviorist rhetoric to justify his positions in the “embryo wars” and the “war on terror,” both premised on protecting the idealized Christian nation from perceived threats. He framed US military invasions of Afghanistan as saving Muslim women and girls—­cast as oppressed gendered and racialized religious Others—­from

26 | Introduction

reductive renderings of Islam.82 Saviorist discourses from US politicians created what Abu-­Lughod called “neat cultural icons”: Islam as an existential threat, Muslim women and girls as savable, and the United States as a righteous savior that advanced the ideals of Western Christian liberal democracy with the most violent military in the world.83 In answer to her provocation, Abu-­Lughod argued emphatically that Muslim women and girls do not need saving. Rather, she implored readers to “be wary” of saviorism by noticing its reductive simplifications, arrogant assumptions, and refusals of responsibility.84 Heeding her call, I approach saviorism in embryo adoption with wariness—­a suspicious mode of ethnographic inquiry focused on tracing the workings of power. Anthropologist Miriam Ticktin developed a related critique of saviorism in her reflections on “innocence” as a moralized Western discourse that is foundational to political life.85 Saviorism is a prominent feature of innocence politics that produces discrete kinds of social subjects, compels moralized action, obscures power, and inflicts harm. Innocence is premised on a fictional state of purity beyond the reach of history, time, and place and is characterized by not knowing or bearing responsibility. When deployed politically, innocence discourse “demarcate[es] human kinds” into binary groups organized through purity logics: Lives deemed pure, passive, vulnerable, and apolitical are considered worthy of saving, and those deemed impure are not.86 It also creates a “class of saviors” upon whom innocents are said to depend.87 Saviors, while encouraged to take responsibility for the care of so-­called innocents, often ignore their role in perpetuating harms to them, including their “complicity in creating a category of people who need saving.”88 Each of these features of saviorism actively animates embryo adoption. Feminist critiques of saviorism illustrate how social hierarchies that stratify people based on class, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, disability, citizenship, and other social positions and experiences actively contribute to shaping savable—­and un-­savable—­subjects. The iconic image of Sharbat Gula, a teenage Afghani refugee featured on the cover of National Geographic in 1985 in a photo titled “Afghan Girl,” is an illustrative example of Abu-­Lughod’s claim that gendered, racist, and religious hierarchies construe Muslim women and girls as savable.89 Gula’s status as a child is a noteworthy facet of her perceived savability because there exists a “no more essential image of innocence” than the child.90 Relat-

Introduction | 27

edly, Ticktin considered the global response to the image of Alan Kurdi, a three-­year-­old Syrian refugee whose body washed ashore in Turkey in 2015, to suggest that he gave the “refugee crisis” a face of innocence. Yet, as she also notes, children like Gula and Kurdi have not always been symbolic of social worth, nor have the plights of all children mattered in saviorist agendas. Here, again, social stratifications actively intersect to configure which child-­figures are deemed worth saving and which are not. As we will see, embryo adoption advocates mobilize stratifying social hierarchies—­like age, gender, disability, and race—­to construct innocence and justify saviorism. Racial constructs play an especially prominent role in stratifying social worth in the US context, where conflations of whiteness with innocence have long shaped which lives are deemed savable.91 According to historian Robin Bernstein, the savable child in the United States has always been a racialized figure—­racialization being a process through which something comes to bear racial meaning through markings of difference.92 Emerging in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the innocent child, racialized as white and as worthy of saving, became “priceless” at the same time that its constructed counterpart, the Black child, was marked as an exploitable, non-­innocent worker.93 Feminist anthropologist Dána-­Ain Davis documents the life-­and-­ death consequences of the “racial politics of saving” in her study of US baby-­saving initiatives over the past century and a half.94 While Black babies are currently twice as likely as white babies to die when born prematurely and are disproportionately represented in neonatal intensive care units, along with Latinx neonates, efforts to address prematurity nevertheless continue to advantage white babies. Davis shows how systematic exclusions of Black and Brown babies from campaigns to mitigate premature birth consistently deem white lives as most “worth saving.”95 As we will see especially in chapter 4, racialized constructs of innocence pervade embryo adoption wherein advocates typically racialize embryos to signify whiteness, though sometimes associate embryos with Blackness to advance particular savior narratives.96 In light of the constitutive work of race and racism in stratifying valuations of social worth in the United States, this book traces the hazards of saviorism by situating the practice of embryo adoption within what novelist Teju Cole calls the “white savior industrial complex.”97

28 | Introduction

This term describes the systemic harms of white helperism advanced through a politics of feel-­good sentimentality. His framework redirects attention that is often hyperfocused on the savable subject toward the ideas, desires, and actions of the white savior, who is typically socially celebrated as an altruistic do-­gooder yet, in effect, is dangerous. Likened to a “wounded hippo,” white saviorism is something that Cole says “you must keep an eye on . . . for you know it is deadly.” So too, I argue, we ought to be wary of white saviorism in embryo adoption. This book builds on critiques of saviorism to examine what it does in and for embryo adoption, and how it links the practice to right-­wing religious nationalist politics. Embryo adoption advocates advance a form of saviorism that I call “embryo saviorism” and discuss at length in chapter 2. Embryo saviorism aligns constructs of white innocence, evangelical discourses of salvation and charity, and reproductive politics to construe embryo adoption participants as altruistic saviors and frozen embryos as imperiled innocents deserving futures with white, heterosexually married, Christian couples. In doing so, it casts staff and participants in familiar roles paralleled in Christian nationalist narratives that call devotees to support the movement for conceiving a Christian nation. Embryo saviorism supports the practical and political goals of embryo adoption, through which the reproductive politics of the Christian Right and its conceptions of a Christian America become visible. Cole’s wariness of white saviorism provides a useful guide for what he calls “thinking constellationally” about embryo adoption, which is a way of “connect[ing] the dots or see[ing] the patterns of power behind the isolated ‘disasters’” that are often the focus of white saviorist stories.98 Wariness of embryo adoption encourages “connecting the dots” between white evangelicalism’s theologies and political ideologies. It helps to make visible the patterns of power in how saviorism works within embryo adoption as it does in disparate political projects that nonetheless share common features (e.g., post–­9/11 militarism, refugee crises, global humanitarianism, US biomedicine). It reveals how the hypervalorization of IVF embryos as persons invokes racist and religious constructs of personhood that undermine reproductive freedom. It makes clear how embryo saviorism requires not just God’s paternalistic handiwork but women’s reproductive risk-­taking framed as maternal responsibility and religious duty. It outlines the stratification of social worth in embryo-­

Introduction | 29

matching markets through constructs of desirable difference in conceiving families and nation. It lays bare the role of the Christian Right in creating a deregulatory political environment within which frozen embryos have amassed in the United States without restraint, and how embryo adoption advocates responded to this fact for political gain. In these ways, wariness of saviorism exposes the proxies at work in twenty-­first-­century embryo dramas, demonstrating how embryo adoption is not merely a search for receptive uteruses but a site of ongoing political struggle for extending the reach and influence of white evangelicalism. Akin to the role of neat cultural icons in post–­9/11 US military rhetoric or archetypal figures of innocence in Europe’s refugee crisis, frozen embryos in embryo adoption stand in for the United States, imagined as a valuable and vulnerable Christian nation governed by God and awaiting (re)birth. Examining the social dramas through which embryos are made to speak today brings embryo adoption into view as part of the long-­standing political project for conceiving a Christian America.

Interlude Coming to Terms

“What we call things matters,” Tim said, schooling me in the semantic battle I had entered as an ethnographer of embryo adoption, a practice ten years in the making when I arrived on the scene. “Of course, using the word adoption means something,” he said. Does it mean I’m trying to outlaw abortion? No. It means we’re trying to give the status of what is happening between these families and the baby that is involved some meaning and some dignity. It’s instead of answering the question “How did I come to be in your family?” with “Hey Junior, you were donated!” I think that by elevating the conversation and the terminology that applies to embryos may have some aftereffect. Just like the abortion language has had a tendency to devalue life, I hope the embryo adoption debate helps to revalue life.

The first professional conference dedicated to embryo adoption was held in May 2008 in Washington, DC, and served as my initial entry into some of the key terms and stakes of this fraught discursive terrain. The National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC), which is based in a Tennessee fertility clinic, hosted the conference with federal monies granted through the “embryo adoption awareness” fund allocated by the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Jeffrey Keenan, a Christian reproductive endocrinologist, teamed up with his clinic’s embryologist, Carole Sommerfelt, and Bethany Christian Services—­the nation’s largest Christian adoption agency—­to facilitate embryo adoptions through the NEDC in the early 2000s. In terms of babies being born, their combined efforts eventually outpaced the Snowflakes program—­which, as we saw earlier, was launched in 1997 by Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency—­ yet both remain heavyweights in the embryo adoption world. 31

32 | Interlude: Coming to Terms

By my rough count, the conference attracted eighty or so professionals from a variety of legal, clinical, religious, social service, and governmental professions. Big players, like Ron Stoddart, founder of the Snowflakes program, and Samuel Casey, a pro-­life Christian attorney and strategist, mingled with adoption agency social workers and fertility patient advocates. Maria Lancaster, a mother through embryo adoption and founder of a church-­based program in Washington state, flew in with a priest to attend. According to organizers, turnout was lower than anticipated or desired. Speakers over the three-­day event spoke on a variety of topics concerning ethical, legal, and clinical issues, yet all acknowledged in some way the political and social implications of how to talk about what they were talking about. “Donation” and “adoption” dominated the discourse, while some lobbied for other terms, like embryo transfer, placement for parenthood, donation for procreation, and rescue. Pro-­life bioethicist Paige Cunningham called attendees’ attention to words used to describe embryos and their management that she found objectifying, dehumanizing, and pervasive in IVF, like fresh, frozen, thawed, storage, cost, amount, services, and use. The clunky conference name itself—­ “Emerging Issues in Embryo Donation and/or Adoption”—­underscored the rhetorical challenges facing professionals involved in the exchange of embryos for procreative purposes, as well as for researchers of them, like me. The term “embryo adoption” surfaced as the most passionately defended and contested during the gathering. Thomas Atwood, president of the US Council for Adoption, advised choosing a “name that is accurate and doesn’t dip into controversy and inhibit consensus.” He preferred the term “placement” over adoption. The Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine—­the nation’s largest professional association for fertility specialists—­rejects the term “embryo adoption,” arguing that it unethically affords embryos status as persons when embryo donation ought to be treated solely as a medical procedure.1 Legal scholar Susan Crockin called the phrasing a legal farce designed to undermine reproductive rights: “Maybe, just maybe, the real goal behind this ‘language creep’ is to change the public’s perception of embryos. Rather than a collection of undifferentiated cells, they become ‘preborn’ children and part of a thinly disguised anti-­choice agenda and

Interlude: Coming to Terms | 33

an all-­out cultural war on modern reproductive medicine, stem cell research, and personal choice.”2 Despite the fact that the contentious term is now heavily associated with white evangelicalism, conservative Christian strategists were not its originators. The earliest mention I found of “prenatal adoption” in reference to human embryos appeared while IVF was still experimental in human reproduction. In 1974, French law professor Mariel Revillard “entered the realm of legal conjecture” in a scholarly article to contemplate anticipated legal issues concerning “embryo implantation in humans,” which at that point in time had proven successful in some animals.3 She described a hypothetical scenario with infertile patients wanting to undergo a process akin to embryo donation for procreation. She argued that the birth mother and her presumed husband ought to be recognized as the legal parents in such an arrangement, and that while the embryo donors “have only given a fertilised egg and not a child, which is not prenatal surrender,” the process could be recognized as “prenatal adoption by the beneficiary couple.”4 “Prenatal adoption” became the favored phrasing of IVF originators Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards who, in early 1982, announced intentions to set up “baby banks of frozen embryos” for preimplantation storage with possibility for transfer into recipients.5 Cryopreservation of human embryos was still experimental at this point, with UK leaders, like Steptoe and Edwards, competing with research labs in Melbourne, Australia to support the first birth from a frozen human embryo, the distinction of which would ultimately go to Monash University researchers in 1984. In the words of Steptoe and Edwards, frozen embryo banks would allow for “‘pre-­natal adoption’ by infertile couples.”6 Their announcement sparked critical responses from the British Medical Association and antiabortion groups, such as the Christian-­led organization, LIFE, whose spokesperson told reporters that the baby-­bank plan “raises horrendous legal and moral implications.”7 Their announcement led then-­Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to call for a governmental investigation of assisted reproduction ethics.8 Embryo adoption discourse made international headlines in 1984 when the deaths of Mario and Elsa Rios thrust two frozen human embryos—­among the first to be frozen in history—­into the middle of a legal quagmire spanning three continents and many more years.

34 | Interlude: Coming to Terms

The Rioses were a wealthy married couple living in Los Angeles who died in a private plane crash in 1983 while flying through the Chilean Andes, leaving behind a multimillion-­dollar estate, two frozen embryos, and no will. When word of their death made global news in June 1984, drama erupted around the fates of their two “orphaned” embryos in frozen storage at Queen Victoria Medical Center in Melbourne, Australia. Dozens of volunteers from Melbourne to Houston, Texas contacted the medical center offering to “adopt” the Rioses’ embryos.9 Most volunteers were from the United States, according to the medical center’s spokesperson: “Some of them have said that these are American children and we don’t like you having our children.”10 Subsequent statements from scientific, legal, religious, and popular sources described the “little orphan embryos” in familial terms as “abandoned” after the death of their “parents”—­foreshadowing semantic battles that would fuel US embryo politics for decades.11 The discourse took deeper hold in the UK when the world’s first birth from a frozen embryo inspired media coverage about “many more 4-­day-­old human embryos [that] are lying in suspended animation in the freezer at Bourn Hall, Cambridge, waiting for mothers.”12 Following Steptoe’s and Edwards’s lead, UK fertility specialists began popularizing adoption rhetoric for frozen embryos. “These embryos are like children in an orphanage sitting there waiting for someone who wants them,” one fertility doctor claimed.13 Other clinics expanded their services to include “orphan embryo treatment.”14 In 1996, landmark legislation governing IVF and human embryo research in the UK came under global scrutiny when its five-­year limit on cryopreservation arrived, after which unused embryos would be mandatorily destroyed unless fertility patients consented to continued storage. While unclear why a five-­year limit was written into the original legislation, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) was responsible for enforcing the federal law. When it came to light that 3,300 unclaimed frozen embryos were slated for destruction, fertility clinics made every effort to contact patients and gamete donors as well as appeal to the government for legal stays to “try to save the embryos.”15 Antiabortion advocacy groups called people to step forward to “adopt” the “orphan embryos.”16 Pope John Paul II weighed in by restating the Church’s opposition to IVF and cryopreservation, after which the Vati-

Interlude: Coming to Terms | 35

can’s newspaper published an article endorsing married couples “adopting” “surplus embryos,” describing each as “an orphan or abandoned child,” in hopes of preventing “pre-­natal massacre.”17 While the Catholic Church would later oppose embryo adoption as morally illicit, white pro-­life evangelicals ran with the rhetoric.18 At first opposed to Steptoe’s and Edwards’s promotion of frozen “baby banks,” pro-­life activists in the UK came to embrace the “adoption” of “orphan” embryos over their destruction through discard or research. US media coverage of the UK controversy raised pointed questions about what should happen with frozen embryos in the United States, where no laws existed governing their production, management, or futures.19 When Tim at ECA heard the story on the radio, he thought that fertility patients must feel deeply ambivalent about their options for so many to remain unclaimed and unplanned for. “People are just not happy with the choices that they have” for their embryos after IVF, he conjectured. Within a year, Ron Stoddart had established the world’s first embryo adoption program, which promoted the procreative donation of embryos between heterosexually married Christian couples as well their political recognition as persons.

1

Life after IVF

Embryo adoption discourse became enrolled in conservative Christian politics at the turn of the twenty-­first century. Before then, it was debated matter-­of-­factly by legal scholars, promoted by prominent IVF clinicians, and opposed by antiabortion activists abroad. When wielded to promote the “saving” of “orphan” embryos through “adoption” via the US-­based Snowflakes program, it aligned decades of activity involving assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), abortion, and adoption to advance the political ambitions of the Christian Right. Understanding how embryo adoption discourse became part of right-­ wing Christian politics requires tracing the social contexts through which the practice of embryo adoption emerged. Exploring the story of how IVF embryos are made and amassed in the United States, and what happens after fertility patients no longer desire them for personal use, takes us inside fertility clinics and situates their practices within the social conditions through which IVF became a well-­established, loosely regulated, and highly lucrative industry. Chief among the social factors useful to consider is how the Christian Right’s opposition to legal abortion contributed to creating a deregulatory environment for ARTs that led directly to the amassment of IVF embryos—­a fact that precipitated the rise of embryo adoption to address the perceived problem of embryonic life after IVF.

Making Extra Embryos “An embryologist’s job is to make babies,” said Zhao, one of West Fertility clinic’s senior embryologists, during my first visit to his lab. West Fertility began as a private “mom and pop” fertility clinic in the late 1980s in California and has since become one of the most active in the state. Zhao joined the staff in the early days and has been instrumental in positioning the clinic competitively as a high-­volume provider in a 37

38 | Life after IVF

state with the largest concentration of fertility clinics in the country. Of the 52,970 IVF cycles reported across California’s eighty-­one clinics in 2018, which ranged in performing 15 to 4,129 cycles, West completed the most.1 It was an early provider of controversial services like intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), which injects a single sperm into the center of an egg to facilitate fertilization, preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) for chromosomal anomalies and gender selection, and egg freezing—­all of which require skilled embryologists. West thrives in a state that has become a fertility treatment destination for patients worldwide. Known for its favorable laws and court rulings that regard intended parents as legal parents, California is home to more IVF clinics, surrogacy agencies, and egg and sperm donation programs than any other state in the country.2 Ostensibly, it is also where most of the nation’s frozen embryos are made and managed. For months I shadowed Zhao and his lab mate, Ken, in their embryology lab, learning how efforts to “make babies” happens months, sometimes years, before any child may be born. Embryologists foster human fertilization in vitro—­in a petri dish outside of the body—­through routine laboratory practices. Ken and Zhao extracted and prepared gametes, monitored and assessed cell development, and maintained rigorous protocols involving patient records, lab logbooks, and cryo-­storage databases. “Making babies,” as I came to understand it, is an approach to IVF that maximizes pregnancy potential. This is not a mode intrinsic to IVF everywhere, as cross-­cultural scholarship on assisted reproduction and cryopreservation discussed later demonstrates, but rather is descriptive of how it came to be practiced in US fertility medicine over the past forty years. Important to the considerations of this book, “making babies” through IVF involves creating a lot of embryos, which has contributed to their amassment—­prevailing estimates suggest over a million—­in fertility clinic freezers across the country.3 Understanding how frozen embryos have accrued in such amounts requires examining the interplay of technologies enrolled in the “making babies” mode of US IVF that relies on producing extra embryos. Freezing human embryos involved the lucky marriage of two technologies: in vitro fertilization (IVF) and cryopreservation. IVF is an assisted reproductive technology that transforms human fertilization—­ which for most of human existence occurred inside the body—­into a

Life after IVF | 39

stepwise laboratory process involving the expert manipulation of eggs, sperm, and embryos in highly controlled environments. Ideally the process generates embryos in vitro that, when transferred into the patient’s prepared uterus, result in pregnancy and childbirth. First experimented on with animals, IVF success in humans is often credited to British gynecologist Patrick Steptoe and embryologist Robert Edwards, discussed earlier, who announced the landmark news in summer of 1978 that Louise Brown—­the world’s first IVF baby—­was born.4 The implications of their announcement would profoundly change the world.5 For one, technologically assisted reproduction shifted rapidly from laboratory experiment to clinical procedure. Within two years, Australian researchers announced their nation’s first IVF birth, followed by similar news in late 1981 from the Jones Institute in the United States.6 The IVF method that became most widely used in fertility clinics worldwide mirrored not the “natural” ovulation cycle responsible for Brown’s birth but the one popularized by researchers in Melbourne. Informed by methods common in animal husbandry, the still-­popular method uses hormones to hyperstimulate ovulation. This method requires harvesting and fertilizing numerous eggs, then freezing and storing any embryos not transferred “fresh” into a uterus. The Australian team that popularized ovarian stimulation in IVF also actively experimented with embryo cryopreservation. Cryopreservation is a technology that uses cold temperature to alter biological processes by delaying development, decay, and death.7 While the study of life and death at low temperature had captivated minds in Western science for centuries, cryopreservation would become what sociologist Hannah Landecker calls a “central mechanism” in laboratory and industrial infrastructure by the mid-­twentieth century.8 The ability to stop, start, store, ship, study, and amass biological life for an indefinite period of time appealed to various markets, including the fertility sector that burgeoned after the Browns’ famous birth. Based on the Australian team’s successes with stimulated cycles, it suggested that “excess” embryos were “inevitable” in IVF and, therefore, embryo cryopreservation was an “ethical obligation.”9 In 1984, global headlines began reporting landmark births from once-­ frozen IVF embryos. Dr. Richard Marrs of the University of Southern California Hospital in Los Angeles announced the first US frozen em-

40 | Life after IVF

bryo birth in June 1986. By the late 1980s, IVF and cryopreservation became mainstream offerings in the rapidly growing US fertility market.

Sorting Embryos Out While framed by early experimenters as an ethical obligation, cryopreservation also raised new ethical concerns. One challenge was determining which embryos were worth keeping. Since the early 1980s, researchers and clinicians have investigated methods for determining which embryos may have potential for establishing pregnancy, an assessment used to determine if embryos should be transferred fresh, frozen, or discarded. Edwards and Steptoe were early endorsers of cleavage-­stage morphology for evaluating embryos for pregnancy potential. In biology, morphology is the study of the form and structure of a plant or animal without regard to function; more simply put, it is the study of how organisms look. Embryo morphology takes into account the visibly structural aspects of human embryo development, such as cell symmetry, clarity, and fragmentation. “Grading embryos is a beauty contest,” as Ken explained. While looking through the microscope, he described some as “beautiful” and “nice” while others seemed to him “cruddy” and “ugly.” He scored embryos on a scale of 0–­3 with 3 denoting a “slam dunk” grade for what Ken called the most “beautiful” morphology of symmetrical, clear, and unfragmented cells; he lowered scores incrementally as cells showed increasing signs of unevenness, darkening, and fragmentation. A quick, though subjective and imperfect method, morphology has proven to have some predictive value, especially when paired with temporal markers of development. Patients at West Fertility were notified about the limitations of this method in the thirty-­page informed consent form they had to sign prior to starting IVF.10 Embryologists readily acknowledge that embryo grading is a subjective process. Neither Ken nor Zhao was formally trained in embryo grading, and Ken acknowledged that they each score embryos differently but consistently. For example, what is a 3 for Ken is sometimes a 2 for Zhao. Studies examining intra-­and inter-­observer variability among embryologists confirm the subjective dimension of grading by finding both to be factors within embryo assessments.11 Some in the field embrace that selecting embryos based on morphology for transfer

Life after IVF | 41

is “a large part of the art of assisted reproductive technologies.”12 Nevertheless, low pregnancy rates from morphological assessment alone and trends toward single embryo transfer to reduce the risk of pregnancies with more than one fetus have driven the search for better systems for sorting embryos out. Preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) has become a widely used method for evaluating embryos by sorting them into two groups based on chromosomal composition: euploidy (“normal”) and aneuploidy (“abnormal”). Initially recommended for patients with a history of genetic risk or advanced age of oocyte donor, this technology is now used widely by patients without reason for concern about genetic risk. PGS requires an invasive biopsy that removes one cell from a cleavage-­stage, eight-­celled embryo on the third day of in vitro or numerous cells from the outer layer of a hundred-­celled blastocyst-­stage embryo on the fifth day of in vitro. Due to mosaicism, which is a normal circumstance during early stages of development where embryos contain cells with both normal and abnormal chromosomes, PGS tests can report abnormal results for embryos that, if retested, demonstrate chromosomal normality. Embryos with abnormal results are often excluded from transfer or freezing in IVF clinics, which means that PGS tests have miscategorized some clinically usable embryos as unviable, resulting in their discard or long-­term storage. “Right now, we don’t fully know what a healthy embryo in a petri dish looks like,” said Dr. Christine Moto, a regenerative medicine researcher at a university stem cell institute, director of her lab’s human embryo biobank, and affiliate of the university hospital’s IVF clinic. “Because of this, IVF clinics often insert multiple embryos into women to try to increase the odds of a successful implantation. Patients frequently have multiple births or devastating miscarriages. Half the time, the embryos don’t make it. If we could figure out what a healthy embryo looked like and what the best media was to grow it in, we’d cut down on that.” Her lab used human embryos donated to the biobank in research to develop a non-­invasive technology for use in IVF clinics for predicting which embryos are most likely to develop to blastocyst stage. The time-­lapse imaging technology they developed, which integrates into incubators and is programmed with visual diagnostic algorithms, has been incorporated into fertility services in clinics worldwide.

42 | Life after IVF

Dr. Moto’s concerns echoed some I heard in a workshop on non-­ invasive embryo selection techniques at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) annual conference. I attended this workshop with Ken, who received continuing education units to learn about the current science of predictive technologies for identifying the best embryos for achieving pregnancy. One presenter reported that as many as 85 percent of IVF embryos transferred into uteruses do not establish pregnancy, which is a rate that motivates clinics to search for improved embryo selection methods. Despite the limitations of current embryo grading systems, none of the newer predictive technologies presented at the workshop—­from genomic testing to time-­lapse technology—­were available yet for clinical application. Upon return from the conference, I asked Dr. Dominic Frank, a reproductive endocrinologist at West Fertility, about the future of embryo screening methods. A self-­described Christian who regards embryos with moral reverence, he considers the current screening techniques insufficient. “We have not yet found the holy grail,” he said, though he sustained hope that researchers were narrowing in on better methods. Fertility professionals continue to search for more effective ways to predict which embryos will establish pregnancy in order to reach the industry goal of reducing pregnancies with multiple fetuses toward a safer gestation rate of one baby at a time.13 Sorting embryos to determine which are worth preserving was essential to Ken’s and Zhao’s everyday work at West Fertility. They classified embryos in three main ways, as I saw it: transferable, freezable, or discardable. Based on morphological assessment and genetic testing, transferable embryos were said to have the most potential for producing a pregnancy. During my period of research, these were typically selected for “fresh” transfer into a prepared uterus. Discardable embryos were judged to be the least clinically viable for pregnancy by failing to meet minimum developmental markers or genetic screening results set by the clinic for freezing or transfer. The middle category is the one of greatest concern to the people who populate this book: the freezable embryos. These were “second best,” according to West’s IVF patient information packet, deemed good enough to freeze for potential future use, including donation for research or procreative use. In the time since my field research at West ended, the convention of favoring “fresh” transfers of best quality embryos and freezing second-­

Life after IVF | 43

best embryos has shifted to what is called “freeze all” cycles. Just as it sounds, this approach freezes all embryos produced in an IVF cycle, which are then selectively thawed and transferred during optimal conditions for the patient. The recent shift in IVF in the United States to “freeze all” methods is due to the significant improvement in freezing media alongside higher demand for genetic testing.14 It means that cryopreservation technology is no longer an adjunct to IVF but the central platform for its function. It also means that the rate of embryos being cryopreserved in US fertility clinics, and live birth following frozen embryo transfer, is increasing dramatically.

Freezing for the Future Cryopreserving embryos for future use aligns with efforts to optimize potential for “making babies.” According to Zhao, freezing embryos is better than creating fresh embryos as needed because it minimizes the physical, financial, and emotional burdens on patients with oocytes by preserving good enough embryos for future cycles. He said: The patient has been through high doses of drugs, a needle into her vagina and ovaries, and paid the costs of lab embryology. You’ve got some good embryos—­why waste them? You don’t bin them. You want to freeze them for the future.15

Instead of transferring or discarding “fresh” embryos from an IVF cycle, as happens in countries that ban embryo freezing, cryopreservation reduces chances of higher-­risk pregnancies with multiple fetuses by allowing patients to receive a safer number into the uterus at a time. Freezing also supports the genetic testing of embryos, which has become a popular option among US IVF patients. Because screening tests can take longer to complete than embryos can safely stay in vitro, cryopreservation buys patients time while they await results.16 How much time cryopreservation buys patients is a topic of ongoing debate. Fertility clinics store embryos in liquid nitrogen, which is a deep cold of -­196 degrees Celsius that halts biologic activity for an indefinite period.17 Freezing, in Ken’s view, is safe: “You can keep them in there for the next twenty years, and nothing is going to happen.” Ken and Zhao

44 | Life after IVF

manage the physical inventory of frozen embryos at West through security protocols to safeguard the cryo-­tanks’ contents, such as logging manual checks of liquid nitrogen levels, strapping tanks to the wall to withstand earthquakes, and electronically monitoring them for theft and unsafe temperatures. Such systems are in place to protect embryos as much as the fertility clinics because clinical negligence has led to cryo-­ tank failures and successful lawsuits.18 Media accounts of children born from embryos cryopreserved for remarkable durations—­10, 19, 24 years—­reinforce the idea that frozen embryos remain cellularly, as well as socially, stable indefinitely.19 In December 2020, international media featured the story of Molly Gibson, a newborn in Tennessee whose birth made history following the transfer of a donated embryo frozen for 27 years—­the longest period on record between cryopreservation and birth until November 2022, when twins from embryos frozen for 30 years were born in Washington State.20 “No embryo is too old,” said Dr. Jeffrey Keenan, Christian reproductive endocrinologist and director of the National Embryo Donation Center, which is the embryo adoption program that facilitated the record-­breaking matches and frozen embryo transfer procedures. While embryos may remain cellularly safe in cryopreservation for an indeterminate period of time, Dr. Keenan’s sentiment that frozen embryos are socially ageless belies the fact that myriad factors beyond the cryo-­tank shape how embryos are perceived, valued, and used, if at all. Patients’ feelings about their embryos change over time, which means for some that initial conceptions of embryos as would-­be children transform into something else, such as a parental problem, financial burden, unneeded resource, or reproductive gift.21 Unplanned deaths and divorces thrust embryos into legal limbo that can delimit their uses despite their progenitors’ intentions. To be sure, cryopreservation technology stabilizes embryos so that they may cellularly endure the hazards of time, yet embryos remain susceptible to social forces beyond cryo-­tanks that determine what life after IVF might entail. The social instability of frozen embryos means that freezing embryos for the future is sometimes a burden in the present. “We have embryos from the 1990s in those tanks,” Ken noted as he pointed toward a room connected to the lab where twelve cryopreservation tanks were located. Managing the clinic’s frozen embryos included caring for “abandoned”

Life after IVF | 45

embryos, defined as those no longer paid for by patients who have failed to respond to calls or letters from the clinic. Determining what to do with unclaimed embryos poses legal and logistical challenges for clinics that are exacerbated by the absence of legal policy on what to do when patients forego cryo-­storage payment. As a result, US fertility clinics have become responsible for managing an unknown number of unclaimed embryos.22 “We don’t discard them after patients stop payment because we are worried about lawsuits,” expressed a concerned embryologist to a panel of lawyers convened at the 2011 ASRM annual meetings. The Ethics Committee of ASRM published a statement in 2013 that clinics should be ethically free to dispose of embryos if the following conditions applied: five years passed since abandonment, the clinic made diligent efforts to establish contact, and patients neglected to leave written instruction concerning disposition.23 Embryologists at West kept unclaimed embryos in their tanks rather than discarding them, even though their standard operating procedure indicated that they could discard after documenting attempts to notify patients of their delinquent accounts. Freezing embryos for the future appeals to many invested in “making babies,” yet managing frozen embryo futures comes with unanticipated challenges.

Embryo Fundamentalism All technologies, like IVF and cryopreservation, are animated by the social contexts in which they are used. In the United States, political polarizations around abortion were chief among the animating social, legal, and political factors that shaped IVF’s rapid expansion over the last four decades, resulting in what has been described as a distinctively “Wild West” environment for assisted reproduction.24 Antiabortion advocacy had a chilling effect on federal regulations, which resulted in the unencumbered making and amassing of human embryos in IVF—­a concerning condition for some conservative Christians. The 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion inspired political opposition to abortion as well as to technological manipulations of human embryos in experiments with emerging biotechnologies. The decision’s coincidence with the increasing clinical successes of IVF created an opportune moment for abortion opponents,

46 | Life after IVF

in the wake of judicial defeat, to advance arguments about protecting human life from “the moment of fertilization” by targeting biotechnologies like IVF. In the 1970s, abortion opponents—­most of whom were white Catholics until evangelicals began spearheading the movement in the early 1980s—­seized debates involving IVF to promote religiously driven political agendas aligned with what legal scholars call “embryo fundamentalism.” Embryo fundamentalism describes political activity common among conservative Christians that asserts an “uncompromising stance on the status of embryos” as “unique human beings from the moment of the conception, and should be respected as such.”25 Fifty years of this kind of political advocacy shaped how IVF emerged in the United States and why it remains neither federally funded nor well-­regulated. Federal funding for human IVF and embryo research was banned before Louise Brown’s birth in 1978. Immediately after Roe, the US Congress passed national legislation to oversee biomedical research involving human subjects. Part of the law directed the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (DHEW, later renamed to Department of Health and Human Services) to establish guidelines for research involving “fetuses, abortuses, pregnant women, and in vitro fertilization.”26 Lumping IVF and abortion in the same class of concerns was not inevitable but rather reflected sociopolitical debates following the legalization of abortion. DHEW’s Secretary Joseph Califano—­a vocal opponent of abortion—­ prioritized recommendations on fetal research and delayed investigations on IVF for three years. His inaction effectively halted federal funding on IVF, then an experimental technology. When Edwards and Steptoe announced Brown’s birth in 1978, Congress pressed Califano for recommendations. Six months later, an ethics board unanimously recommended that DHEW lift its funding moratorium on human IVF and embryo research. Antiabortion activists responded by placing an ad in the New York Times calling IVF “morally abhorrent” and coordinating a congressional letter-­writing campaign that sent nearly 13,000 letters opposing the ethics board’s recommendations.27 These are some of the earliest examples of antiabortion opposition to IVF. Meanwhile, Pat Robertson, evangelical radio show host and founder of the right-­wing advocacy group, the Christian Coalition, denounced IVF on national

Life after IVF | 47

airwaves for the uncertain fates it brought upon “extra embryos.”28 Protestant theologian Paul Ramsey used antiabortion rhetoric to challenge IVF through claims that it legitimizes abortion by creating “abnormal” fetuses that required its use, leading another critic to suggest that abortions are “implicit” in IVF.29 Antiabortion activists at the First Annual Respect Life Leadership Conference held in January 1980, which was co-­sponsored by the Life Amendment Political Action Committee and Christian Family Renewal, named IVF as contributing to the “general moral decline of American society.”30 Antiabortion hostility to IVF and human embryo research took its toll. Califano never incorporated the ethics board’s recommendations, nor did his successor. When the board’s charter expired in 1980, the de facto funding ban persisted for another fifteen years. President Bill Clinton attempted to lift the ban in 1995, but the following year congressional Republicans reinstated it by attaching a rider to a federal appropriations bill that banned funding on human embryo research. Named the Dickey-­Wicker amendment after the antiabortion senators who introduced it, the rider has been approved every year since. While the federal funding ban has not halted privately funded research, IVF has never been studied through clinical trials nor received peer review and oversight provided by the National Institutes of Health, as have other major biomedical fields since the mid-­twentieth-­century public investment in scientific research. As a result, IVF and related assisted reproductive technologies function as clinic-­based experiments on fertility patients without governmental oversight or regulation to mitigate reproductive risks and harms. The United States is well known for its “deregulatory” environment for IVF. To date, there is no single governmental authority that oversees, monitors, or regulates the fertility industry as a whole, such as exists in other countries.31 Rather, the United States maintains an ambiguous set of federal and state policies that are governed by a patchwork of regulatory bodies, most without legal consequences.32 The Food and Drug Administration annually inspects some aspects of fertility services, such as drugs, devices, and donor tissues, but not every clinic. Some states have passed policies requiring insurance coverage of fertility services, though they are highly variable.33 One state, Louisiana, enacted legislation in 1986 defining any “in vitro fertilized ovum [as a juridical person] . . .

48 | Life after IVF

which shall not be intentionally destroyed.”34 The only successful federal policy on IVF passed in 1992 to protect patients as consumers; while it requires clinics to report outcomes data to the Centers for Disease Control, which are compiled annually by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SART), there are no legal repercussions for non-­reporting or poor outcomes.35 Once welcoming of legal guidance for the burgeoning field, fertility specialists quickly became opposed to governmental oversight in favor of allowing the market to guide their clinical care.36 Instead of comprehensive governmental oversight, professional organizations, like the ASRM and SART, emerged to support the field with practical and ethical guidelines. Today an $8 billion sector, the US fertility industry flourished in the absence of oversight and federal spending. Despite numerous attempts by Democrats, US lawmakers have failed to reach a “national consensus” on regulating the burgeoning industry.37 This is due, in part, to a wave of political conservativism that coincided with the arrival and expansion of IVF in the early 1980s. Ronald Reagan ran successfully for president in 1980 on the Republican party platform that was newly opposed to abortion as well as governmental regulation of the market. His “New World Order” administration gave national prominence to the strategic alliance between conservative Christians and free market capitalists referred to as the Christian Right. This political bloc’s focus on Christian “family values” created ideal conditions for regulating abortion while stymieing federal funding and oversight of IVF. Early approaches to IVF in the United States promised broad demographic access and inclusivity, though such futures were foreclosed by social and political factors that stratified assisted reproduction along class, race, sexuality, disability, age, and citizenship.38 This resulted in IVF being accessible largely by those whom “society permits to use them.”39 Just as IVF became a clinical offering in the early 1980s, Reagan-­era right-­wing religious politics provided ideal conditions for it to take hold as a private sector service accessible primarily to out-­of-­ pocket payers, the majority of whom were white, married, and upwardly mobile women.40 Following the 1970s decade of second-­wave feminist gains for women socially, legally, and professionally, Reagan-­era politics popularized a conservative religious backlash, which included circulating unsubstantiated media claims about an “infertility epidemic” among

Life after IVF | 49

white professional women.41 Politically hyped anxieties about the underproduction of white babies and deleterious impacts of feminist gains on “traditional” gender roles—­especially procreative motherhood—­ created pressures among demographics that were both able and eager to access IVF. Such consequential rhetoric obscured the fact that Black women and women with lower socioeconomic status were most likely to experience infertility as well as structural barriers to fertility services.42 Among the controversial procedures that have flourished in the deregulatory environment of US IVF, such as surrogacy, egg donation, and preimplantation genetic testing, embryo cryopreservation was mainstreamed early and without restriction. This is noteworthy since cryopreservation remains neither customary nor legal in many regions of the world where IVF is practiced. Germany banned embryo freezing in 1991 with passage of the “Federal Embryo Protection Law,” a criminal statute that limits the production of embryos to no more than three per IVF cycle and requires that all, regardless of quality, are transferred into the patient’s uterus. Italy, once a highly active place for assisted reproduction in Europe, took a sharp turn in 2004 when lawmakers passed a restrictive bill outlawing embryo cryopreservation as well as gamete donation, surrogacy, and usage of ARTs by same-­sex couples. Some countries limit the duration that embryos can be cryopreserved. As we saw earlier, the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of 1990 disallowed embryo storage for longer than five years without patient consent. Others limit disposition decisions, such as in Brazil where resolutions enacted through the Federal Council of Medicine allow IVF patients to freeze embryos but disallow discard.43 In Muslim-­majority countries practicing IVF, like Egypt, Lebanon, and Iran, freezing embryos is considered halal—­or permissible by Islamic law—­and thus an accepted practice in line with Shia fatwas on assisted reproduction.44 Iran, for instance, is the first Muslim country with legislation regulating the donation of frozen embryos for procreation.45 The United Arab Emirates (UAE), by contrast, banned embryo freezing in 2010, which compelled many Emiratis to travel abroad for IVF services and international fertility patients who had traveled there for services not offered in their home countries to wonder about the fates of their embryos stored in the UAE.46 In 2020, the UAE implemented new legislation allowing for embryo cryopreservation, but only for married couples.

50 | Life after IVF

Forces beyond law shape cryopreservation practices in places like the United States with few or no regulations of ARTs. In Ecuador, for instance, cryopreservation decisions are made by patients and doctors. In anthropologist Elizabeth Roberts’s ethnographic study in Quito and Guayaquil, regional variations around religious beliefs and conceptions of kinship resulted in differing perceptions of cryopreservation that compelled some to freeze extra embryos while others opted to discard them.47 While not an exhaustive review of cross-­cultural variations in cryopreservation policies and practices, these examples illustrate that embryo freezing is shaped by social factors particular to where the technique is—­or is not—­practiced. Maximizing pregnancy potential through embryo sorting and “freezing for the future” contributed to the rapid accumulation of frozen embryos in US fertility clinics, yet this effect was not inevitable. Even in places where IVF and cryopreservation are used to assist reproduction, embryos have not amassed elsewhere as they have in the United States. These technologies flourished in a nation actively embroiled in “culture wars” fomented by the Christian Right, which contributed to a deregulatory environment for IVF and fostered the accrual of frozen human embryos—­a fact that religious right-­wing strategists recognized as a political opportunity.

Disposition Within the sociohistorical context described thus far, decisions about what should happen with frozen embryos have, to date, remained squarely in the hands of their progenitors: fertility patients. When efforts to “make babies” through IVF come to an end, fertility patients have a few options for any unused frozen embryos: they can be discarded as medical waste, moved to long-­term storage, donated for scientific research, or donated for procreation. Deciding what to do with one’s remaining embryos is called “embryo disposition” in fertility medicine, which is a legal term for dealing with personal property that involves the formal transfer of care or ownership of a possession to another party.48 Each of the nation’s approximately 500 IVF clinics handles embryo disposition a bit differently; some provide a robust list of options and referrals while others offer the bare minimum. Scholarship on embryo disposition dates back to the late 1990s, yet its findings about patient preferences, decisions, and barriers in the United

Life after IVF | 51

States provide only a partial view. This is due, in part, to the deregulatory setting discussed earlier within which fertility clinics have developed their own systems for tracking activities. The highly varied practices across clinics limit research access to comprehensive and comparable data. Beyond the legally required consumer protections data on IVF outcomes reported to the Centers for Disease Control, there exist no statewide or national data sets that systematically document or aggregate actual numbers of embryos produced, frozen, discarded, or donated in the United States.49 Studies based on single or multiple clinics suggest that “backup” embryos appeal to many fertility patients undergoing IVF. At the same time, many patients report feeling emotionally torn when having to decide what to do with remaining embryos.50 Such emotions have coincided with delayed decision-­making for multiple years and changed attitudes over time.51 Cryopreservation bills, which typically range annually between $400 and $1,000, often introduce patients to disposition options available through their clinic and, for some, motivate decision-­making.52 Various factors affect what patients choose, including their reproductive history, availability of information about their options, life circumstances, embryo quality and quantity, personal values, and ideas about what embryos are.53 Patients generally report feeling dissatisfied with their disposition options and information they receive about them.54 Dissatisfaction has inspired some to request alternatives, such as a procedure called “compassionate transfer,” which is a frozen embryo transfer into the patient’s unprepared uterus that would have no chance at establishing pregnancy.55 From what we can determine, most US fertility patients with frozen embryos who no longer intend to use them for their own family have chosen to discard or store, either at the clinic or in a long-­term cryo-­storage facility. At West, Ken and Zhao implemented a six-­month “cooling” period following a patient’s initial request for discard, after which they remove designated vials from the cryo-­tanks and dispose of them as medical waste. I was not able to witness the process during the months I shadowed at West, but I sensed there was not much to see. Ken did not sentimentalize his description of what happens. “We throw them in the trash,” he told me as well as patients when they called to ask how embryos are discarded. He sees embryos as “just cells,” but does not voice this view publicly because he worries about political reaction.

52 | Life after IVF

West’s patients can store their embryos at the clinic but are financially incentivized to ship them to an off-­site cryo-­storage facility where rates are cheaper. I visited one well-­established facility in 2012 to learn more about this option. The office was based in a nondescript business park building that houses a low-­frills reception area, various personnel offices, and a few rooms containing forty stainless steel cryopreservation tanks that are hooked up to monitors that regulate temperature and securitize access. Mark, the site director, has an advanced degree in reproductive physiology and handles all of the embryos shipped to and from the facility. While not sure why clients opt to store long-­term—­because they do not formally ask and clients do not often disclose—­he believes it is a safe and affordable way to buy time: “People do long-­term storage because they are planning to do something with them, when the time is right . . . Some people need time to make those decisions.” Once a client completes an embryo storage contract, staff coordinates the shipment of embryos from a client’s clinic in what is called a dry shipper, or a portable cryopreservation tank, which is delivered to the storage center via Federal Express. Long-­term storers pay $400 for each year and can make a decision at any point to use their embryos personally, discard, donate to research, or donate for procreation. Mark keeps a list of referrals for clients interested in embryo donation and handles the discards himself. Like other cryo-­storage representatives I spoke to, Mark emphasized his company’s expertise in specimen safety.56 Visitors to the website of ReproTech—­another reproductive cryo-­storage business—­are greeted with similar messaging. Bold black letters on the homepage state: “Your Future. Safe with Us,” followed by a paragraph promoting the business’s “leadership” through “unmatched safeguards” and “gentle handling and trusted procedures.” As we saw earlier, embryo donation for research and procreative use were thrust into public scrutiny at the turn of the twenty-­first century as competing uses for frozen embryos coincided. In the politicized environment in which embryo futures were being battled over, fertility patients tended to rank the options of donation for research and for procreative use as their least preferred choices.57 Some prospective studies indicated moderate to high levels of interest in donating for research or procreation, though retrospective studies estimated actual rates of donation at less than 10 percent.58

Life after IVF | 53

Donation to science was a relatively popular preference for fertility patients in the first decade of the new century, though some patients experienced barriers to donation.59 I saw this firsthand while spending an academic year conducting ethnographic research in a university-­based stem cell lab that managed a biobank of IVF embryos donated for research from fertility patients across the country.60 Dr. Christine Moto, the embryologist and university faculty member with a well-­funded research lab who was introduced earlier in the chapter, started the biobank with competitive state funding to advance research in reproductive and regenerative medicine.61 Yet, like many embryo biobanks of the time, Dr. Moto’s closed within five years of opening due to embryo oversupply and limited support for personnel facing unanticipated challenges managing the donation process. During the same period, donation for procreation also appeared to be on the rise.62 Procreative embryo donation is recognized and partly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, which is the governmental agency that oversees all donated human tissues—­and about a dozen states have laws that provide guidance for the practice. The Ethics Committee of ASRM has recognized embryo donation for more than fifteen years as a medical procedure for treating infertility.63 According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control summarizing national trends in assisted reproduction, 69 percent of the 467 reporting fertility clinics provided services for cycles involving donor embryos.64 Procreative donation most often occurs within one of the roughly two hundred fertility clinic–­based donation programs, such as the one at West Fertility, when highly ranked embryos made in the clinic are exchanged anonymously between consenting patients. Embryo donation is typically more affordable than IVF because it involves the use of already-­made embryos and, therefore, is not a lucrative source of revenue for clinics. Ellen, an experienced nurse, supported West’s informal program, which underwent significant changes since it began and was experiencing a lull in participation during my research period.65 At the time, fertility doctors were in charge of making anonymous embryo donation matches between their patients themselves, which meant that donors and recipients did not mutually select each other, nor did either receive identifying information about the other.

54 | Life after IVF

Birth of Embryo Adoption Near the turn of the twenty-­first century, the California-­based Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency began the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program with the expressed goal of “saving” unused embryos from “frozen orphanages.” Advocates for the practice framed it as a necessary alternative to standard disposition options by promoting pro-­life values of recognizing human life as beginning at fertilization. In their view, discarding embryos as medical waste or donating them for scientific research destroys nascent human life; long-­term storage defers parental responsibilities for embryos indefinitely into the future; and anonymous, clinic-­based donation programs mirror many of the troubling facets of mid-­century domestic adoption premised on closed records, secrecy, and shame. Rather than implementing a medical procedure to treat infertility, as ASRM maintains, embryo adoption advocates promote procreative donation as a child-­centered, family-­building process that recognizes embryos for what they believe them to be: frozen pre-­born children deserving of “homes” and recognition as persons. A quarter century after its inception, eight programs in the United States offer embryo adoption services for US and international clientele. Most are based in Christian adoption agencies, while some operate from fertility clinics, churches, or online. Some programs limit donors, recipients, or embryos based on particular criteria, whereas others have flexible policies. None facilitate legal adoptions, because embryos are not recognized as children in US statute, but rather transfers of personal property between consenting parties. All must adhere to FDA regulations for donating human tissue. Among assisted reproduction options worldwide, embryo adoption is unique in allowing for directed conditional donations, which is a rare model that permits donors and recipients to rank “matching” preferences that program staff use to facilitate mutual selection.66 Unlike clinic-­based donation programs, giving and receiving clients in embryo adoption assent to matches and agree upon levels of contact before signing contracts and transferring for pregnancy. Embryo adoption is one of a suite of third-­party reproduction techniques available in the highly permissive and competitive marketplace of US fertility that attracts clientele from around the world. Embryo adoption is often advertised as cheaper than a round of IVF ($20,000–­

Life after IVF | 55

25,000), and especially IVF with sperm donation (additional $2,000), egg donation (additional $20,000–­40,000), or surrogacy (additional $90,000–­130,000). Costs for recipients tend to be higher than clinic-­ based donation programs ($2,000–­5,000) and variable depending on what services programs provide or require to participate. For instance, some require completion of a home study with a licensed adoption agency, which costs $2,000–­3,000 in addition to other common expenses: FDA-­required infectious disease tests ($300–­400); application, matching, or program fees ($2,500–­$4,000); legal contracts ($2,500); embryo shipping ($500) or travel to a particular clinic ($1,000–­2,000); and clinical costs for frozen embryo transfers ($2,000–­5,000). While the US government has banned federal funding for embryo research for nearly fifty years, it has also allocated millions of dollars in grant monies to embryo adoption advocacy for two decades. In 2002, the US Congress initiated the Embryo Donation and/or Adoption Awareness program, a federal grant program authorized under Section 301 of the Public Health Service Act to provide public funds to organizations to “educate Americans about the existence of frozen embryos (resulting from in-­vitro fertilization), which may be available for donation/ adoption for family building.”67 Backed by the George W. Bush administration, the grant’s origins are attributed to Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, a pro-­choice, pro-­embryonic stem cell research Republican who chaired the subcommittee responsible for determining appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. On December 20, 2001, Senator Specter spoke during a Senate session about allocating $1 million dollars to the new program: A controversy has arisen because some object to stem cell research because they are extracted from embryos and embryos can produce life . . . If any of those embryos could produce life, I think they ought to produce life and not to be used for stem cell production. But if they’re not going to produce life, then why throw them away? Why not use them for saving lives? We put into this bill $1 million, sort of a test program on embryo adoption. Let us try to find people who will adopt embryos and take the necessary next steps on implanting them in a woman to produce a life. If that can be done and use all of the embryos, that would be marvelous to produce life. But where those embryos are going to be

56 | Life after IVF

discarded, then I think the sensible thing to do is to use them for saving lives [through use in research].

On average, two to five awardees have received hundreds of thousands of public grant monies each year. The two most prominent embryo adoption programs in the United States, Snowflakes and the National Embryo Donation Center, have been regular grant recipients, supporting the exchange of thousands of frozen embryos and the birth of more than 2,000 children to recipient families.68

Fertile Terrain Embryo adoption is a term, and a practice, of its time. As we have seen thus far, a variety of social, legal, political, and technological processes occurring over the last fifty years conditioned the possibility for embryo adoption to emerge in the late 1990s United States in support of Christian Right politics. Understanding what precipitated the amassment of countless human embryos in fertility clinic freezers, and how embryo adoption strived to respond, therefore, requires situating both within decades of antiabortion activism in the wake of judicial defeat; legislative responses to emergent biotechnologies; strategic political alliances aligning evangelicals and conservatives as the Christian Right; vigorous capitalizations of fertility medicine; stratified access to infertility services; and clinical desires to maximize pregnancy potential, among other social forces. Each of these factors contributed to the rise of embryo adoption, but they do not fully explain what aligned the term and practice with the long-­ standing goals of the religious right to realize a Christian America. It is noteworthy that the founders of the Snowflakes program did not originate the term “embryo adoption,” yet, through strategic use of it, they newly linked white evangelicalism, assisted reproduction, antiabortion advocacy, and adoption through a practice that has gained national and international recognition. In the next chapter, I consider how saviorism powerfully links efforts to save embryos with saving the US nation, which takes us inside the everyday routines and rhetoric of Christian adoption.

Interlude Claiming Adoption

The US adoption tax credit is an economic incentive that provides support to families who assume parental responsibilities of children in need of guardianship through adoption. Federal law governs the adoption tax credit and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) determines eligibility; state-­level credits vary.1 The credit, according to the IRS website, “offsets qualified adoption expenses, making adoption possible for some families who could not otherwise afford it. Your tax liability may be reduced if you adopt an eligible child and qualify for the Adoption Credit.” The IRS defines an eligible child as an “individual” who is younger than 18 years old and unable to care for themselves. While the code does not define individual, guidance regarding the definition in other areas suggests that embryos—­in vitro or in utero—­would not qualify. Nevertheless, embryo adoption recipients have applied for the credit to test the law.2 Qualified adoption expenses include adoption fees, court costs, attorney charges, and other expenditures involving the legal adoption of an eligible child. In 2022, the nonrefundable tax credit capped at $14,890 per child. Every year, Blossom staff receive inquiries from recipients about filing for the adoption tax credit with questions that they say are difficult to answer: Does embryo adoption count as a legal adoption for the IRS? Does a frozen embryo qualify as an “eligible child” and, if so, which ones, e.g., the ones shipped, transferred into a uterus, or born? Which program expenses “qualify,” e.g., home study, agency fees, and/or medical costs for frozen embryo transfer? Which date is an embryo adoption finalized, e.g., contract signing, shipment, embryo transfer, or birth date? Would the Blossom property transfer contract work in lieu of an adoption certificate or decree? The Blossom team typically refers people back to their tax preparer for advice. 57

58 | Interlude: Claiming Adoption

Tim is not discouraged by the fact that embryo adoption is not included explicitly in the IRS’s adoption credit literature: The language in the law and forms you have to file say it has to be legal adoption. [Embryo adoption] isn’t an illegal adoption. Does the federal government recognize it as an adoption? Well, they’ve spent 3 to 4 million dollars making the public aware of embryo adoption so I think that they believe it’s adoption. I just don’t think they’ve stopped to think if it’s the same as adoption that’s eligible for a tax credit.

He supports clients claiming the adoption credit as an everyday form of advocacy that advances the movement’s broader claim that embryos are children deserving equal recognition. Program staff have practical concerns for their clients. Kathy worries about the financial risks that Blossom recipients assume when participating in embryo adoption, especially if these are not offset by a tax credit. The overall cost for recipients averages $13,000–­17,000, which includes the $9,000 program fee to be matched with a set of embryos, an official home study ($2,000–­3,000), and frozen embryo transfers ($2,000–­5,000 each). In international and domestic adoption, Kathy said, “The odds are very high that you’re going to get a child, eventually. There’s not a guarantee, but for the most part we’re going to have a child at some point in the future.” Blossom recipients, by contrast, may never become pregnant or carry a pregnancy to term. “It’s a very costly thing to go through and not have a result,” Kathy said. She explains that families who adopt domestically or internationally “can wrap their head around [the expenses and credits] and make it financially okay,” but Blossom clients are in a different position: “People aren’t real sure if they can take any of that [embryo adoption expenses] off their taxes and we’re not even sure if they can. So, financially, they are just out the money and they may or may not have a baby.” Monica is less concerned about client risk and more about the appropriateness of their filing. She is not enthusiastic about Blossom clients applying for the credit: “Being reasonable about who the adoption tax credit is intended for, I don’t think Blossom families fall under the category.” In the absence of specific legal guidance or precedent about the tax credit for Blossom clients, recipients use the program’s client listserv to

Interlude: Claiming Adoption | 59

share resources, tips, and experiences. Some feel perplexed by the responses they receive from the IRS. “I am still very confused by the process,” wrote one recipient father, “and I’m an accountant; I can read tax code.” Some reported securing the credit through successful IRS filings by claiming their first children born through embryo adoption, but subsequent submissions for their second and third born from the same set of embryos were denied. One recipient mother sent copies of her home study and the Blossom contract as supplementary materials to represent her “qualifying adoption expenses.” When denied the credit, she posted to the listserv, “And they still think it is not an adoption?! Perhaps I should have sent them a picture of my daughter!” Online community forums hosted by Adoptive Family Circles, Baby Center, Embryo Adoption Awareness Center, and even the tax preparer H&R Block feature discussions about the eligibility of embryo adoption for the tax credit. One contributor on Baby Center wrote: “I was told by the IRS last year that embryo adoption is not legally adoption but rather seen as ‘property transfer’ in the eyes of the law, since these embryos are not considered living beings. That sounds so heartless but that’s what I was told.”3 The Embryo Adoption Awareness Center, an online hub of resources for embryo donation and adoption created by the Snowflakes program and funded by federal grant dollars, posted advice on its blog: We have heard of families who have been able to receive the tax credit once the baby has been born. The families who have successfully claimed the ATC [adoption tax credit] for their embryo adoption have usually finalized their adoption in court, expending additional dollars to have an attorney assist them. Finalizing your embryo adoption in court is not legally necessary—­you have already been identified as the legal parents on your baby’s birth certificate. However, having a court confirm that your baby is an adopted child seems to be the lynchpin in applying for the ATC.4

Nancy, a Blossom embryo recipient and certified professional accountant, asked a local judge to provide an adoption decree after her child was born. “It was a pain and it cost extra, but, in the end, it paid for itself,” Nancy wrote to the Blossom listserv after receiving news that her tax credit was approved. Legally adopting her child in court provided

60 | Interlude: Claiming Adoption

Nancy with an adoption certificate that the IRS requires. In many state courts, requests like Nancy’s are denied because requesters are already considered the legal mothers in state statute, as bearers of their children. I heard that some judges in the state of Missouri granted adoption certificates to Blossom clients once children were born. Passage of the “Option of Adoption Act” in the state of Georgia in 2009 made a splash in the embryo adoption community as embryo recipients spread word about the law’s provision for obtaining a court order to confirm parentage before or after birth with “adopted” embryos.5 Recouping adoption expenses is a practical motivation for embryo adoption participants, though political commitments compel too. Martha is hopeful that her filing will encourage the US government to recognize the practice of embryo adoption as a legitimate adoption, and embryos as adoptable children. In a note to the recipient listserv, she wrote: We are praying for guidance and direction—­we feel so strongly about claiming this adoption tax credit. Receiving this credit would just give more affirmation to our 100% belief that she WAS a human being as an embryo, and share that message even further . . . My little girl WAS adopted, and it hurts to see it in writing that they don’t consider her as a human life when we adopted her. I know you girls get it—­why can’t the rest of the world?

*** Ester and Dave Jacob—­a white evangelical embryo recipient couple through the Blossom program—­share Martha’s motivations to legitimize embryo adoption. They are one of the few participants I spoke to who filed successfully for the adoption tax credit. Before having children, Ester heard about embryo adoption through her mom, who listened to the Focus on the Family radio broadcast featuring the first Snowflake family’s story. “I always kind of had it in the back of my mind that it would be something I would like to look into,” Ester said. They decided to apply to the Blossom program after their two biological children were diagnosed with an inheritable genetic condition. Ester appreciates that embryo adoption allowed her the “ability to adopt,” “give embryos a chance at life,” and experience pregnancy. “It’s a great way to save lives,

Interlude: Claiming Adoption | 61

to actually play a role in saving the life of a child,” Ester said. The Jacobs received nine embryos in 2009 and, by the time we spoke a few years later, Ester had transferred four, delivered one daughter and a set of twins over two pregnancies, and was planning future transfers for their remaining five embryos. Ester is a committed pro-­life activist who joins annual antiabortion prayer chains, attends national pro-­life marches, and advocates for embryo adoption to her elected officials. Her pro-­life activism extends to her identity as a parent, she tells me, of ten children: two biological children, three children born through embryo adoption, five frozen embryos, and one embryo that was transferred and did not establish a pregnancy. She grieves the embryo that perished, which she said, “I won’t be able to hold until I’m in heaven.” She participates in online forums for grieving parents of miscarried pregnancies and early infant loss, and each year she commemorates the embryo she named Rose on her Facebook wall. The Jacobs, like many Blossom recipients, maintain that embryos are pre-­born children. “Life begins at conception and embryos are the smallest place that you can start with that,” Ester said. “For me, these embryos are children and they need someone to take care of them just as much.” Their religious politics motivated them to file for the adoption tax credit after the birth of their first child. They knew about the credit because both of their extended families have adopted members, and received encouragement to try for it through the Blossom client listserv. “Whether they [the IRS] felt it was a ‘true’ adoption or not, it was,” Ester said. “I was going to apply for [the tax credit] whether they liked it or not. We would just take it from there and see what happens.” The Jacobs’ claim, unlike many program clients who attempt to receive the credit, was accepted. The IRS audited their 2009 tax return, in which they claimed their first child born through embryo adoption for the credit. The IRS asked the Jacobs to provide a “certificate of adoption” for their daughter, which they did not have, so they sent copies of their official adoption home study and receipts for the Blossom program fees. It worked. That year, the Jacobs received a $12,150 tax credit to offset their personal tax liabilities. Like other politicized forms of tax avoidance, embryo adoption clients claiming the adoption tax credit are making political acts based on

62 | Interlude: Claiming Adoption

their shared claim that embryos are adoptable children. Advocates see the IRS’s “acceptance” of adoption tax credit filings as a form of recognition for embryo adoption as a legitimate practice and embryos as eligible children. While the IRS approved the credit for the Jacobs’s first child born through embryo adoption, the couple chose not to submit a tax filing for their twins or for the five frozen embryos stored in their fertility clinic. In other words, the seven embryos Ester identifies as parenting were not claimed as adopted in their tax filings, or “accepted” officially by the state, a point that she does not dwell on in our conversations. Rather, Ester is excited to tell her story about embryo adoption “to anyone who will listen” as advocacy for the social, legal, and moral recognition of embryos as pre-­born children.

2

Embryo Saviorism

Embryo adoption proponents draw intentionally from the saviorist rhetoric and routines of US adoption to advance practical and political goals. Claiming embryos as eligible children in adoption tax credit filings with the US government is one strategy among many used to promote the practice’s ambitions. Embryo adoption advocacy targeted to broader publics borrows numerical, rhetorical, and theological tactics from Christian adoption to cast frozen embryos as vulnerable orphans, without parents or homes, and worth saving. Tropes of white saviorism are elemental to such efforts and find expression through what I call “embryo saviorism.”1 Understanding what embryo saviorism is and its role in embryo adoption helps to make clear how a family-­making practice with ARTs advances the reproductive politics of white Christian nationalism in conceptions of a Christian America.

White Saviorism in US Adoption Adoption is a common yet complex social practice that has been instrumental in major national and international politics.2 In the US context, adoption operates as a social and legal process through which an adult assumes the rights and responsibilities of parenthood for a child as if that child were born to them.3 Before individual states passed legislation governing adoption in the mid-­nineteenth century, arrangements were forged informally and privately within and between families. Initially the focus of nongovernmental Christian charity and humanitarian organizations concerned about child welfare, adoption became the province of governmental activity by the turn of the twentieth century.4 Throughout ensuing decades, adoption was formalized, professionalized, and regulated. Like other social processes involving reproduction, adoption has featured centrally in US colonialist and military projects and has been promoted within major public policy debates, such as opposing abortion 63

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rights and government aid to minority mothers. While not intrinsically political, adoption has been embraced by white evangelicalism as a site for advancing so-­called religious family values.5 Saviorism actively shaped US adoption as it developed over the last century and a half. Feminist anthropologists teach us that saviorism draws upon social hierarchies and constructs of value to produce discrete kinds of social subjects: those that require saving (or not), and those that save.6 Saviorist discourses then assign this cast of characters roles in narratives that reproduce dominant ideas about social worth, intolerable threat, moral action, and societal good. White saviorism is a kind of saviorist discourse that melds social constructions of whiteness and Christian discourses of charity and salvation into narratives about white figures acting altruistically to help racially marginalized and infantilized figures in peril. White saviorism is a political discourse that is used, reproduced, and resisted by people who bear diverse identities and social locations. Similar to how I approach white evangelicalism, white saviorism does not describe what white religious people think or do but rather how whiteness and righteousness align in dominant narratives about moral action that has shaped much of US politics today. In the US context, white saviorism draws social meaning from earlier articulations of racially redeeming narratives, like settler constructions of the “noble savage,” state-­promoted ideologies of “manifesting” white Protestant America’s “destiny,” and colonialist claims about “white man’s burden.”7 “Whiteness” is construed in this repetitious theme as a dominant social ideal positioned atop the US racial hierarchy. While white savior narratives typically resist blatant expressions of white supremacy, they advance insidious forms of racial paternalism in covert ways. According to sociologist Matthew Hughey, we ought to be wary of white savior discourses because they “disavow the existence and effects of modern racism, which in turn allows the perpetuation of racial hierarchies and reconsolidation of white racial interests across the world.”8 “Saviorism” in these US discourses signifies moral protection from harm through faith in a loving fatherly figure. It draws directly on the foundational concept of salvation within Christian traditions that describes the protection of one’s eternal soul through faith in God. In evangelical Christianity, salvation is modeled through Christ’s life and rewarded to those who hear and believe the gospel. God grants salvation

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to believers through forgiveness (justification), holy likeness (sanctification), and kinship with God (adoption).9 It also invokes Christian notions of charity, which is understood theologically as a pure form of love with God. Believers are instructed to practice charity through unselfish and altruistic love toward each other, which can take shape through forms of helperism, humanitarianism, and pity. White savior narratives cast Christian ideals of salvation and charity as social salves for systemic racism while obscuring Christianity’s constitutive role in maintaining white supremacy as a moral order.10 Critical adoption scholars maintain that white savior discourses are “inherent” in US adoption and reproduce power relations valued by the Christian Right by promoting “liberal ideas about saving babies from dangerous and negligent others.”11 Before tracing the specific work of white saviorism in US adoption, it is worth noting the contexts within which it occurs. US adoption is well known for its stratified demographics in which adopters are consistently overrepresented by white, educated, and financially secure people, birth parents are overrepresented by people experiencing poverty and communities of color, and adoptees are overrepresented by Black and Brown children.12 Narratives of racialized paternalism, which are indicative of white saviorist discourse and prevalent in US adoption, map neatly onto these stratified demographics. For instance, adoption supporters deploy white savior rhetoric to counter historical stigmas around adoption by presenting it as a redemptive cause for the broader social good. Yet the notion of social good animating saviorist tropes is typically constructed by those empowered by their social position. This becomes clear in the way dominant narratives in US adoption privilege what the empowered—­the so-­called saviors—­want, and how they relate to the disempowered—­those said to need saving—­rather than vice versa. In doing so, saviorism in adoption has created dynamics where the disproportionately Black and Brown adoptees feel burdened with expectations of gratitude to their disproportionately white adopters for being “saved” from relations that many value: their families and communities of origin, and access to cultural heritage and other parts of their identities.13 One way that white savior rhetoric reproduces power relations in adoption is by assisting with the making of so-­called orphans. White saviorism is especially good at “mobilizing pity” in order to “position some

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as legitimately within a circle of care and deserving of resources,” as Laura Briggs argues.14 White saviorism achieves this effect by reducing complex social forces into oversimplified tropes that cast other people’s children as imperiled innocents, birth parents as negligent, home communities or countries as threatening, prospective adopters as altruistic, and adoption as a net positive for all.15 In transforming other people’s children into assimilable “others,” white saviorism shores up socially stratifying power relations as a moral order. Key to its efficacy in Christian adoption is convincing predominantly white Christians to take responsibility for so-­ called orphans worldwide while obscuring the Christian Right’s historical “complicity in creating a category of people who need saving.”16 As we will see in a review of Christian child-­saving movements in US history, white saviorism has a long record of encouraging the removal of socially marginalized children from their families of origin as a redemptive and charitable social act while obscuring its harms. Embryo adoption draws critical attention to the reproductive politics that are implicit, though often unexamined, in white saviorism. Toward making the reproductive politics of white saviorism more explicit, this chapter examines what I call “embryo saviorism” by tracing the strategies that embryo adoption advocates borrow from Christian child-­saving campaigns broadly, and US adoption practices specifically. A closer look at embryo saviorism reveals how this political discourse aligns constructs of white innocence and religious notions of salvation and charity to construe embryo adoption participants as altruistic saviors and frozen embryos as imperiled innocents deserving futures with white, heterosexually married, Christian couples. In subsequent chapters, we will see how it moralizes and politicizes embryo adoption as a salvational practice through a form of religious paternalism that relies on women’s reproductive risk-­taking and self-­effacement to “save” embryos from “frozen orphanages” by receiving them into their wombs. In doing so, embryo saviorism comes to light as a powerful discourse in embryo adoption advocacy that links not only racism and religion but gender, sexuality, class, disability, and other sites of social activity that commonly articulate in reproductive politics. Thus, embryo saviorism is key to understanding the constitutive links between the practice of embryo adoption and the reproductive politics of Christian nationalist visions for realizing the potential for a Christian moral order.

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Situating Embryo Saviorism Evangelicals began embracing adoption in unprecedented ways in the early twenty-­first century.17 “Adoption is everywhere,” proclaimed an editorial headline in the July 2010 issue of Christianity Today, the flagship evangelical magazine started by televangelist Billy Graham in the 1950s, “and God is into it too.” Journalist Kathryn Joyce noticed what she called a “sea change” of enthusiasm for adoption, especially among white evangelicals, following a 2007 summit hosted by the Christian Alliance for Orphans, the umbrella organization for the Christian orphan care and adoption movement. Key Christian leaders in attendance forged a plan that centralized adoption as a new “signature issue” by allowing Christians to spread the gospel and work proactively against abortion. Through the ensuing years, fervent supporters of adoption established “Orphan Sundays” in Christian congregations worldwide, published dozens of popular and scholarly books that espouse “orphan theology,” and sought political opportunities to foreground the so-­called global orphan crisis as the premier concern for evangelicals.18 Bethany Christian Services, the nation’s largest adoption agency, reported significant increases in adoption inquiries and placements by 2010, which it attributed to the mobilization of churches around adoption.19 Ron Stoddart, reflecting on trends in the Christian adoption agency that launched the Snowflakes program, told the Baptist Press in the same year, “I think the reason for the upswing in the number of home studies that are being done and the number of families that are applying is because of this increased awareness within the church of the need to take care of kids.”20 While adoption has been embraced fervently by US evangelicals in the twenty-­first century, Christian involvement in construing particular child-­like figures as social innocents, mobilizing pity for their plight, and promoting their saving by white middle-­class Christians has a broader reach than the legal practice of adoption, yet coincided historically with its development in the United States over the past 170 years. Christian child-­saving movements were closely linked to formal adoption and lay bare the workings of white saviorism that have become constitutive of US adoption, as well as embryo adoption. One of the earliest Christian child-­saving movements in the United States was led by white Protestant social reformers in the antebellum

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era who sought to redress the effects of industrialism and urbanization upon the so-­called dangerous classes of poor, urban, and immigrant youth. Protestant minister and social worker Charles Loring Brace was an early leader dedicated to identifying, as he titled his 1859 book, the “best method of disposing of our pauper and vagrant children.”21 Brace established the New York Children’s Aid Society to place “orphaned” youth from poor, immigrant, and urban households on white Protestant family farms in the West. According to historian Linda Gordon, Brace “was a man possessed by a messianic sense of his power to uplift the poor by molding their children into something better, higher than the slums from which they came.”22 Over the next eighty years (1854–­1929), 250,000 children—­many Catholic and Jewish—­were transported on orphan trains from northeastern cities to rural western towns where white Protestant families took in urban youth as acts of charity. Brace’s vision was to mitigate social ills by transforming the children of the “dangerous classes” into productive citizens.23 Moralized discourses of “saving” the so-­called orphans, who often had one or both living parents when placed on western-­bound trains, cast a racially marginalized strata of society as dangerous to justify the removal of children from their families for the alleged betterment of society.24 While the orphan trains ran, colonialists targeted Native youth for “saving” by forcibly removing them from reservations through enrollment in Christian boarding schools.25 Indian boarding schools were government-­driven, church-­supported, and military-­led assimilationist projects that emerged as part of colonialist strategies to “kill the Indian, save the Man.” This genocidal rationale was first voiced by Army General Richard Pratt, founder of the first off-­reservation boarding school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and formalized in President Ulysses S. Grant’s “Peace Policy” of 1869 that gave Christian denominations administrative power over Indian reservations as well as funding to build religious boarding schools.26 Separating Native children from their communities and inculcating them with white Christian values through requisite use of English and church attendance, the logic went, would enable their assimilation into white settler society. According to Pratt, transferring the “savage-­born infant to the surroundings of civilization” would help the child to “grow to possess a civilized language and habit.”27 More than 100,000 Native youth were forced to attend these schools, some

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of whom did not survive the physical punishment, food deprivation, sexual abuse, and other forms of violence reported by attendees and resisted for decades by Native activists.28 These schools are not a relic of the past; seventy-­three schools are in operation today, among which fifteen are still boarding.29 In the post–­World War II era, government authorities removed thousands of Native children from their families and placed them in foster care and non-­Native adoptive homes.30 By the mid-­twentieth century, the Indian Adoption Project of the Child Welfare League of America (1957–­1968) and subsequent Adoption Resource Exchange of North America (1966–­1978) had removed nearly one-­third of the children from reservations, more than 90 percent of whom were placed with non-­Native white adopters. These state-­sanctioned and church-­ supported programs sought to “save” Native youth and did not slow until the 1978 passage of the Native-­led federal law, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).31 ICWA was designed to prevent the genocidal removal of Native children from Native communities, though the law has been actively eroded in disputes over the non-­Native adoption of Indigenous youth. A national controversy erupted in 2013 over the case of Baby Veronica, who is the daughter of a Cherokee man placed for adoption by her mother, Christina Maldonado, with a non-­Native family without his consent. The father legally disputed the adoption placement as a violation of ICWA, which was facilitated by staff of the South Carolina branch of Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency—­not coincidentally the agency that founded the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program. When a South Carolina state court ordered Veronica’s transfer from her adoptive family’s home to placement with her father, non-­Native Christian adoption advocates responded by promoting the “Save Veronica” campaign for the “little girl taken unjustly from the only family she has ever known.” Campaign organizers claimed to have galvanized more than 30,000 signatories and called for messages of support to be emailed to prayers@ saveveronica.org, an email address that emphasized the religious thrust of the campaign’s white saviorism. The US Supreme Court took up the case and issued a ruling favoring Veronica’s re-­placement with the adoptive family, stating that ICWA did not apply to her adoption. White saviorism prevailed in this case, casting the child’s adoption to a non-­Native

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couple as in her “best interest” while eroding legal protections of Native American communities from legacies of genocidal violence.32 Twentieth-­century US militarism provided another front for Christian child-­saving through the establishment of the international adoption industry.33 Following World War II, US families looked increasingly abroad to adopt children from “war-­torn” and “disaster-­ridden” countries. “Baby lift” missions, initially in postwar Germany and Japan and later Korea and Vietnam, relocated thousands of internationally born children—­some the children of US soldiers stationed abroad—­to the United States. Figures like Bertha and Harry Holt, a white evangelical couple from rural Oregon who adopted eight children from Korean orphanages, were key agents in establishing the legal and procedural groundwork for international adoption that would make the United States the highest “consumer” of international adoptees in the world. The Holts became a celebrity family when they convinced the US Congress to change adoption law in 1955 to simplify the international placement of foreign-­born children with US families. They started Holt International Children Services, today one of the largest and longest-­ lasting Christian international adoption programs in the world, by appealing to Christians to “assume the responsibility” of rescuing orphans from the “cold and misery and darkness of Korea into the warmth and love of your homes.”34 Raising foreign-­born children in what were often white, middle-­class, Christian homes fueled Cold War politics through discourses that historian Arissa Oh calls “Christian American patriotism.”35 The rhetoric about saving children from former US war zones framed the United States, and white Christian adopters in particular, as saviors of racialized innocents from “cold and misery and darkness” whose Christian upbringing would, among other goals, assert US victory in the Cold War.36 More than geopolitical strategies in global politics, white savior narratives worked at intimate scales to transform foreign-­born children first into “needy objects,” and then “treasured subjects” desirable for transnational adoption.37 Elemental to saving so-­called orphans is severing their ties with families and communities of origin.38 According to Oh, the postwar Korean child, at first a “war waif,” was “imagined as an orphan” through white savior rhetoric that erased their past in preparation for a new future as a US adoptee-­immigrant. Once deemed orphans,

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children entered orphanages—­a material and symbolical space within white saviorism where children await what are called “forever families.” Postwar Korean orphanages, like others around the world, standardized children through dress, documentation, and regimen to become a blank slate on which to draw a hopeful future. Christian child-­saving efforts that propelled postwar international adoptions fell short domestically due to anti-­Black racism at home. Children born to Black mothers in the United States have been largely regarded as unadoptable and channeled into the foster care system.39 By contrast, “illegitimate” newborns from unwed white mothers were systematically “scooped” up by white infertile couples in vast numbers in the postwar decades.40 When the US government militarized Black and Brown communities in the 1990s’ “war on drugs,” a wave of would-­be white adopters responded to the “crack baby” epidemic by undertaking the expense and difficulty of adopting white children from Romanian orphanages rather than caring for the predominantly Black children within US domestic foster care.41 These trends exemplify how white savior constructions of innocence idolize the figure of the child while social factors that stratify them based on race, class, gender, disability, and citizenship status render the plight of all children of unequal concern.42 White savoir rhetoric prominent in Christian child-­saving movements proved useful for framing fetuses as savable subjects following the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the United States, and for promoting adoption as the saviorist alternative. Saving “unborn children” in Roe’s wake quickly became a cornerstone of antiabortion activism, which was initially led by Catholics and subsequently embraced en force by white evangelicals by the early 1980s. Conservative Christian leaders “biblicalized” the political message “abortion is murder” by making absolute moral opposition to abortion consonant with being Christian.43 For Jerry Falwell, white evangelical preacher and leader of the right-­wing political bloc called the Moral Majority, Roe meant that “this time preaching would not be enough.” The legalization of abortion led him to “realize that there were other crises facing the nation that required immediate political action from men and women of Christian faith.”44 For James Dobson, Christian radio talk show host and founder of both the white evangelical advocacy organization Focus on the Family and the political lobbying group Family Research Council,

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Roe instigated what he called a “new Civil War of values.”45 For Randall Terry, white founder of the extremist antiabortion organization, Operation Rescue—­later renamed Operation Save America—­undermining legal abortion was a means to a greater end: “When the Lord put the vision in my heart, it was not just to rescue babies and mothers but to rescue the country. This is the first domino to fall.”46 In these examples, we see how white savior rhetoric propelled political responses to abortion as a paradigmatic threat to conservative Christian ideals, with the at-­risk fetus representing what sociologist Carol Mason called a “minority unborn”: a figure of white innocence deemed vulnerable, valuable, and thus requiring saving.47 In practice, Christian Right activists promoted adoption as an alternative to abortion through educational campaigns led by advocacy groups, like Focus on the Family, as well as through the everyday activities within crisis pregnancy resource centers, maternity homes, and Christian adoption agencies, many of which are religiously affiliated and government-­funded. Proponents of adoption in these efforts cast it as a savior for the idealized religious social order. Yet, such a framing masks the fact that adoption is not considered an option by the vast majority of pregnant people seeking abortion nor, when it is chosen, is it without trauma to birth parents and their children.48 Thus far, we have seen how Christian child-­saving movements made ample use of white savior rhetoric to advance their goals over recent centuries by melding racist and Christian ideologies to intercede politically in people’s reproductive lives. Across a diverse range of examples, the similar effects of white saviorism are clear: some child-­like figures are construed as imperiled innocents, their parents are deemed negligent threats, and their powerfully positioned saviors are regarded as charitable agents for broad social good. Yet it is the constitutive role of reproduction as a political resource for white saviorist activity that makes these examples legible as part of a broader Christian vision for the country. As we will see, embryo adoption is the most recent expression of white evangelicalism’s focus on “saving” children. Drawing actively upon white savior narratives common in the Christian tropes that propel US adoption, embryo adoption advocates transform frozen embryos through numerical, rhetorical, and theological strategies into orphans

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without parents or homes and worth saving. We will consider each of their strategies in turn.

Counting a Crisis: Embryos without Parents “There are over 143 million children who go to bed each night without parents,” Ron Stoddart, founder of the Snowflakes program, told the Christian Examiner in 2007 for an article about National Adoption Month. Christian advocates concerned about the worldwide “orphan crisis” use such numbers to motivate fellow believers to open their hearts and homes to parentless children. As science and technology studies scholars teach us, all numbers tell stories about how people perceive the world, the problems in it, and how to address them.49 Numbers like 143 million are not self-­evident facts but rather are the effect of elaborate social negotiations about how to define categories, such as “orphan,” and how to best measure the phenomenon of orphanhood.50 Christian orphan advocates promote the perception of a growing global orphan crisis by claiming the number of orphans is rising worldwide, evinced through campaigns reporting an upward trend from 153 million, to 163 million, and recently to 210 million. These numbers have become what journalist Kathryn Joyce calls as “shorthand for a belief system” that an orphan crisis exists, a moral response is necessary, and adoption is the solution.51 The 143-­million number that Ron Stoddart referenced comes from the 2004 UNICEF report “Children on the Brink”—­a study that challenges the claim that all represented in that number are “without parents.”52 The vast majority of children reported on were not parentless but were living with a surviving parent or relative. Of the approximately 16.2 million “double orphans” without either surviving parent, many were being cared for by older siblings or extended family.53 Global orphan estimates that treat vulnerable children as without family cause violence to communities worldwide by erasing from view the relatives and community members involved in their care. This erasure does further harm by assuming all societies are structured around a nuclear family model or conveying that they should be, which imposes Western Christian values on others in order to justify removing their children from communities of origin. Ron’s suggestion that millions of children go to sleep

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each night without parents invokes white savior tropes common in US adoption that are nourished by the “the lie we love” to believe about other people’s children—­that they are permanently removable from their families to fulfill our desires to save.54 Embryo adoption advocates use similar saviorist strategies from the Christian orphan care movement to discursively cast frozen embryos as pitiable children without parents. The FDA oversees the management of human tissues in the United States, including human embryos, which puts them under the governance of property law rather than family or civil rights law. This means that embryos do not have legally recognized parents according to US law, affirming advocates’ view that frozen embryos are orphans. Recall from the introduction JoAnn Davidson’s testimony to the US Congress in which she described frozen embryos as “children” in “orphanages” that are “waiting to be born.” Marlene Strege delivered testimony during the same hearing as the parent of the “first adopted former frozen embryo.” She told her story to the committee of fifteen using similar orphan discourse: “Looking into Hannah’s eyes, I weep for the roughly 188,000 frozen human embryos like her placed in frozen embryo orphanages, who could be adopted, rather than terminated with assistance from my federal tax dollars.” JoAnn’s and Marlene’s testimonies featured white savior rhetoric from adoption to convince lawmakers that IVF embryos are “frozen orphans”—­at risk, vulnerable, and worthy of futures, just like parentless children. Marlene’s testimony quantified the “travesty” with a figure—­ 188,000—­to indicate the number of frozen orphans “who could be adopted.”55 In the printed statement submitted with her testimony, she calculated how many of the 188,000 frozen “children could be placed for adoption and born into the families of infertile married couples in America who seek to raise children.” She claimed that 12,600–­35,000 children could be born if all were donated for procreation.56 These numbers, which present a hopeful and urgent story in favor of embryo adoption, are based on the misleading idea that all of the nation’s frozen embryos are “orphans,” and thus available for procreative donation—­ which they are not. Like Ron’s statement about 143 million orphaned children, Marlene’s math does not acknowledge the ongoing relations between fertility patients and their embryos. Embryo disposition preferences and decisions

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over the past two decades tell a different story, which is that many frozen embryos are not legally or practically “abandoned” by their progenitors but actively planned and paid for.57 Most people storing embryos intend to use them for future reproductive attempts or plan to discard; only a small minority plan to or actually donate their embryos for research or for procreation.58 It is true that embryos are amassing rapidly and some progenitors with unused frozen embryos are absent, indifferent, or without plans.59 Cases involving death, divorce, and financial hardship leave some frozen embryos in states of legal limbo that halt disposition decisions. Nevertheless, it remains the case that embryos are not legally or practically available for procreative donation without patient consent. I would expect Marlene and other embryo adoption advocates to argue that not using one’s frozen embryos shirks parental responsibility and religious duty—­themes explored in greater depth in the next chapter. Still, her confidence that “the ‘excess supply’ of embryos will evaporate . . . as embryo adoption proliferates in the wake of this [embryonic stem cell funding] controversy” is guided by a false premise that all embryos accounted for in national estimates are available for procreative donation. Claiming frozen embryos in the United States are parentless and calculating the “lives that could be saved” if all were “adopted” uses numerical sleight-­of-­hand to create the semblance of a crisis for a vulnerable and valuable figure said to deserve moral action.60 Embryo adoption advocates borrow another counting strategy from the Christian orphan care movement when actively advertising an increasing number of embryos in cryo-­storage to suggest a rising moral crisis. Frozen embryo estimates are rough guesses because there is no national reporting or accounting system governing the private fertility sector in the United States, such as we saw earlier existing in the UK, that systematically tracks the actual number of embryos in cryo-­storage or disposition preferences. Since Marlene testified in 2001, national estimates have grown from 188,000 to more than 600,000 in 2013—­a n estimate based on an unpublished “embryo census” conducted by the Embryo Adoption Awareness Center.61 Following an estimate published by one of the innovators of human embryo cryopreservation, Alan Trounson, Blossom advertised that more than one million embryos are in cryo-­storage nationwide.62 The program publicized the increasing frozen embryo counts in promotional ma-

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terials, media interviews, and political advocacy in order to “turn the tide” on the problem, as Tim, the Evangelical Christian Adoptions (ECA) agency’s executive director, explained: “When the number of embryos continues to grow, the only way that you are going to turn the tide is to emphasize numbers.” Christian advocates “emphasize numbers” to tell different stories about the world that challenge the status quo.63 To turn the tide on the “devaluing” of embryos in the US fertility industry, advocates maintain that frozen embryos accumulating in fertility clinics across the country ought to be recognized as a crisis of care for at-­risk children rather than management of a surplus of cells in safe storage.

Frozen Orphanage: Embryos without Homes JoAnn’s and Marlene’s testimonies to Congress likened cryopreservation tanks common in fertility clinics to the image of an orphanage—­a temporary, tragic place for housing parentless children—­where they claimed that embryos, like children, do not belong. Doing so challenges the prevailing clinical view that embryos are safely protected in subzero temperatures where they can remain unharmed for an indefinite duration. Rather, advocates insist that embryos are out of place in cold storage and deserve a “home”—­more specifically, a uterus. Monica, director of the Blossom program, echoed a similar view in a conversation with me about her motivation to “find homes for embryos”: “Usually when you have something that is so valuable, you keep it in a safe place. They’re in the clinic but, my gosh, you wouldn’t feel comfortable if your child was in a clinic for years.” Blossom staff developed the imagery of “frozen orphanages” in promotional efforts to convey the program’s discomfort with cryopreservation. Using funds allocated through the federal Embryo Adoption Awareness grant, funded through the US Department of Health and Human Services since 2002, the adoption agency hired a media producer in 2008 to develop a series of online promotional videos to motivate donors, recipients, and professionals to participate in embryo adoption. I watched these videos during my first week on site at the agency when the director of Public Affairs for ECA—­which houses

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the Blossom Embryo Adoption program—­set me up in the conference room with a bunch of printed and digital promotional materials. Soon afterward I had my first conversation with Tim in his office. He asked if I had seen the “little two-­minute videos” yet, which he seemed excited to discuss. A goal of the videos, he said, is to “help people visualize that an embryo becomes a baby.” He continued: “How do you convince a family that has embryos that the best thing to do is to offer them to another family? That’s hard. In my opinion, it’s almost impossible to do if they don’t believe that it’s either a baby or is going to be a baby.” One video illustrated the program’s persuasive effort best: “Really the best example of are we trying to subtly influence people’s attitude toward embryos? is the video of the babies in the tank, [entitled] ‘Making Dreams Come True,’ where we have the little kids’ voices,” Tim said. The “Making Dreams Come True” video is set within a fertility clinic embryology lab. Opening with an image outside of a fertility clinic, the video moves inside the lab where a white male embryologist in a white coat works. Sitting at a lab bench, he handles a petri dish while looking into a microscope, then shifts to placing a slim container of plastic tubes containing frozen embryos into a cryopreservation tank. A voice representing the embryologist’s inner voice speaks, “There you are, all nice and frosty.” He secures the tank with a lid, tidies up the lab, and leaves for the day. He walks past four cryo-­tanks and says, “Goodnight my little friends.” As lights in the lab fade, the nursery song “Lullaby and Goodnight” begins to play and the voices of young children originating from inside the tank begin talking to each other. “You know, it’s really cold in here,” one says. “I know. What do you think is going to happen to us?” another asks. “I don’t know,” says a third. “I had a dream last night,” says the first. “Wanna see?” “Sure,” they respond. An image of a white hetero-­couple on a picnic blanket holding a baby overlays the cryo-­tank, then focuses on the mother kissing and rocking the baby. “Wow, I like your dream,” one voice from the tank says. In unison, others say enthusiastically, “Me too!” The voices of children coming from inside a tank in a darkened clinic presents a disturbing contrast to the caring thoughts of the embryologist and soothing music. Something, the video suggests, is wrong with this picture, conveying what literature scholar Lee Edelman describes as the profound cultural resonance of the idea of a baby in pain.64 Frozen

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embryos are made to speak with children’s voices that express worry as well as hope for their futures. While embryos are unable to speak for themselves, what they say conveys a great deal about the ventriloquizer.65 This promotional video makes audible tropes of embryo savior anxieties about the fates of frozen embryos and the embryos’ dreams depict the futures that conservative Christians envision as worthy for them: birth into white, heterosexual, nuclear families. The video shifts to a sequence of heart shapes containing pictures, each coming into view in time with the thump-­thump cadence of a heartbeat. The first contains an image of an in vitro embryo followed by an in utero fetus, a newborn at birth, and concludes with a white infant. During the sequence, with lullaby music in the background, a woman narrator says, “Making dreams come true. Embryo donation and adoption. Share the hope.” All aspects of the video’s rhetorical design were intentional, Tim said: The whole purpose of that was to help people connect the dots: embryo, baby, embryo, baby, embryo, baby. You do it fast enough and they just kind of merge in terms of the embryo becomes baby. Embryo, fetus, newborn, child—­it’s a natural progression. That’s the message we were trying to subtly do . . . When you look at the tank and you hear little babies’ voices, it helps reinforce the fact that these are pre-­born babies.

By blurring distinctions between embryo and baby, and making contiguous associations between in vitro cells and born child, the video uses antiabortion strategies and Christian adoption rhetoric to convey what advocates maintain is wrong with this picture: Frozen orphans are not clinical specimens in safe storage but “pre-­born orphans” without parents or homes. Blossom experimented with a more tangible version of the frozen orphanage for community outreach events. I visited ECA during the summer of 2012 to find a new prop that the program planned to stage at summer tabling events in hopes of promoting conversation about the Blossom program. On the table in the center of the office sat a used cryopreservation tank stickered with jungle-­themed nursery images and accompanied by a poster that read: “Frozen Embryo Nursery: Where Children Wait For Their Dreams To Come True.” The idea arose during

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Figure 2.1. Faux cryo-­tank prop decorated as “Frozen Embryo Nursery.” Photo by author.

a weekly team meeting discussion earlier in the year. To everyone’s surprise, Monica found an affordable and portable cryotank on Craigslist that she procured to prepare for outreach.66 ECA reserved a booth at the county fair that year, and staff from the agency’s domestic, international, and embryo programs took turns representing the agency in the booth. I joined Blossom staff one evening to see how their outreach efforts were going. The faux cryo-­tank sat on the tiered tabletop, a piece of clinical equipment situated next to flyers about orphan care in foreign countries, brochures about adoption for pregnant women “in crisis,” and photos of smiling children. Like most days during the fair, foot traffic was slow that evening. Very few visitors came by and none asked about embryo adoption. I heard from staff that the tank received only a modicum of attention on other days of the fair. One visitor thought it was a large donation receptacle and expressed surprise to learn it was medical equipment used to store human embryos. On another day, a little girl asked the staffers what the tank was for, which they did not know how to answer. They joked later about what they

Figure 2.2. Faux cryo-­tank prop at agency’s county fair booth. Photo by author.

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could have said. “Well, all of us start as embryos,” Sarah, a program assistant, began in a pretend reply, which Kathy, the program social worker, sardonically finished with: “and some of us are put into tanks.” Kathy’s comment made us laugh, both at the awkwardness of introducing the ART version of the birds-­and-­the-­bees to a stranger’s child as well as the oddness of explaining to visitors how cold tissue storage equipment belongs in an adoption booth. The strangeness of such an explanation is the point. Blossom’s prop tank was meant to be out of place in the adoption booth, just as advocates regard frozen embryos as being out of place in cryopreservation tanks across the country. Baby animal stickers on the gray metal exterior of clinical equipment did not transform the storage unit into a convincing nursery but instead rendered it a spectacle. Even though the cryo-­tank did not elicit the kinds of conversations the program hoped it might on its first foray in public outreach, it did rhetorical work. Misunderstanding its use and purpose in the booth is precisely the conversation the staff want to have about what frozen embryos are waiting for: life beyond the perils of frozen orphanhood.

“God Has a Heart for Orphans” “Embryos are orphans until they are born,” said Nathan, Tim’s successor as executive director of ECA, during a conversation we had soon after he assumed leadership. “They are not being cared for,” he followed. Nathan came into his new role in 2012 following a career as an ordained Baptist minister and private Christian college professor. Drawing from his expertise in Christian scripture, he oriented me to the theological underpinnings of the Blossom program. “There is undoubtedly an adoption mandate in the Bible,” he said, a point he conceded that even congregants and pastors from “Bible-­believing churches . . . need some education on.” He views the Blossom program as a useful “talking point” that “awakens evangelicals” to the biblical imperative around adoption that, he suggested, has long been a concern within Christianity. “There is an adoption mandate that appears more times in the Bible and appears going back as early as the book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible. It is a pervasive theme throughout the Old Testament and New,” he said. “It’s clearly there that we are to care for the widow, fatherless, stranger,

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oppressed . . . This is not just a command but is rooted in God’s concerns. God has a heart for orphans and therefore so should we.” As a student, speaking to a professor and pastor, I asked for literature recommendations to learn more about the biblical mandate to adopt. Nathan directed me to Proverbs 24:11–­12, a biblical passage about the perils of not rescuing those in need. It is a common reference in US antiabortion activism called “rescues” involving direct action attempts to dissuade pregnant people from walking into abortion clinics, which Nathan sometimes participated in outside of the local Planned Parenthood.67 He paraphrased the passage with ease: It says, “Rescue those who are being led to the slaughter and do not say we didn’t know about it because doesn’t the Lord see your heart?” In other words, he knows that you knew that there was something going on that you didn’t do anything about. I think Christians don’t need to have the Proverb in mind in order to feel the sense of this verse, which is there is something going on that I can continue to pretend I’m ignorant of or I can do something about. They know that pretending to be ignorant is not an excuse.

He handed me a multiple-­page list of biblical passages printed from a keyword search of fatherless—­a theological synonym for a non-­ Christian—­through an online version of the New International Bible. As he explained it, the Blossom program fulfills the biblical mandate to care for orphans by recognizing embryos as in danger, without parents, and in need of “homes.” Theologically, adoption is a metaphor for religious conversion—­a transformation involving the “great act of redemption in which sinners are forgiven, justified, sanctified, and made into a ‘new creation.’”68 In Christian scripture, particularly those penned by the apostle Paul, orphanhood is interpreted by theologians as a metaphor for “fatherless” non-­Christians who are outside of God’s “family” of believers and ripe for conversion.69 God as Father is common imagery throughout the Bible, with significant concentration in New Testament expressions from Jesus. In this familial metaphor, God is said to be omniscient, provider of life, corrector, and forgiver.

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Even though Nathan maintains that Christian scripture endorses the socio-­legal act of adoption, the embrace of adoption by Christians is relatively recent, as we saw earlier in the chapter. Emergent theologies of adoption over the past couple of decades of evangelical fervor actively link spiritual salvation—­one’s adoption into God’s eternal family—­with the legal adoption of other people’s children into one’s care. “What God does to us spiritually, He expects us to do to orphans physically: be born again and adopted,” said evangelical pastor Rick Warren to congregants at an adoption summit hosted by the Christian Alliance for Orphans.70 In order to follow God’s heart for orphans, as Nathan put it, Christians are called to mirror God by saving embryos and their souls in the same act of embryo adoption. While embryo adoption originated during a period of increased interest in adoption among evangelicals, it was not received without controversy. Advocating embryo saviorism raised the ire of some Christians wondering about the fates of “born children” in orphanages and foster care. Tim and Nathan, in their role as agency leaders, responded with assurances that God has a heart for all orphans—­including frozen embryos. Monica, as often, held a different view. While caring equally about orphans and embryos, she saw them as having fundamentally different needs. “Giving life to an embryo is not the same as bringing a kid home from an orphanage or adopting an infant,” she said. “They are totally different. They are parallel but separate problems.” Monica became interested in a career in adoption while living abroad as an au pair with a European family and caring for their daughter, an adoptee from China. Upon return to the United States, she accepted a front desk job at ECA where she hoped to eventually work in international adoption programs. “I came to adoption wanting to help people and especially kids, not the frozen ones though!” When asked to assist with the growing Blossom program, she thought it would be a temporary position from which she would transition into the agency’s international programs. When the previous Blossom manager left, Monica was the obvious choice as her successor. As spokesperson for the program for seven years, she maintained that embryo adoption differed markedly from finding homes for children living in orphanages—­a position that ran counter to some of the agency’s theological messaging about their equivalence.

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In December 2015, Nathan delivered an online webinar about the religious imperatives of embryo adoption in which he addressed the question: Can embryo adoption fulfill the call to care for the orphan? He told a story of meeting a prospective Blossom recipient client at a Calvary Chapel service where he spoke about ECA’s international, foster care, and embryo adoption programs. The client shared with Nathan his reservations about the Blossom program, which was prompting him to consider switching to the international adoption program. With 168 million orphans worldwide, this gentleman was having trouble understanding why he would adopt an embryo rather than an orphan child from another country. What I said to him is, “You can. You do, people do!” We have families who do both. We have families who have adopted two kids from China and two Blossom children. We have a family who adopted from China, had a biological child, then also adopted an embryo. So, there’s not an exclusion here. It’s not an either/or. It’s a both/and.

By including frozen embryos in the biblical mandate to care for the orphan, God becomes an endorser of embryo adoption and Christians become morally obligated to “rescue” the frozen orphans “being led to the slaughter.” Nathan concluded his presentation without mincing words about the theological roots for Christians’ civic responsibility to save embryos: Embryo adoption is a moral imperative, not a neutral or gray area . . . The purpose is to take the embryos that already exist despite who created them, why they created them, and whether they should have created them and to give every opportunity for these embryos to come to life.

Including frozen embryos in theological interpretations of adoption is a strategy developed to motivate Christian audiences, especially critics who are otherwise supportive of adoption. Sarah, a Blossom program assistant who managed online communications, regularly encountered what she called misunderstandings from fellow Christians.  Adoption is a long tradition that people are familiar with. They understand it as taking a child already born and existing and becoming a family

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to that child. Blossom encourages people to adopt embryos who aren’t physically out of womb, breathing, eating, or walking on their own . . . There are some within the adoption community who see embryo adoption as taking homes away from the 143 million orphans around the world right now . . . Tim’s big thing is protecting life in all forms of development. We fully support adoption of children [from other countries], and helping teenage mothers place their newborns. We also see embryos as lives frozen, as lives with potential.

She surmised that some Christians are uncomfortable with embryo adoption because it veers from theological and social convention: “Embryo adoption is not traditional. For some, the new way isn’t the right way.” Tim sees the discomfort differently. While serving as agency director, he received and responded to various criticisms of all of ECA’s adoption programs—­domestic, international, and embryo. Critiques of embryo adoption are not a problem of tradition, he said, but one of perceived priority. In an email to ECA supporters at the end of 2012, Tim addressed the criticisms head on: We are often confronted by those who believe we should be prioritizing some programs over others. Why do we worry about frozen embryos when there are millions of orphans in the world? Why do we worry about children in orphanages in far off lands when there are so many children in the United States who need stable, loving homes? Why do we counsel young women with unplanned pregnancies to consider adoption when their own families could step up to help parent the child?

ECA’s mission is not about priority but equivalence, he explained: “To attempt to solve one problem does not mean we have to ignore the others.” For Tim and other embryo adoption supporters, frozen embryos, fetuses, and children in orphanages all share the need, as children, for safe homes. In general, we see ourselves as finding, recruiting, and facilitating the coming together of families with children. For instance, with international adoptions, we do not see ourselves as having a client family and

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going over and looking for a child for this family in some country. We see ourselves as knowing that there are innumerable children available, whether embryos or carried by a birth mother or in an orphanage, that need a family. Our focus is on recruiting families for these children.71

Embryo Saviorism Casting particular child-­like figures as social innocents deserving protection by white saviors is neither novel in US history nor unique to embryo adoption. White savior narratives have served as the linchpin in abolitionist rhetoric, the cornerstone of border politics, a decoy for transforming systemic racism—­like the segregation of schools—­into “private” family matters, a justification for US adoption, among many others.72 Yet what is often missing in discussions of white saviorism is attention to the reproductive politics that are constitutive of saviorism’s many expressions. Reproduction is a fundamental feature of most political activity—­as medium, metaphor, material, and more—­even while the fact is often obscured.73 Embryo adoption lays these features bare. As we have seen, embryo saviorism operates in embryo adoption as a powerful discourse that merges constructs of white innocence and religious notions of salvation and charity to generate discrete kinds of social subjects: those that do and do not require saving, and those that save. In effect, embryo adoption participants become socially sanctioned saviors and frozen embryos become pitiable innocents that deserve futures with white, heterosexually married, Christian couples. These parallel familiar roles within Christian nationalist mobilizations that call devotees to save the threatened, though precious, possibility for a Christian nation. Examining the reproductive politics of white saviorism in embryo adoption reveals the powerful work of saviorist discourses in linking the practice’s everyday activities to the Christian Right’s goal of conceiving a Christian America. Wariness of embryo saviorism brings to light its seductions and harms. The promise of salvation for the savable, the saviors, and the broader social order is extremely seductive for embryo adoption advocates. Discourses of responsibility and duty common among embryo adoption advocates provide guidance for how to practice charity toward achieving these salvational promises. Public outreach efforts that call

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predominantly white, heterosexually married, Christian women to provide a “home” for embryos by receiving them in their wombs tap into social constructions of white Christian motherhood and a powerful God to amplify the seductions of embryo saviorism. For this reason, the dutiful and altruistic white mother’s motivations to save embryos, enmeshed with her procreative desires for a nuclear family, are especially prominent within the stories they tell. Following Teju Cole’s critique of the white savior industrial complex, white saviorism in all of its forms ought to be watched carefully because, like a wounded hippo, it can cause real harm.74 The following chapters bring us deeper inside the world of embryo adoption to consider the seductions and harms of embryo saviorism as it is wielded by its agents—­ professionals and participants. What we find is that embryo saviorism is a politically powerful discourse with practical limits that nevertheless has made embryo adoption a strategic symbol in conservative Christian politics as well as a constitutive site for making their dreams of an ideologically whiter and righter Christian nation come true.

Interlude American Seed We are dealing with the seeds of the next generation. —­President George W. Bush, in a public speech delivered on August 9, 2001 about federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research

From a Southern California suburb in 1997, a Christian adoption lawyer forged a legal transfer of frozen embryos between two infertile Christian couples that would become the basis for the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program—­the first of its kind in the world. John and Marlene Strege—­the first embryo recipients—­enjoy telling the story of how God answered their prayers for a child through embryo adoption. Over the past twenty-­five years, they have seized many opportunities to share publicly how their family was formed—­to journalists, on Christian radio talk shows, through legal testimony, as well as in published writings of their own, such as John’s recent memoir, A Snowflake Named Hannah: Ethics, Faith, and the First Adoption of a Frozen Embryo. The following narrative about the first embryo adoptive family draws upon details the Streges shared with numerous sources or penned themselves. The Streges are a white married Christian couple who raised their only child, Hannah, in Southern California. Marlene met her husband, a sports journalist, when in her mid-­twenties and working as a hotel clerk. During the first years of marriage Marlene took night classes toward a degree in occupational therapy, a career that she eventually left to focus on raising her child as a stay-­at-­home mother. The Streges attended the nearby Lutheran Missouri Synod congregation—­a conservative, evangelical sect of Lutheranism. Marlene’s desire to experience pregnancy had remained strong as she and John experienced infertility, which led them to attempt IVF. She 89

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talked with a trusted co-­worker about her concerns with IVF, namely that more embryos would be created than they could commit to transferring. Her friend suggested, in that case, that another Christian couple could parent them. The idea sparked Marlene’s curiosity. After being diagnosed with premature ovarian failure, which impacted her ability to produce her own eggs and explained her infertility, Marlene consulted her doctor about options. He mentioned egg donation with IVF, which the Streges opposed because they felt, as Marlene explained in an online essay written for Christian Life Resources—­an evangelical network of crisis pregnancy centers and residences for single mothers—­that using a donor egg would be “going outside the marriage bond to create life.”1 She asked if the clinic had any embryos she could adopt. He offered anonymous embryo donation, in which the clinic would match them with remaining embryos from previous patients who they could not meet nor learn much about other than hair and eye color. Uninterested in this approach, the Streges were steadfast in wanting to grow their family in a way that felt “honorable before God.”2 The idea of adopting unused IVF embryos took deeper root. Marlene sought counsel by contacting three Lutheran pastors and the evangelical Christian ministry, Focus on the Family, for religious advice. She called in to Focus on the Family’s Christian daily radio talk show on her drive to work and followed up by writing a letter to Dr. James Dobson, the organization’s founder and president, asking what God would think about adopting frozen embryos. Dobson called Marlene directly a few days later to say that he had never heard of such a practice and would look into it. Meanwhile, the Streges met with their friend, Ron Stoddart, a family lawyer and executive director of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, whom Marlene first met when she was a teenage participant in his youth group. After discussing the domestic and international adoption options available through the agency, Marlene raised the idea of “adopting” an embryo. “Ron didn’t even flinch,” she recalled in a Christian radio interview with Dr. James Dobson.3 “He took it and ran with it.” As John Strege wrote in his memoir, “There would be no story to tell had Ron viewed our request to adopt embryos as a time-­consuming challenge rather than an opportunity to save lives.”4 Ron, a pro-­life Christian lawyer who believes frozen embryos are pre-­ born children awaiting the chance at birth, wanted the legal transfer pro-

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cess to mirror traditional adoption as closely as possible. He asked a staff member, JoAnn Davidson, who had been hired for birth-­mother outreach, to assist him with developing the program. This involved investigating the contractual legalities of transferring embryos between parties, researching embryo storage and transfer protocol within fertility clinics, and supporting prospective clients. The learning curve for JoAnn was “huge,” she recalled in a conversation with John that is featured in his memoir, though she felt “the Lord working through me, using me in my vocation” to achieve their overall goal: “We want more babies to be saved.”5 Ron asked the Streges, as intended recipients, to complete all requirements for adoption in the state of California, including background checks, home study, and consultation with social workers, as well as complete physical exams. He also asked that they compose a letter introducing themselves to prospective donors. Ron and the Streges justified the effort and expense by regarding embryo adoption as traditional adoption at an earlier stage. As Marlene described, “We would be providing a home for children, similar to any other adoption. Through my body, I would be providing oxygen, nutrients, a warm place to grow, and love for my baby—­the same requirements for a child outside the womb.”6 Late in 1997, Focus on the Family staff connected the Streges with news about a prospective donor couple in the Midwest who, fortuitously, contacted the organization asking for advice about what to do with their twenty frozen embryos remaining after having triplets through IVF. Together, Ron and the two Christian couples created the first embryo adoption agreement—­a legal transfer of property between consenting parties modeled on the language and requirements of traditional adoption. They developed the program’s iconic name—­Snowflakes—­together as well. To thank Ron for his support, John and Marlene had invited him to see a Christmastime show staged by the Lamb’s Players Theater at the Hotel del Coronado. During the play, one of the actors recited a line that caught their attention: “In the intricate design of each flake of snow, we find the creator reflecting the individual human heart.” During intermission, Ron told Marlene that they had found a name for what would become the world’s first embryo adoption program. Reflecting on that inspired moment years later, Ron said to John: “Once in a while you hear people say that ‘God gave me a word’ . . . This is the one time in my life I can say that God gave me the word . . . Talk about God’s perfect plan.

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Nothing could have been more perfect than snowflakes from Heaven, frozen. It was amazing. It still gives me chills.”7 After signing the legal property transfer contract with the donor couple in early 1998, the Streges received a FedEx shipment of frozen embryos at their California fertility clinic. They chose this clinic because they had identified a Christian reproductive endocrinologist there who was willing to transfer embryos created at another IVF clinic—­an atypical arrangement in fertility medicine at that time. Early efforts were devastating: Most of the embryos failed to survive the thawing process and their first FET was unsuccessful. The next transfer, scheduled for Easter weekend, required thawing the remaining eight embryos; only three survived and were deemed viable for transfer. Two weeks later they celebrated the news that Marlene was pregnant with a single embryo. “When we as Christians celebrate new life is when Hannah came back to life,” Marlene told Biola University professors in an interview for the Thinking Biblically blog.8 Pregnancy affirmed their faith in God’s hand in resurrecting, so to speak, their embryos from frozen limbo, auspiciously timed during Easter. Marlene delivered their “snowflake” baby on December 31, 1998. They named her Hannah, loosely meaning graced by God and after an infertile biblical figure whose prayers were answered when she bore her only son, the prophet Samuel. When Hannah was five months old, the Streges traveled to Focus on the Family headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado for a radio interview with Dr. Dobson and Ron to discuss embryo adoption. While there, the Streges met the donor family for the first time, who they would meet a few more times in person and share holiday and birthday cards with for two decades. The Streges maintained an open relationship with the embryo donors, who asked to remain anonymous in the Streges’s public advocacy. Dobson announced his endorsement of the newly minted Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program during the interview, making it the first public attention brought to the practice.9 At that time, Dobson’s radio show aired on several thousand radio stations in the United States.10 Many donors and recipients I spoke to claimed that this radio show and a follow-­up magazine article first introduced them to embryo adoption. The Focus on the Family broadcast marked the beginning of Marlene’s public advocacy for embryo adoption. By the time Hannah was

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ten years old, the Streges had joined other Snowflakes families on three trips to the White House and had twice met President George W. Bush personally. In 2000, the Streges were invited by the Christian Legal Society’s advocacy affiliate, Human Life Advocates, Inc., to join as plaintiffs, along with Nightlight Christian Adoptions, in a federal lawsuit challenging the National Institutes of Health’s guidelines concerning federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. Soon after President George W. Bush’s inauguration, his administration began reviewing the guidelines. Prior to making a decision, the US House of Representatives scheduled hearings, bringing supporters and opponents to DC in July 2001. Pro-­life Christian legal strategist, Samuel B. Casey, encouraged the Streges to bring Hannah to Washington. Testifying before Congress would “put a human face on the issue” of federal funding for embryonic research, Casey told them.11 According to John, the Streges embraced advocacy opportunities because they felt called by religious duty: We did not seek this fight, but neither was it one in which we were willing to cede responsibility to others. We are pro-­life Christians who believe life begins at conception, and unwittingly, we were at the fore of an embryo adoption movement that began to allow countless other embryos in frozen storage to be given the same opportunities that Hannah had. We were obligated to make a stand on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves, as the Bible instructs us to do, and we agreed to do so.12

As Hannah grew, the Streges considered how to discuss their daughter’s origin story with her. “Being an adoptive mom, we . . . had to do other things besides a traditional adoption like how do you tell your child they were frozen . . . and they were adopted as an embryo and not a newborn, that type of thing.”13 Marlene used seeds to explain to Hannah how she joined their family. The idea came to Marlene during a lesson on plants in Hannah’s kindergarten class. With Hannah, she put two seed packets in the freezer, removed them during the appropriate growing season, and planted twenty seeds in an egg carton. Not all sprouted seedlings, nor did all of the seedlings survive transplantation in their garden. She recalled telling Hannah: “We adopted you as a seed and the doctors put you in my tummy to grow. Just like when the doctors transferred the frozen embryos into me, not all of them survived.”14 In an interview

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with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Marlene said that she liked reminding Hannah, “Only God could see you. You were so tiny.”15 As Hannah aged, the Streges elaborated on the narrative, noting that mothers and fathers who use IVF create seeds like her, a story that helped them introduce Hannah to her biological relatives. The seed origin story gained popularity with other embryo adoption families beyond Snowflakes, many of whom shared ideas on online blogs and discussion boards for explaining their children’s unique origins. Around Valentine’s Day one year, I noticed that the Blossom staff had displayed a homemade valentine sent by a recipient client. The program often received holiday cards from clients who considered staff important parts of their family-­making process. The sender designed a flowerpot-­shaped card out of red construction paper and glued a packet of flower seeds from the American Seed company inside, with a printed note that read: “Hey Valentine . . . Life begins as a seed . . . just like you!” More than a “face” for embryo adoption, Hannah is becoming a vocal pro-­life advocate for embryo personhood.16 “Saving embryos is a cause dear to my heart,” Hannah wrote in the foreword to her father’s memoir.17 When a freshman at Biola University, an evangelical college in Southern California, Hannah wrote an advocacy letter to then-­Vice President Mike Pence, whom she met at a press conference in Washington, DC in 2006; the conference was showcasing children born through embryo adoption to coincide with President Bush’s veto of the human embryonic stem cell research funding bill. Each frozen embryo is a life and we should be striving for plans of adoption instead of destruction . . . I stood behind President George W. Bush during his first veto in 2006, with regards to limiting federal funding for stem cell research. President Obama lifted the veto during his presidency. I know you and President Trump are pro-­life and I am hoping you would consider stopping federal funding on embryonic stem cell research.

She closed her letter with, “For the embryos yet to be born.” At the time of writing this book, Hannah is a graduate student of social work who is motivated to “devote” her career “to the cause of life.”18 She identifies as having been an advocate from a young age:

Figure I.1. Valentine from a Blossom family forged through embryo adoption. Photo by author.

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I just put a face and a name to the problem. People see me, and they see that I was once an embryo, and I was once considered property. When in our country was the last time a human was considered property? Slavery. I really showed America and the world that embryos are worth saving and worth our time and worth rescuing.19

As a social worker, she aspires to “induce social change on abortion, the overuse of in vitro fertilization, and the creation of more embryos than a couple will be able to use—­and to help rescue the embryos still in frozen storage. I want to give a voice to the voiceless. I owe it to my nineteen siblings. Their lives will not be forgotten.”20 In her mother’s view, “serving God, their country, and their fellow man” is a proud role for the “hundreds of Snowflake children”—­like Hannah—­“who are about to take their place in the world.”21

3

Generation

The Streges were the first of thousands of white pro-­life Christians whose desires for children led them to embryo adoption, a practice their daughter describes as having “showed America and the world that embryos are worth saving.” More than just the first parents from embryo adoption, the Streges have become paradigmatic ambassadors of embryo saviorism. The opportunity to save frozen embryos through an adoption-­like process that involves “the same requirements for a child outside the womb . . . providing oxygen, nutrients, a warm place to grow, and love for my baby” was initially a means for John and Marlene to create a family. Upon finding themselves “at the fore of an embryo adoption movement,” the Streges embraced identifying as embryo saviors in public advocacy in order to fulfill what John calls their duty “to make a stand on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves, as the Bible instructs us to do.” Marlene took a stand, as we saw in the previous chapter, when joining Snowflakes staff in testifying to Congress about the “188,000 frozen human embryos like her [daughter Hannah] placed in frozen embryo orphanages, who could be adopted, rather than terminated.” The Streges take a stand each time they broadcast their story through saviorist narratives of frozen embryos as imperiled innocents and the efforts of white, heterosexually married, Christian couples—­like them—­to adopt them from freezers. By not “ceding responsibility to others” to promote the cause, the Streges consider themselves powerfully positioned to make a difference—­a savior’s view. Hannah, similarly, describes herself as a born savior whose very existence “put a face and a name to the problem,” a fact that motivates her “to help rescue the embryos still in frozen storage” in order “to give a voice to the voiceless.” The Streges may not have sought “this fight,” but they have become prominent spokespersons for embryo saviorism and the Christian conceptions of America it advocates. 97

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The Streges helped launch the orphan embryo into the world—­a controversial social figure formed strategically through the rhetoric and rituals of US adoption, as introduced in the previous chapter. In turn, they embraced a savior identity as charitable Christian rescuers of white innocents without parents and in peril. The frozen orphan and the embryo savior are the most conspicuous figures used in public outreach and political advocacy for embryo adoption. As symbols of embryo saviorism, they help to align the practice’s goals of saving embryos as well as the country from existential threats by seeking new “homes” for both. Yet, in practice, Blossom’s staff and clients report that the frozen orphan and embryo savior figures, while politically provocative, are practically problematic. They feature less prominently in day-­to-­day program activities except as sites of tension for staff and clients. Disputes between clients about these figures have resulted in disrupted agreements that caused heartache and left embryos in freezers. Program staff who strive to smooth out conflicts with and between clients experienced internal strife around their professional efforts and savior identities. An inside look at the everyday activities within embryo adoption shows how the most prominent public symbols of embryo saviorism may advance the movement’s political ambitions yet cause harms that hinder its expressed goals of moving embryos from freezers to wombs. In response to the pragmatic challenges posed by the limits of embryo saviorism to save embryos, Blossom staff developed more relatable roles to facilitate the mundane work of “finding homes for embryos.” The roles that staff generated were inspired by the program’s roots in ECA, a Christian adoption agency that, according to Nathan, one of its directors, is committed to a “biblically-­driven Christian ministry” and is “uniquely pro-­life.” Blossom staff embodied both commitments by construing participants as parents and stewards, and frozen embryos as pre-­born children and God’s property, respectively. Casting embryos as pre-­born children foregrounds pro-­life politics while appealing to participants who identify, or wish to be recognized, as responsible parents. Casting embryos as God’s property animates theological concerns that call Christians to behave as dutiful stewards in caring for God’s divine possessions. Both roles—­parents and stewards—­promote the discursive aims of embryo saviorism but are more useful in the day-­to-­day activities of moving embryos from freezers to uteruses. The fact that staff de-

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veloped roles better suited to the everyday goals of embryo adoption highlights how embryo saviorism, in practice, counteracts those goals. In other words, this chapter reveals some of the practical limits of saviorism for “saving” embryos.

“Embryos Aren’t Abandoned” Given the enthusiasm among the adoption agency’s leadership for saving frozen orphans, I was surprised to hear the first critical remark about it from Monica—­Blossom’s program manager. During an early conversation in 2008, she rejected the idea that embryos donated through the program are orphaned. “I haven’t been around embryos that have been abandoned,” she said matter-­of-­factly, “because everyone I’ve talked to owns their embryos.” Over the many months I shadowed Monica at work, I came to understand her use of the word “ownership” in this instance to mean caring for something for which one is responsible, whether as parent or steward. In other words, the embryos she helps to place with recipients are not orphans because they are actively cared for by donors. Beyond handling program logistics, Monica spends a lot of time talking with Blossom clients on the phone about their feelings and concerns. Through these conversations, she becomes aware of the emotional labor that embryo adoption plans entail for donors. Most of them, she said, care actively for their embryos throughout the donation process: Even if they’re not being implanted, the [donor] parents are really loving them. They fill out the application, they cry about who to choose. They mull it over in their heads about what kind of family [and ask], are these the right ones? And then they talk to their doctor: what is this going to cost, how are we going to do this, and what are our steps? They’re just very concerned with going about things the right way.

For the vast majority of Blossom clients, Monica feels that using terms like orphan, rescue, or abandoned fails to acknowledge their feelings of parental responsibility. “[The word abandon] implies that the parents aren’t paying storage fees, waiting to be matched with an adoptive family, etcetera,” she said. “The embryos aren’t abandoned but are the opposite:

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they are loved and cared for.” While agency leadership and some clients are compelled by orphaned embryo figures and embryo savior roles, Monica tries in her daily work with clients to counteract embryo savior tropes by acknowledging the donors as parents and stewards. I saw firsthand how much Monica cared for the clients and embryos in her charge, having spent ample time with her at work and beyond, sharing meals and walks together. She approached her daily tasks of coordinating contracts and shipments, corresponding with clients, and matching with passion and kindness. She agonized over particular cases after hours and regularly came to work with fresh ideas to respond to client issues. During interviews with program donors and recipients, many shared unprompted reflections about their appreciation for Monica’s attentiveness during their process, no matter what the result was for them. Monica recalled an exceptional case of what she called “truly abandoned embryos.” A woman in a divorced couple who used an egg donor and her husband’s sperm for IVF decided to donate with no desire to be involved in selecting the recipients. They were truly what I’d consider like orphaned embryos. So, this mother, or this woman who’s placing, didn’t care about choosing the family, the husband wasn’t involved at all, [and] the egg donor didn’t know they existed. I just felt like this mom, she didn’t even write more than her name and her phone number—­not even her phone number—­on the application. I just felt like, oh my gosh, you don’t care. It might not have been that at all, Risa. She might have cared so much that she couldn’t face it. I didn’t get that feeling from her. Usually I can tell, or I think I can tell, when people care so much that they just can’t be involved because it hurts too badly. That’s another branch. I don’t think that this lady was in that branch. I feel like she just felt that these were such a burden and she didn’t want them anymore.

Monica experienced empathy for these embryos, saying that she could “feel how abandoned they felt.” All of a sudden, I had the most compassion I’ve ever had for any of the embryos. I just felt that they are truly abandoned embryos. Nobody in this world right now loves them, in a sense. They are not being loved. I’ve

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never felt like that about any of our other embryos. They are always loved by the genetic parents [donors] or the adopting parents [recipients], or both. But I felt like these embryos were not being loved and my heart just broke for them.

Not being loved made the embryos seem to Monica less like a “gift” from donors or God and more like an uncherished item one gives away. It’s not a gift. It’s like going to pick them up at the Goodwill. Whereas all the other adoptions that we do, it’s like [donors say], “We want them, but we can’t. Where can we place them that they will be in a good home?” This feels so different.

This case motivated Monica to move swiftly. “I felt, oh my gosh, we need you to get adopted really quickly. I know there’s a mom out there for you and I don’t know who she is, but I need to find her for you.” The donor’s seeming emotionlessness cued Monica to feel that the embryos were unloved, unwanted, and abandoned by the very people she typically sees acting as parents or stewards. If the donor could be called a mother, Monica felt she was an irresponsible one. She conceded the possibility that the woman cared because she went through the effort of applying. Yet Monica reserved her harshest criticism for the applicant—­who she struggled to call a mother—­rather than the ex-­husband, who had a biological connection to the embryos and played no role in the donation at all. This is one of many instances I encountered in which parenting expectations fell hardest on female donors and recipients to perform care, nurturance, and protection. One way that discourses of “good” and “bad” mothers take shape in embryo adoption is through gendered expectations of donors and recipients called to be “responsible parents.”1 Maternal care, in particular, is what advocates claim protects embryos from devaluing forms of abandonment—­a theme I examine in later chapters. When Monica assumed the role of Blossom program manager, her predecessor told her to be aware that she was entering a “spiritual battlefield.” This approach overwhelmed Monica. Instead, she coped with the pressures of her work by “not adhering to the pro-­life mission [of the program] too much” because she found the task of saving every embryo regarded as a person to be daunting. Rather than a crusade to save every

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embryo from frozen orphanages, or a religious duty to care for hundreds of thousands of God’s possessions, Monica focused on nurturing the embryos in front of her: As far as going out to the world to save every embryo, it’s not really on my heart, which I think is a good thing to save my own sanity. Thinking of 500,000 embryos in storage, thinking about that whole picture, is way too overwhelming for me. When I have six over there that we can’t find a home for, or two, I think, “Oh my gosh, these two little tiny [embryos]” and then I imagine them as little babies. It helps me. Sometimes I even name them, the ones that are really hard to place, because I have to personalize them so that I can keep working for them.

As Blossom manager, Monica was expected to promote program messaging about embryo saviors and frozen orphans in public outreach, though she saw firsthand how these tropes posed challenges in serving clients as well as for her identity in her job. Acknowledging that she felt overwhelmed by the message of saving every frozen orphan and each of God’s gifts helped her develop a more compatible role for herself as what I came to think of as an embryo nanny—­a professional caregiver who diligently works to make sure the “little ones” in her charge make it “home.”

“You ‘Rescued’ Our Embryos? Really?” The Bakers are a donor couple who were deeply offended at the suggestion that their embryos were “abandoned” by them and “rescued” by an adoptive couple. Tensions occurred between the Bakers and the Channings—­the couple who received the Bakers’ twenty-­four frozen embryos—­that led to the dissolution of their agreement. I interviewed Sharon Baker and Tara Channing separately in the summer of 2008, the week they first met in person prior to signing contracts. The next time I spoke to Sharon was four years later when she and her husband Dennis were in the process of taking their donated embryos back from the Channings because their differences were irreconcilable. Tara expressed interest in talking with me too but did not want to discuss the adoption arrangement or donor family. When she stopped responding to my

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scheduling queries, I did not press her further. Blossom staff who were in touch with her relayed to me that she and her husband were struggling with the Bakers’ decision. Donor retrieval of embryos that have been legally transferred to recipients, which happens after contracts are signed and embryos are shipped, is a rare situation in the Blossom program, but is a possibility addressed in the contract. It states that the transfer of ownership rights to embryos is “permanent” unless or until either party formally breaks it. A “relinquishment clause” describes the retrieval process for already-­ given embryos.2 While rare, this case was not unique; I heard about a few other donor retrievals that took place for other reasons as well as a number of potential retrievals resolved through mediation. The Bakers are a married white couple in their early forties living in the Northeast, where Sharon works as a schoolteacher and Dennis as a software technician. They are members of a Covenant church, an evangelical congregation in their suburb of a large city where Sharon first explored fertility services. She gave birth to three children through IVF before facing the decision of what to do with the frozen embryos that remained. “In the moment the embryologist called to say we had twenty-­four embryos, I cried because I was happy and I cried because we couldn’t parent them all,” Sharon said. “I wondered, what have we done? I had this overwhelming sense of responsibility.” The Bakers embarked on what seemed to be an ideal donation plan with Tara and Albert Channing. The couples found each other through Hannah’s Prayer, a Christian online infertility forum, in which Sharon and Tara both participated.3 Sharon was intrigued by Tara’s postings about wanting to “adopt” embryos and found herself attracted to Tara’s passionate commitment to pro-­life issues informed by her evangelical faith. The couples lived in neighboring states and met in person to discuss their idea of partnering together. Regular communication and reading of each other’s personal blogs facilitated their budding relationship. Rather than use an attorney to draft a private contract for the embryo donation, they decided to use the Blossom program services because it affirmed the process as an adoption. Soon after receiving the embryos at their clinic, the Channings began a tumultuous multiyear journey of three failed embryo transfers and two miscarriages before giving birth to their only son, Gregory.

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Tensions in their relationship began when Sharon realized that she gifted her pre-­born children to Tara, who maintained that she saved frozen orphans. Sharon wanted to participate in embryo adoption in order “to help another family who has been through what we’ve been through, which is infertility.”4 Yet shortly after contracts were signed, Sharon learned painfully about the different identities that each couple embraced. What ended up happening was that they would say things to us, like “We saved Gregory” and “We rescued him from his frozen orphanage,” referring to him as an orphan and his siblings that were frozen as orphans. They were taking the standpoint of wanting to spread awareness about embryo adoption from a fundamental Christian point of view and wanting other people, other fundamental[ist] Christians, to get on board to save embryos whereas Dennis and I went into this trying to help somebody. Having gone through infertility, we knew how hard it was and so we wanted to come from an altruistic point of view. Had we known the attitude and state of mind before signing the contract, I know we would not have gone with them. It just made Dennis and I feel terrible. It’s like, “Wow, we’re giving you this gift and your point of view is that you rescued him? You rescued our embryos? Really?” Their point of view and our point of view are on two different spectrums. I couldn’t believe that we gave embryos to people who think that way and were on a mission. I think it’d be much better that they go into the process anonymously, that way the genetic parents wouldn’t have to deal with your “mission” to save embryos.

Embryo saviorism inspired the forming of this relationship and contributed to its breakdown. Rather than a case of competing narratives about a singular or stable embryo entity (e.g., frozen orphan, pre-­born child, maternal gift), the rift that occurred between the two couples arose from the conflicting roles that each embraced. Sharon rejected the idea that IVF and cryopreservation are morally questionable practices by identifying as a sacrificial giver “of life.” Gift rhetoric in conventional adoption serves many purposes for placing parents, including disrupting a common stereotype that casts them as irresponsible and recipients as responsible.5 Sharon’s reclamation of moral status as a giver of life to her embryos—­deemed to be pre-­born

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children—­rather than irresponsible abandoner is an example of how gift rhetoric operates in embryo adoption too. Part of the hurt Sharon experienced came from feeling that Tara was an ungrateful recipient of her maternal gift and the sacrifice it entailed. [The Channings] think they thanked us for the embryos, but they never did. When my Uncle Jack didn’t thank me for the coffeemaker we gave him, no big deal. But when somebody doesn’t thank you for the gift of your embryos, you know it . . . We were willing to take on grief and loss in order to help another family. It was a place of thinking [gratitude would] come naturally because of us giving someone a gift of life, but they never thanked us.

Gratitude matters to Sharon because giving implies a reciprocal relationship.6 Gifts, as anthropologists have long maintained, are never free because they are premised on relations that imply the obligation of return, though not necessarily in kind.7 Sharon’s identity as mother of pre-­born embryos, who gave the chance of motherhood to another, presumed a relationship of giving embryos and getting gratitude that is premised on their shared parental identities. Embryo saviorism is based on a different working premise: that embryos are without parents, without homes, and in need of both. This trope casts recipients as providing embryos with what their progenitors are unable to do, whereas responsible parenthood involves giving another the chance at the same—­an exchange of blessings between mothers. The tensions arising at this impasse led Sharon to worry about how the language of “abandonment” could affect Gregory, the Channings’ son. “We were concerned for their son,” Sharon explained. “We didn’t want any children born from the adoption to feel like they had been rescued by their [adoptive] parents. We never intended that for them.” Rather, they wanted children born to know that they were deeply loved by their progenitors. I was not able to speak to Tara further about her views. During our two hour-­and-­a-­half interviews in 2008, she did not use terms of rescue, orphan, orphanage, or sin, nor did I find evidence of this language on her personal blog, which she periodically revived. In a blog posting in June 2008, she presented an alternative perspective to what the Chan-

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nings reported to me. Responding to a description of embryo adoption as an “extraordinary work of mercy,” Tara wrote that she sees her role as an obedient recipient of God’s gifts—­a steward—­but not as a savior on a heroic mission: I would like to insist that we are not martyrs or heroes. Yes, what we’re doing is a sacrifice. But our children are not a project or a cause or a political statement. As much as I believe that saving their lives is the right thing to do both conceptually and specifically, we are no less than completely committed to them as our children wholly loved for that reason alone. We at most consider ourselves obedient and blessed for this opportunity to become parents.8

Identifying as an obedient steward aligns with Tara’s strong sense of religious duty, which includes the giving and receiving of blessings. During a conversation I had with Nathan about the theology of adoption, he explained that an economy exists in God’s kingdom in which those in abundance bear a responsibility to provide relief to those with too little. “It’s part of God’s plan that those who have much would be blessed by giving and those who don’t have much would be blessed by receiving,” he said. God, in Tara’s case, both gave and took away. Tara’s identity as a blessed steward rather than heroic savior echoed remarks from clients who program staff called “rescue” families, even though some told me that they actively reject the rhetoric of frozen orphan rescue. Rescue families are clients who do not experience fertility challenges common to the vast majority of Blossom recipients and are often open to receiving embryos that “wait” because they prove harder to place—­a challenge in embryo adoption I explore in the next chapter. During my time at Blossom, the program counted only five such families among hundreds of recipients since the program began. I was able to interview two of these couples, both of whom assured me that their interest in embryo adoption “is not about rescue” but rather religious duty. According to Rich Barton, “this is not about being heroic, but about what we feel called to do as parents.” His wife, Anita, shared a similar view: “We are truly doing this because we want to adopt. We could have our own. Our motives are different because we’ve been blessed . . . The bottom line is we love kids and we are letting God lead us.”

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My intention in putting into conversation Sharon’s and Tara’s respective views on what was a painful experience for both parties is to make clear that the frayed relations between them did not arise from their interpersonal failures. Rather, discourses of frozen orphanhood drowned out other identities of responsible parenthood and dutiful stewardship at play in their dynamic. Even when all are committed to saving embryos, as both were in this case, enacting embryo saviorism in practice can create challenges that thwart efforts to relocate embryos from freezers to wombs. This story is one example of the limits of embryo saviorism to save all embryos. Feeling too hurt to continue the adoption arrangement, the Bakers reclaimed their frozen embryos from the Channings when the annual renewal of the relinquishment clause in the original contract expired.9 The Channings chose not to challenge this act in court and grieved the loss of embryos they felt to be their adopted children—­their son’s siblings. Last I heard, the Bakers had possession of their embryos and Blossom declined to assist them with placement with another recipient. Motivating in premise, embryo saviorism contributed to relational tensions in practice. The couples’ irreconcilable differences mean that the Bakers’ retrieved embryos have reduced chances of ever making it out of the freezer. Sharon sought resources for the grief and stress she experienced, through which she became critical of pro-­life approaches in Christian adoption and began advocating for the rights of first/birth mothers. She continues to identify as a Christian and someone who grew up in a household where “everything was black and white.” Participating in embryo adoption shifted her political views, as she described it, from pro-­life to pro-­choice, because she now sees how “God made the world more gray than we give it credit for.”

Pre-­born Children After telling me “embryos are orphans until they are born; they are not being cared for” to explain the theology for adopting frozen embryos, Nathan followed with a caveat: “Obviously they are not orphans, in the sense that there are parents who are storing them.” The obviousness of embryos being both orphaned and parented was not initially apparent

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to me, yet became clearer as I spent time alongside Blossom staff during their daily activities. The parented pre-­born embryo is most prominent in the day-­to-­day dealings within the Blossom program. It differs from the frozen orphan by affirming the identities and motivations of participants who have, as staff said, “parental feelings” for embryos. More than the “orphan embryo,” the figure of the “pre-­born embryo” actively includes donors who feel relationally connected to their embryos. It stands in contrast to the “owned embryo” present in the legal transfer between parties and, in doing so, directly links embryo adoption to the discourses and goals of the US antiabortion movement. Advocates explicitly use the term “pre-­born child” within ECA’s mission, values, programs, and paperwork. One place to see how the Blossom program constructs the pre-­born child embryo is through the program’s official adoption contract, which is an eleven-­page document that has evolved over the past two decades. It begins with a preamble affirming pro-­life Christianity: “The parties believe that human life is created by God at the time of conception, whether in-­vivo or in-­vitro.” Other parties in the legal transfer of property are conspicuously named in familiar terms. Frozen embryos are called “pre-­born children who are endowed by God with unique characteristics and are entitled to the rights and protection accorded to all children, legally and morally.” Donors are called “genetic parents” who are said to, “through the fertilization of eggs and sperm, have become responsible for the lives of pre-­born children in the embryonic stage” and who “desire to forever transfer the responsibility for nurturing their embryos through the gestational period and parenting the child(ren) born as a result thereof to adopting parents.” Recipients are called “adoptive parents” who “desire to accept the full moral and legal responsibility for parenting the embryos adopted hereunder and the child(ren) born therefrom, beginning with the implantation of the embryos in the adopting mother.” The contract defines adoption “in its literal sense, rather than in a legal sense,” by which it means “the transactional necessities required in transferring custody and/or ownership of embryos from the genetic parents to any other party.” Here and throughout the document, “ownership rights” and “parental rights” are used interchangeably, making embryos both owned and pre-­born children, and contracting parties owners as well as parents.

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Blossom defines embryos as pre-­born children in paperwork for a legal transfer of property to encourage donors and recipients to behave like parents rather than owners. Parenting, in the Blossom program, involves acts of care prior to thaw and transfer and regardless of birth outcome. By contrast to the erased parents of the orphaned embryo, the pre-­born child transforms fertility patients into parents by virtue of having commissioned the creation of embryos in vitro. Donors’ main duty is to give remaining embryos and associated parental obligations to others who are willing to assume such a responsibility. Although recipients are said to accept full responsibility “beginning with implantation” in the uterus, many of the outlined expectations from them are only possible beforehand. The list of duties for recipients stated in the contract include: agree to transfer embryos in a reasonable time frame; thaw only those intended for transfer; commit to transferring all viable embryos that survive thawing; do not transfer too many; refreeze embryos only when necessary and never select embryos of higher quality for implantation; do not selectively reduce a multiple pregnancy; notify ECA of transfer and pregnancy outcomes; and provide annual updates to the agency about children born. In terms of time, much of the parenting that occurs in embryo adoption is anticipatory. Acting as if one is a parent is how some donors and recipients transition into and out of relational responsibilities to embryos. For donors, as-­if parenting of their IVF embryos allows them to express parental care toward their could-­have-­been children. For recipients desirous of the parenting role, as-­if parenting creates early occasions for showing parental care in anticipation of the chance—­a welcome mode given the low potential of successful birth through embryo adoption. This anticipatory temporal mode is similar to what happens in IVF and adoption where the complex choreographies involved in forging families beget speculative figures, like would-­be “children,” birth “mothers,” and intended “parents.”10 Each figure, like the pre-­born child, exists before an expected event sometime in the future. The pre-­ born child signals the possibility of birth while calling attention to the reproductive risk-­taking, and losses, its potential entails. Birth is only possible, advocates claim, if embryo owners assume parental responsibilities and act decisively until all frozen embryos are safely “home” in a “welcoming womb,” where they maintain that God decides which is

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born.11 Making parents of embryo owners through the pre-­born child figure is a strategy developed to protect embryos from the perceived perils of secular property law, which I discuss in depth later in the chapter. Program expectations of parental responsibility toward pre-­born children resonated with many participants, especially donors. Janice Fredricks and her husband, white Christians living in New England, considered embryo adoption for their five frozen embryos when she learned that she was unable to successfully carry another pregnancy. “I could no longer provide for them,” Janice told me. She felt “such a mothering feeling towards embryos” that she struggled for over a year to complete the Blossom application: “It felt like being the world’s worst mom even thinking about adopting them out. For the longest time I couldn’t think about it because I was imagining [my newborn children] living with another family.” Janice crafted multiple drafts of the “family profile” letter required for the application, which she read to her husband at night for feedback until the letter, and she, felt ready. Janice was not alone in taking her time; most donors took numerous months, and sometimes years, to complete their applications. A “mothering feeling” made it hard for Janice to consider giving their embryos to another family, but her husband Ray felt strongly “that they were truly already babies and deserved that chance to live and have a life.” One day when holding her twin month-­old infants, it “hit” Janice that embryo adoption was the best option because, she said, “those other babies [frozen embryos] deserve the same chance that these guys have.” Donna, also a mother of twins through IVF who said she “believes in God” but does not often attend church, felt a “commitment” to her embryos for having created them with the intention of parenting. Imagining them as waiting children activated strong feelings of parental responsibility. “I truly hated having frozen embryos waiting,” she said. “It’s the hardest thing in fertility because I believe they are un-­grown children, not just cells.” Imagining the embryos as her children helped Donna each step of the way: I treated my embryos as if I was a pregnant woman who was going to give birth and I had to decide who was going to raise them. I thought of them as children, not embryos, when I was placing them. That’s a very impor-

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tant distinction for me. I was picturing children, thinking that these are my children. I wanted to be true to them from the beginning.

Nora and Bill Molson, who are married non-­denominational evangelicals with three children, felt similarly about what they called their “seven frozen Molsons” awaiting placement with recipients. “When we underwent IVF, we decided to treat all of our embryos as our children,” Bill said. They chuckled as they told me about their idea to hang seven little stockings on the mantle at Christmas to represent their seven frozen embryos. The seriousness of their parental feelings made it imaginable to include their frozen embryos in family holiday traditions. It mattered to the Molsons, as it did to most donors with whom I spoke, that they followed through with the family-­building intentions for their unused IVF embryos. They wanted me to know the many ways they strived to be good parents to their frozen embryos, like completing the detailed donor application; thinking deeply about preferences for recipients; making thoughtful matching selections; maintaining lines of communication with recipients even when emotionally fraught, etcetera. Conversations with donors like these made clear to me how actively they cared for their embryos throughout the embryo adoption process. In their view, none of their embryos were orphaned nor were merely personal property. Participants with parental feelings for pre-­born children are critical of the owned embryo, a figure resulting from legal classification as human tissue and, thus, personal property. Most feel that the owned embryo is devaluing because it makes them objects rather than lives, babies, or children—­terms they preferred using for their embryos. Still, some struggled to find words that conferred value without objectifying. “To call my embryos property is almost an insult,” said Donna. “They are jewels, not property. They are the most precious thing. Children are the most precious thing.” When participants use words like “jewel,” “prized possession,” and “precious thing” to convey embryos’ value, it rhetorically complicates their efforts to treat them as persons rather than objects. And yet commodity discourses about the value of children may be hard to avoid given the long history of treating children in the United States as the property of fathers with commercial value.12

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Recipients also take issue with the owned embryo. “I don’t like the idea that embryos are like property,” said Clara, a Jewish physician and mother of two children through embryo adoption. “It makes me feel like I’m buying them. It’s a bizarre way to think about it.” Recipients expressed particular discomfort with linkages they drew between US history of chattel slavery and contemporary frozen embryos. “What’s the next step?” said Mark, a Christian recipient and father of one child through embryo adoption. “Do we start selling embryos? Then you’re selling children, which is along the lines of slavery.” Extending the critique, a few claimed that the ownable embryo is a disheartening comment on the moral state of the nation. “A country that was originally founded on Biblical principles has deteriorated to pre-­born babies, as embryos, being defined as property,” according to Diana Maurer, a white evangelical home-­schooler and mother of eleven. “This is a sad affair and state in our nation.” For Hank, a paramedic and Baptist father of two: “As soon as this country decides that children are not property, we will return to the great nation that we once were.” Nostalgic desire for a Christian nation that treats embryos as pre-­ born children rather than property is a common saviorist sentiment among advocates, though one that is premised on a fiction. For centuries, US law regarded children as the property of slave owners as well as fathers (but not enslaved fathers), which only began shifting within the last century and a half.13 For advocates who embrace embryos as pre-­ born children, legally treating them as property is not an aberration in US law and practice but one with sizable precedent. Voicing nostalgic laments about what sociologist Stephanie Coontz calls “the way we never were” allows advocates to challenge the owned embryo, promote their parental identities, and contribute to the political project of imagining a national past and future in line with white Christian nationalist ideologies.14 In doing so, they echo refrains from evangelical leaders, like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson, whose promotion of religious “family values” has long hinged on hope for the rebirth of a pro-­life Christian nation.15 The familiar roles, relationships, and responsibilities conjured to promote saving pre-­born children appealed to many program participants who identified as parents wanting involvement in adoption. For this reason, the owned embryo did not change the way many viewed the transaction. “It’s kind of an odd term: a transfer of property,” said Lena,

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a white evangelical with two daughters from embryo adoption. “It’s like we bought a car. That’s just a technicality, though, that’s not how we perceived it at all. To us, in our framework, it was an adoption.” Many appreciate how the program bridges the gap between owning embryos and caring for pre-­born children: “One of those great things about Blossom is they take care of the legal documents of this tissue transfer but at the same time they understand that this is truly an adoption,” said Jacob Turner, a married father of two and prospective recipient of embryos with his wife, Maura. “It fits the mindset that these are children at the earliest stage of life.” Only a few I spoke to embraced the owned embryo for making the process simpler and more secure than legal adoption. Embryo adoption, which deals in contract law rather than family law, is often speedier than traditional adoption, which is known for multiyear waiting periods and legal hurdles. As a transfer of property, exchanging embryos requires minimal paperwork and none of the bureaucratic processes for transferring legal parental rights. It also provides recipients who give birth with clear status as legal parents. Noel Christopher, a Catholic recipient and lawyer in the military reserves, welcomes the fact that embryo adoption is a more “secure” form of parentage than is possible via legal adoption. The laws right now benefitted my children. I was fantastically happy that the state of law now creates a legal loophole for [my twin daughters born through embryo adoption] to not be confused legally about who their parents are, whereas traditional adoption creates exactly that problem . . . Embryo adoption defines the parents and legal adoptions don’t.

Noel is referring to what is called the presumption of parentage principle in US law. This principle presumes that the person who gives birth is the legal mother and her husband, if she has one, is the legal father. Surrogacy and adoption require extra legal steps to override this principle in order to define who the parents are, which have fueled numerous high-­profile controversies about parentage in these arrangements.16 Noel is comforted by the fact that Blossom recipients who give birth are the owners of embryos and presumed legal parents to the children they bear, even though they are neither the embryos’ original progenitors nor

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genetically related to them. “How ironic that our embryos, defined as our property, allow us to do loving things and have family integrity,” she said. Noel’s enthusiasm for parental security afforded her through embryo adoption belies the fact that she, like most recipients in the Blossom program, already enjoys high levels of security as a parent. Historically, parents with strongest claims on their children in the United States are white, cisgender, heterosexually married, home-­owning, and employed US citizens—­a demographic that maps neatly onto the majority of participants in this study and embryo adoption generally. Unlike them, parental security is something that most US communities do not have. Consider the long history of taking children in the United States: from enslaved pregnant women whose fetuses were the earliest forms of “prenatal property,” from Indigenous communities through genocidal assimilation, from migrant parents forcibly separated from their children at the US border, from disproportionately Black and Brown parents subjected to state surveillance through Child Protective Services.17 Parental insecurity is a structural condition that systematically and strategically threatens marginalized communities by undermining their ability to keep hold of their children, expressed either by or on behalf of the US state.18 Embryo adoption, as it is currently practiced, offers secure parental identity and status for an already socially advantaged group, enhancing its attractiveness to those who wish to circumvent insecurities common within third-­party reproduction, adoption, and marginalized communities.19 Noel hopes that legal ownership of embryos does not disappear. While supportive of “saving embryos,” a phrase she used to describe the program’s appeal to her, she worries that “the [pro-­life] personhood movement goes too far” in trying to change the law. In her view, recipients who give birth should be able to rest easy knowing that their embryos are owned prior to transfer, and that the donors are never their legal parents.

God’s Property Advocates, while mostly critical of the property classification of embryos, embrace it when the owner is God. When cast as God’s property, frozen embryos foreground relations of stewardship—­a religious

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duty requiring care for divine gifts. Caring for God’s property emphasizes the salvational dimension of embryo saviorism. More than saving embryos from peril, embryo adoption allows saviors to save themselves by submitting to God’s plan and behaving as dutiful stewards of God’s possessions.20 Many program participants feel their primary responsibility in life is to God—­creator, presider, and possessor of all things, including frozen embryos. Biblical stewardship in evangelicalism calls Christians to care for God’s belongings, make good use of one’s God-­given talents, and answer to God about one’s choices.21 Themes of stewardship in embryo adoption emphasize obligations to care for embryos as God’s divine possessions. “Stewardship means that you are a temporary caretaker with obligations to the real owner,” explained Diana, the stay-­at-­home evangelical mother introduced earlier who homeschools her eleven children. “You are responsible for something, but ownership is really somebody else’s. For us, that’s the Lord.” She continued, “We are just stewards of embryos. It’s the same for biological and internationally adopted children. Even when they are living and breathing in your house, it’s just for a season.” For Dave, a Baptist father by IVF and domestic adoption who donated seven embryos through Blossom, “Responsibility is created knowing you have been entrusted with those people, those souls.” It is significant that Blossom, deemed a Christian ministry by its leaders, starts its contract by acknowledging God as the creator of human life who endows embryos with uniqueness and entitlement to care. Signers, described as parents, are said to be responsible for embryo care. More than a statement of faith among parties facilitating a transfer of privately held biological assets, this language calls Christians into a religious commitment of faith by asking its signers to assume responsibilities not only as parents but as stewards of God’s sacred possessions. In asking participants to sign a legal document asserting the transfer of property between responsible parties while also affirming God as the ultimate property owner to whom religious duties are primary, the contract operates as a “doubled form.” Anthropologist Caitlin Zaloom describes a “doubled form” as a “tool that allows its users to respond simultaneously to two conflicting sets of ethical commitments,” which, in her study of financial ministries, involved “those drawn from the Bible and those drawn from the marketplace.”22 Straying from Zaloom’s no-

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tion of doubled forms as managing conflicting ethics, Blossom’s contract articulates what may be perceived as conflicting. It does so by taking a clear position on “divine law”—­which conservative Christian adherents conceive as inalienable and granted by God—­as superior to the civic laws of “man.”23 The treatment of embryos as personal property in US law is something staff and participants acknowledge as a fact of “civic law,” but enshrine in the contract the superior role of “divine law” in which embryos belong to God and require care. According to program staff, most signed the contracts without alteration, though a small handful of signers over the years edited the language to remove mention of God. Staff assumed these clients were not attracted to the “Christian” in the agency’s name, as most clients claimed to be. These changes were typically allowed so long as the core responsibilities of the parties remained intact. Program participants voiced the clearest expression I encountered of dutiful stewardship. Annika Sanders, a white evangelical donor raising two sets of twins in the Midwest, embraces the divine call of obedience. After what she described as two “traumatic” twin deliveries, she and her husband donated their five remaining embryos to a couple, who subsequently gave birth to a son. Annika approached the donation of her embryos as she does the parenting of her four children: as acts of stewardship toward lives that came into her care by God’s design. I don’t look at it like they are my kids. I look at it like they are on loan to me. They are not my children. I mean they are my children, but they are God’s children. I look at them like they are on loan to me and he’s entrusted me with four to raise.

Annika enjoys telling her embryo donation story not to be congratulated for being a dutiful Christian, but in order to “reveal God’s handiwork” to others who are willing to see it: It’s amazing how many people say, “Look what you’ve done!” and “What a blessing you’ve been!” They don’t get it. I emphasize it’s not what we’ve done, it’s what God’s done. We’re not a blessing, but we are being blessed. We are so blessed because God was able to use us to bring this little boy into the world because he was supposed to be here. And look at these

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people, the adoptive family. What have they done? They are sharing his [child born from embryo adoption] life with us and we are reaping the benefits of that.

Yvette Morris, a white military veteran and parent of one child, Caleb, who was born through the Blossom program, feels that embryo adoption “uniquely helps remind me” of her role as faithful steward. She described herself as “custodian” of her life, home, finances, as well as her son, to whom she claimed to be “just a parent.” We’re just parents . . . He’s not ours, he’s God’s, and we’re custodians of him on this earth. Certainly, it’s our responsibility to love him and raise him and trust him, but it’s also very important to always remember that God has a purpose and a plan for him that is separate from my purpose and plan, and separate from Joe [her husband]. Every child that would come into our home has a unique call in his life and it’s our job to cultivate, grow, and discover that.

The program’s home study screening requirement in particular reminded her of being entrusted with someone else’s belonging. You have to read all these books, and you have to have a home study. We had to get a more thorough background investigation than we had to get in the military, which is good and important, and there’s obvious reasons for it, but it just was as a reminder that we can’t really call him ours.

Like servants in the Parable of the Talents, the Bible teaches Christians to prepare to answer to God about how well they managed his possessions, gifted to each person for profitable use.24 Like good stewards in the parable, who grew rather than retained or squandered their master’s wealth, Yvette is committed to “cultivate” and “grow” her son for whatever God’s plan and purpose may be. For her and Annika, possessing embryos is theologically compatible when God is recognized as the ultimate owner. When cast as God’s property, frozen embryos call participants into roles as stewards by affirming their religious identities and motivations. Thus far we have seen how the Blossom program’s legal contract enshrines relatable roles and expectations of participants to behave as

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parents and stewards toward frozen embryos. Many of the donors and recipients I spoke to responded favorably to these roles, yet this is not true for all who pass through the program. The importance of these roles and participants fulfilling them, in order for staff to achieve everyday tasks within the program, was most pronounced in stories about clients who struggled to do so.

“Chilling, Literally” Sarah is Blossom’s hardworking program assistant who helped participants who struggled to follow through with program expectations of them as parents and Christians. Her eagerness to excel in her first job after graduating college at an evangelical university inspired her to tackle a stack of “problem” files that Monica and Kathy, the program social worker, were too busy to deal with. Many in the pile were “disruption” cases, a term borrowed from legal adoption meaning the ending of an adoption arrangement. Disruption cases occur when recipients do not use all of the embryos they received and want to return them for re-­matching. Staff felt intensified responsibility to “find homes” for returned embryos because “each year that goes by makes it harder to place them,” according to Kathy. In 2012, Sarah told me about the “nightmare” case of the Ulmans’ embryos, a file that she had already been working on for more than a year. While saving embryos aligns seamlessly with many participants’ political and theological beliefs, in practice, collaborating with them to move embryos from freezers to wombs requires a considerable amount of labor. After struggling with infertility for six years, Ted and Alice Ulman tried IVF with their own gametes in 1999, unsuccessfully, and with an egg donor in 2000. The egg donor cycles resulted in the birth of twins and four frozen embryos. The Ulmans took a year to decide to donate their embryos through the Blossom program and, in 2003, selected the Sheldons as recipients in an arrangement with no contact. That same year, the Sheldons thawed and transferred two of the four embryos without becoming pregnant. Five years passed before they emailed the Blossom program to say that they wished to return the remaining two embryos to the donors. To make the disruption official, Blossom asked the Sheldons to send a termination letter as the first part of a multi-­

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step process for relinquishing the embryos for re-­matching with another recipient family. For three years, neither the Sheldons nor the Ulmans responded to Blossom’s efforts to reach them via phone, email, and certified mail in order to begin the re-­matching process. Frozen for more than a decade, the Ulmans’ two embryos had moved across country but had not left deep freeze. “It was at first a mission,” Sarah said. “The detective part of me resolved to solve this and get these embryos, that is true. However, at some point it turned from a mission to being taxing.” In 2011, Sarah began scouring Internet search engines, Facebook, and church websites, and also reached out to emergency contacts listed on the application to find updated contact information for both couples. Hiring an investigatory service helped track them down. Once in touch with the Sheldons, Sarah discovered that they had had four biological children in the intervening years. Part of the reason they had wanted to receive embryos was because Mr. Sheldon had had a vasectomy, rendering them infertile, and embryo adoption aligned with their Christian beliefs. After the first frozen embryo transfer failed, the Sheldons decided to pursue a vasectomy reversal because it felt more in line with God’s plan for them and their family than transferring the remaining embryos in another uterine transfer. This news surprised and disappointed Sarah. “Well, this plan kind of sucked,” she vented to me. “They waited for eight years, holding on to two embryos. How can they think this is acceptable? They are good Christian people and had two embryos just chilling, literally. Two embryos are frozen that they are not taking very good care of.” In Sarah’s view, “good Christian people” behave as responsible parents or stewards of God’s gifts, or both. Their perceived lack of parental accountability and dutiful care confounded Sarah. When finally reached, the Ulmans were shocked to learn the news. “It was incredibly uncomfortable calling the Ulmans to say that two embryos existed in the world even though they thought it was over eight years ago,” Sarah said. Part of the reason for their surprise is due to the nature of their agreement with the Sheldons to have no contact once the embryos were donated. Sarah was a proponent of open arrangements in which participants actively select each other and maintain some level of communication. She believed their no contact contract was part of

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the problem: “This is the perfect example for why a closed adoption isn’t a good thing. The Ulmans never called to find out about the embryos.” Donors who prioritize open lines of communication with recipients would know the status of their donated embryos, she suggested. In her experience, participants drawn to parental or stewardship forms of embryo saviorism typically prevent embryos from languishing in cryo-­ storage, forgotten and “waiting.” Alice Ulman cried during her conversation with Sarah, asked lots of questions, and was silent for long stretches of time. A few weeks later, the Ulmans asked if they could have the embryos back for their own use. While returning embryos to the original donor is a “strange and atypical” request, according to Kathy, doing so would have been the easiest solution for the program and the quickest route to thaw and transfer into a uterus. The Ulmans, then a forty-­something couple with twins in junior high school, looked into insurance coverage for a frozen embryo transfer. Nine months later they notified Blossom of their decision: it was not financially feasible to take the two embryos back as originally discussed. They asked staff to try to find the embryos a new recipient family. “Do you know how much work I put into this?” Sarah said. Preparing the Ulmans’ embryos for re-­matching had been a herculean task. New FDA requirements from 2005 meant Sarah had to collect new paperwork from the donors before the embryos could be matched. The program also considered whether to hold the Ulmans to its revised expectations for embryos made with donor eggs, but ultimately decided to limit the barriers by making an exception.25 Sarah also struggled on the other end to get the Sheldons to respond to her requests to sign paperwork. The storage facility where the embryos were located considered the Sheldons the owners, which meant the Sheldons had to sign release forms, approve shipments, and release medical records that needed to travel with the embryos. After “calling, texting, and emailing every day,” Sarah finally secured the signatures required to relocate the embryos elsewhere. By my last in-­person visit to the Blossom program in 2013, Sarah had created a biography of the Ulmans and their embryos that she posted on the program’s “Special Circumstances Embryos” web page, which is for embryos that need extra visibility to help them find “homes.” The

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phenomenon of waiting embryos, which I examine in the next chapter, illustrates yet another facet of embryo saviorism’s practical limits for saving embryos.

Generation Embryo saviorism, as we are seeing, is a generative discourse—­of political ideals, moral meaning-­making, professional expertise, social discourse, relational ties, and personal identities, to name a few of its effects. Within the day-­to-­day activities of the Blossom program, the premier symbols of embryo saviorism fall short as facilitators for the program’s expressed mission of moving embryos from freezers to wombs. This is because saviorist tropes about frozen orphans and saviors of them create relational tensions for staff and clients alike that undermine its programmatic, though not its political, goals. In response to these challenges, program staff created other symbols of saviorism—­the pre-­born child and God’s divine property—­that promote the pro-­life charity politics and salvational dimensions of embryo adoption. The labor-­intensive work of moving embryos from freezers to wombs, which falls largely on the shoulders of Blossom’s all-­female staff, presented generative conditions for new saviorist symbols and roles. Guiding program participants in how to behave as responsible parents and dutiful stewards helps the seductions of embryo saviorism feel achievable. Importantly, these roles also reinforce gendered constructs of motherhood and fatherhood, asymmetrical distributions of labor within nuclear families, and subservience to patriarchal authority—­ all of which are enshrined in the policies and politics advanced by the Christian Right. While embryo saviorism is limited in its ability to “save” embryos from freezers, it works powerfully to advance core tenets of Christian nationalism. In the next chapter, we consider other dimensions of embryo saviorism in supporting the relocation of embryos from freezers to wombs by marketing unselected embryos as waiting to be saved.

Interlude Waiting

“Dear Future Mom and Dad,” begins the introductory letter of the Blossom recipient application packet. Answers to common questions about embryo adoption—­from eligibility requirements to agency fees to statistical chances for pregnancy—­are outlined in the twenty-­nine pages that follow. “We know you’ve come through a lot to get to this day,” the letter continues. “The journey might have been frustrating, sorrowful, and intimidating. Maybe you’re not sure if this is the right adoption choice for you.” For lingering questions, applicants are encouraged to contact Monica, the program’s friendly manager. It is her job, the signatory explains, to “work diligently on our behalf.” The letter is signed: “Sincerely Yours, The Waiting Embryos.” While program staff regards all embryos as equally worthy of being saved, some embryos wait longer than others. Waiting is a state of anticipation, of readiness for some future event. Theologically, waiting in the Bible is variously likened to hope, expectation, eagerness, patience, and stillness, all of which call upon believers to actively trust that God has a well-­timed plan for each person’s life and salvation. The Bible exhorts the faithful to “wait for the Lord” by remaining confident that God is wise and will “lead me in a straight path.”1 Scripture encourages Christians to restlessly but hopefully anticipate the second coming of Jesus Christ, for those who wait will reap rewards.2 Monica’s letter to prospective recipients calls them to identify as “future moms and dads” who act faithfully and expectantly, like frozen embryos, in trust of God’s plan. In the fall of 2012, I received a promotional email targeted to prospective recipients soliciting interest in one of the program’s embryos that had been waiting for a long time: “Dear Risa, Are you ready to take a leap of faith? There is a single embryo waiting for its chance at life. Here is its story.” The email described Derrick and Jolene Bower’s determi123

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nation “to not give up until this little one finds a home.” After several years of infertility, the Bowers turned to IVF in 1998. By year’s end, they had given birth to one son and were paying storage for seventeen frozen embryos. Nine years later in 2007, the Bowers decided their family was complete and wanted to help another couple become parents. They noted preferences on their Blossom application for a recipient family to be religiously moderate, white (which they later changed to any racial identity), middle-­to upper-class, and, as they wrote, “college minded” when raising children. They preferred a stay-­at-­home parent but would accept recipients who were employed full-­or part-­time. Their ideal couple would have no prior marriages and be parenting fewer than three kids. The ideal family mirrored the Bowers almost exactly. The Bowers requested photos and letters at least once a year about any children born and were open to phone calls, emails, and visitations if the recipients wished. Within months of applying, the Bowers chose the Daniels to receive their entire set of seventeen embryos. Mirroring practices in conventional adoption, Blossom prioritizes placing embryos with recipients in what staff called “sibling batches.” Unlike many clinic-­based embryo donation programs and some embryo adoption programs that divide embryos among numerous recipients at once, Blossom prefers to find recipients willing to accept all of a donor’s embryos in order to limit the number of families parenting genetic siblings. Given some of the high numbers of embryos donated, some recipients are not able fulfill this commitment. The Daniels transferred five of the Bowers’ embryos, resulting in the birth of one son, after which they felt their family complete. They relinquished their use rights to the remaining twelve embryos by returning them to the Bowers for re-­matching with another family. Per the contract, the Daniels paid to store the embryos at their clinic while the Bowers reviewed recipient profiles in search of another match. In early 2008, the Bowers selected the Millers to receive their remaining twelve embryos. In the profile letter accompanying the Millers’ application, they described their excitement when first learning about embryo adoption: “The idea that we could share a pregnancy or childbirth was an idea that we had long given up. To think that we could have that together is priceless! We are ready to give birth to twins or triplets. We have the room in our house and our hearts, and if that is what we are blessed with, we believe that God will give us the energy and patience too.”

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Despite their ready home and hearts, the Millers’ prayers to become parents through embryo adoption were not answered. After a year of transferring eleven embryos over multiple attempts without becoming pregnant, the Millers wrote to Monica expressing their decision to discontinue trying: Unfortunately, we got the news yesterday that, once again, we are not pregnant. We were better prepared for that possibility this time. But, it doesn’t hurt any less. The hardest part is that we are finished. We are financially strapped, emotionally worn out, and just plain tired of this battle to become parents. Somehow, this is God’s plan for our lives . . . I have spent so many years dreaming of being a Mommy, I don’t know what else to dream.

When Monica shared the news with the Blossom team, she expressed surprise at the Millers’ decision. It was very sad to talk with [Mrs. Miller] and hear her words, which were full of “Why me?” and “This isn’t what I would choose.” I found myself thinking that she didn’t have to stay this way. She had other options. She had another embryo, for goodness sakes! I don’t know why she felt she was just not meant to have children and she “couldn’t continue.” I don’t know. Hardly anyone who joins Blossom shares with me that they are just not meant to become parents. Usually they get pregnant with Blossom or they move on to other means.

The Bowers’ original group of seventeen embryos had become a batch of one. Even though grieving the end of their embryo adoption process, the Millers agreed—­like the Daniels prior to them—­to pay the cryo-­storage fee for the remaining embryo until it could be re-­matched: “Of course we can store the little guy until you find a place for him,” the Millers wrote in an email to Blossom staff. “We continue to try to tell people about you guys. We have nothing but positive things to say about our experience even though it didn’t work out for us.” Finding someone to take a leap of faith on the single Bower embryo proved difficult. As the Bowers’ batch reduced in number and the freeze date grew more distant, the embryo’s appeal to prospective recipients

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faded. Frozen in 1998 using a slow-­freeze method early in development at the two pro-­nuclear stage, prospective recipients perceived it as having a very low chance of establishing pregnancy. The Bower embryo was rejected numerous times when proposed to prospective recipients. When an interested party applied in 2011, Kathy contacted the Millers’ fertility clinic where the embryo was stored to retrieve an updated embryology report. She was shocked to learn from the clinic that, in the span of a few years, the Millers had divorced, moved out of state, and left an unpaid $1,500 cryo-­storage bill. Before the clinic would ship the embryo to another clinic, it required payment and a signed consent form from the Millers approving its release for shipment. Monica admitted having “very little hope that the [Bower] embryo will result in a pregnancy,” but encouraged her team to commit their energy, resources, and prayers to saving it. After nearly a year of effort, Blossom paid the bill and secured all of the necessary paperwork from the Millers for relocating the embryo to a long-­term storage facility where the embryo would stay until matched with a “forever family.” “Since the embryo was already in the program,” Sarah said, “we assumed responsibility. There were seventeen embryos to begin with. We don’t want to give up on one.” Monica was so personally overjoyed with her staff ’s efforts that her husband sent the team a congratulations card with “Hallelujah!” printed in big letters, which Monica displayed on her desk in the Blossom office. “This proves that miracles do happen,” Sarah said. A week after the Bowers’ embryo arrived at the new storage facility, Monica drafted the email I received and that was sent to all prospective recipients advertising the readiness of this single embryo, described as waiting expectantly for its chance to be born. “The statistics are never in an embryo’s favor,” Monica wrote. “The chances of any one embryo surviving a freeze and continuing to develop into a baby is far less than half. But doesn’t it still deserve a chance? . . . We aren’t aiming to cause any more heartache; we just believe in giving each life the chance to live to the fullest. Will you help us?” She appealed to prospective recipients’ faith in God’s plan for each embryo: “If you could see Derrick and Jolene’s son, with his sparkling blue eyes, full of wonder about the world, and his curious hands and feet, exploring everywhere he goes, you’d want to be able to tell him, ‘We gave your sibling his chance. We

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love him as God loved us . . . unconditionally, not based on what he could give back but simply because he was a human and therefore deserves our love.’” I called Sarah a year later for an update about the Bowers’ embryo. “We still own that sucker,” she said with a sigh. “I think everyone wishes the ‘difficult cases’ [like the Bowers’] were on their way. I mean it gets so hairy with some of these cases.”

4

Unselection

Embryo saviorism construes all embryos as equally deserving of futures and recipients as charitable saviors. Kathy, Blossom’s social worker, described these ideals in clear terms. “Because we’re a Christian agency,” she said, “we want to believe people adopt to save the embryos.” She continued: “We consider that every embryo is a potential continued life. We want to give them all a chance.” In practice, Blossom staff works to match recipients with embryos of diverse kinds, such as developmental stages, clinical grades, and amounts; frozen recently and long ago using different cryopreservation methods; made with egg and sperm donors; commissioned by couples young and old; from donors with communicable diseases and potentially inheritable health conditions, etcetera. When recipients accept matches without concern for pregnancy outcome, they exemplify the program’s saviorist ideal of “giving them all a chance.” Yet, most program recipients are motivated by desires other than altruistic do-­gooding. Recipients, who otherwise endorse the program’s saviorist mission, want to become parents often after struggling with years of infertility, pregnancy failures, and losses. Many are tired of waiting—­for pregnancy test results, for cycles of countless hormone injections, for a child to hold in their arms. By the time they come to Blossom, they are eager to be matched with embryos that will help them achieve birth. As a result, embryos wait due to what program staff call “embryo shopping”—­a picking-­over process that renders some at risk for never leaving the freezer. Blossom staff are understanding of recipients’ desires for parenthood but struggle with the logic of “picky” matching. “It feels like people think it’s a risk of not achieving pregnancy if they don’t have more than four embryos, or a certain stage [of development],” said Monica, citing some of the reasons recipients give when declining proposed matches with donors. Kathy and Monica share taking lead on matching and often share their frustrations with the process. For instance, Monica vented to the 129

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Blossom team after a disheartening rejection by a potential recipient: “Does she want to be a mom? Because the embryos still need to be born to some family. It’s not going to be easy for those embryos anywhere.” As we saw in the previous chapter, staff criticism of client behavior falls heaviest on women due to moralized gendered expectations of maternal responsibility with little regard for the reproductive risks that are part of their calculations within this procreative experiment. As a result, embryo selections impact real though unacknowledged realities about women’s health.1 More than anything, Monica wished receiving clients would “think about it just a bit more” before turning donors down. The problem of pickiness began around 2008 when participant numbers shifted from majority recipients to donors. Initially with more clients wanting embryos than available, Blossom used donor preferences to drive the matching process—­an approach that parallels supply-­and-­demand trends in domestic adoption programs in which birth parent preferences are used to determine matches with prospective adopters, who far outnumber the birth parent pool. Staff then noticed that more fertility patients with remaining embryos were applying to donate as the number of recipient clients dwindled—­a shift that coincided with widespread economic devastation following the economic recession. Now with more donors in the matching pool, prospective recipients wait less time to be matched and have a greater number of match possibilities, which allows for unprecedented levels of “pickiness” in the matching process. “When you wait four months for the first match, you’re not going to be too picky,” said Monica. “If when you come in and wait twelve hours to get a match in your [email] inbox, it’s a lot easier to say ‘No.’ Adoptive clients are much better ‘shoppers’ now.” Embryo shopping leaves some embryos unselected and therefore not yet saved, in program parlance. Scholars of assisted reproductive technologies have examined the phenomenon of selection, with emphasis on what people search for in order to create particular kinds of children.2 Elsewhere I consider some of the selection practices among white evangelicals in embryo adoption for embryos from donors of color, which often hinge on desires to compose families that bear markers of racial difference as an expression of religious duty.3 In this chapter, I expand on those considerations to include selection practices that concern disability. In doing so, I take interest in how embryo saviorism amplifies the logic of embryo shopping while also working to redress its impacts.

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In response to the phenomenon of participant pickiness, program staff developed two saviorist strategies that transform unselected embryos into figures of desirable difference in hopes of making them more savable. The first, marking, differentiates embryos by racializing certain ones to appear as “multi-­ethnic” and disabling others as having “special needs.” Race and disability are not intrinsic or essential qualities of any body or, as I argue, any embryo. Rather, they are the effect of discursive and material processes that construct difference by marking otherness and ascribing social meaning to it.4 Instead of promoting narratives of white innocence to motivate recipients to adopt frozen orphans, as we saw in previous chapters, marking transforms unselected embryos into pitiable subjects deserving charity. Marking race and disability are old practices in US adoption, from which embryo adoption advocates derive inspiration for promoting the saving of unselected embryos. Marketing is the corresponding strategy for inspiring prospective recipients to fulfill the saviorist role by choosing the picked-­over embryos for procreative use. I use the term marketing intentionally to highlight the charity logics that inform how Blossom staff attempt to resolve the problem of waiting embryos by moralizing consumer choice through online catalogs and advertising approaches. It is no accident that the only online cataloging efforts Blossom created to promote matching featured embryos deemed “multi-­ethnic” and “special needs.” This is due partly to the fact that Christian discourses of charity similarly treat non-­ whiteness and disability in ways that essentialize, patronize, and fetishize difference as sometimes desirable. In this light, it is also no accident that staff eventually merged the “multi-­ethnic” and “special needs” web pages so that all were listed under one header: Waiting Embryos. What critical scholars call the interdependent constructions of race and disability I came to see as foundational in advocates’ efforts to construe unselected, misfit embryos as in need of charitable homes.5

Fitting Matching is an old sorting practice within US adoption premised on finding a “good fit” for a child by assuming that their “best interests” involve placement in a family with similar racial, ethnic, and religious identities.6 Prior to World War II, children labeled as disabled—­which

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included children of color, for not being white was treated as a disability in adoption—­were deemed unfit for placement in the adoptive homes of white, middle-­class, heterosexually married couples. Until the mid-­twentieth century, adoption professionals often ruled out from placement children who were Black and Brown, disabled, older, and with siblings. Children in these demographics typically remained in foster care or institutionalized group homes while non-­disabled white infants were given priority adoption. Which children were deemed “fit” enough to access family reveals what historian Sandra Sufian calls “stratified worth,” or the effect of social hierarchies that produce difference, such as race and disability, on the perceived adoptability of children.7 Social changes occurring during the postwar era altered those who were deemed “fit” for adoption and adoptive parenthood, which shifted placement trends for disabled children and children of color from excluded toward partially included.8 Race-­based placement was a dominant paradigm from the eighteenth century through the 1960s, when adoptive families were “matched” with children bearing similar physical qualities (e.g., eye, skin, and hair color) as well as temperament, intelligence, and faith.9 By design, race matching in adoption aimed to simulate biogenetic kinship to ensure that white adoptive families appeared “naturally” formed.10 Public agency adoptions shifted away from race-­based placements by the 1970s except for efforts to recruit Black families for Black children, as advocated for by Black communities, and Native families for Native youth following federal law requiring it. Yet, as anthropologist Christine Gailey argues, desires for racial resemblance remain a strong motivator among international and private domestic adoption clients.11 Most of the adopters she interviewed claimed that race should not matter in adoption placements, yet they made “unmistakable” efforts to adopt children with particular racialized physical traits.12 One international adoption client explained to Gailey that her goal was “making sure you get a blue-­ribbon baby,” which meant “looking like us as much as possible.”13 Adopters’ quests for Baby Right, or perhaps more aptly Baby White, have made social constructions of race a consumable good in a choice-­driven market for children.14 Matching extends beyond the world of adoption to organize contemporary forms of third-­party reproduction, including egg and sperm

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donation, embryo donation, and surrogacy. Race-­specific preferences are so common within these marketized reproductive exchanges as to have become seemingly natural. As philosopher Camisha Russell writes, “To create a baby of one’s own race, with or without technological assistance, is considered so natural as not to even constitute a choice.”15 Race is a category near-­universally included in gamete donor profiles, many of which are featured in online catalogs, though agencies variously represent race in them.16 Each step of gamete donation—­from donor recruitment and self-­identification, to database cataloging and client selection—­situates race as a prime factor in the gamete trade.17 For instance, the world’s largest semen cryobank stores and ships its samples using a color-­coded system according to race.18 Some countries, including the United States, have established guidelines for how racial matching should occur in gamete selection.19 To be sure, not all gamete-­seekers desire donors who racially “match” themselves. Some seek donors with “darker” skin tones based on social ideas about inherited cultural traits, whereas others seek donors with “lighter” tones, driven often by desire for the structural privileging of whiteness.20 Even in cases where race matching is not the expressed goal, fitting logics often inform gamete selection. As in adoption, a consequence of “racially organized gamete markets” is that the marking and marketing of race as a selectable quality creates “stratified worth” among givers and their gametes.21 Constructs of disability also factor prominently within third-­party reproductive technologies. Genetic screening tests, which are common in third-­party reproduction programs, construe disability as biological, inheritable, and, therefore, an allegedly selectable feature of eggs, sperm, and embryos for determining which kinds of children could be born. Selecting against disability within reproductive decision-­making has long-­standing roots in the worldwide eugenics movement that became popular in policy and practice during the early decades of the twentieth century, and actively shaped perceptions of “fitness” within US adoption practices. Some argue that assisted reproductive technologies, which emerged in the latter decades of the twentieth century, provide a “back door” for eugenics and other systemic expressions of ableism.22 Anthropologists Tine Gammeltoft and Ayo Wahlberg, who examine selective reproductive technologies worldwide, critique how

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genetic testing in assisted reproduction has become routine in antenatal care aimed at “build[ing] families that are free from the suffering that disability and sickness are assumed to entail.”23 Conversely, selections for disability among disabled people, such as for Deafness or dwarfism, occur in adoption as well as assisted reproduction.24 Controversies around selective desires for disability lay bare ableist ideas that reproducing disability ought to be undesirable. Along with constructs of race in third-­party reproduction, disability has come to appear as a fixed biological trait, or essence, within fertility markets aimed at matching eggs, sperm, and embryos with seekers of reproductive resources.25 Matching in embryo adoption—­a hybrid of conventional adoption and third-­party reproduction—­is guided by similarly exclusionary logics of “fit” that mark embryos as categorically distinct and market their differences to targeted audiences. In the Blossom program, matching is how staff evaluate client preferences and make proposals for donors and recipients to consider each other, one at a time. Successful matches occur when both clients mutually select each other or, in other words, fit. Forging fits in embryo adoption is guided by three main factors: program rules, client preferences, and, according to Kathy, “a little bit of God.” Program rules established by ECA prescribe which kinds of clients end up in their pools. Blossom initially required that all recipients be heterosexually married for three years, plan to raise their children in a spiritual home, and, for the recipient woman, be able to carry a pregnancy. During my time at Blossom, program rules loosened up; they began placing embryos with single women as well as recipients who planned to use surrogates, but not to single men. Tensions arose between Blossom staff and ECA agency leadership around the topic of placing embryos with gay and lesbian recipients even though they accepted queer-­identifying donors. Increasing numbers of Blossom donors expressed openness to placing with queer recipients, or identified as gay or lesbian themselves. Although some program staff were open to matching embryos with gay and lesbian recipients, Nathan, ECA’s director, responded to my question about the idea by saying that ECA adheres to biblical principles that are not open to interpretation around homosexuality. Tim, ECA’s former director, opposed placing with queer clients as well, which he explained was a business decision; he said that ECA “decided on our niche” of predominantly white, cis-

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gender, heterosexually married couples and that placing with gay and lesbian couples “is not who we are”: “If I thought it would triple the numbers of babies being born, you know I’d have to rethink it, but that isn’t the case.” As program staff talked about their ongoing tensions with agency leadership, they told me of at least one match they made with a single woman recipient who they suspected was in a same-­sex relationship with her long-­term female “roommate” featured in the application profile. Client preferences also shape matching outcomes. According to a program brochure for donors, they may enjoy the “safety and security” and “peace of mind” of being able to select which families receive their embryos—­an advertised benefit not typically available in anonymous, clinic-­based donation programs. Blossom encourages mutual selection, akin to “openness” in conventional adoption, which means that clients rank preferences, receive information about each other, and decline matches without penalty. Finally, as staff reminded me on many occasions, matching is aided by God. “Dear God,” said Monica, as she began one morning’s matching session with a prayer: Thank you for this beautiful day and for bringing us all here safely today and for putting desire in our hearts to do your work to find homes for these embryos. We thank you for the parents you’ve brought to this program who desire to give life. We pray that you put peace into their hearts for the matches that are going to be made and, God, that you be in control of bringing these embryos, these children, home to the parents they are meant to have. We pray that you will give them life and fulfill the desire of these parents’ hearts. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

Staff also play an instrumental role in the matching process. Monica took time to re-­read family profiles, review home studies, and look at family photos to help her “get a feeling” about a possible match before recommending to clients. “When I was in charge of matching, I would read every family profile,” she told me. It’s not like I would take note about if they liked soccer or anything but would try to match people’s hearts. Not every family, and frankly not

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most families, are going to end with a birth, and knowing this I want them to feel good about the connection they’ve had with these other people. Nothing feels better than when a client writes to say how overjoyed they are with a match they made because the family is absolutely perfect. This isn’t to say we always know how these things are going to turn out. There have been surprising matches that I didn’t think would happen or work out.

She then referred to the recent birth of a “little Black baby” who was born to a single Black female recipient who she did not think would be selected by the donors, and vice versa. “I feel donors are a little more flexible on their match preferences than we sometimes assume,” she said. Kathy, on the other hand, stuck closely to the program spreadsheet to make matches based on the embryo qualities people requested, even while lamenting this fact. She tended to take client preferences as fixed and was less likely to propose what may seem on paper like far-­fetched matches. When facing a tie between multiple possible matches, she often gave preference to embryos that had been “waiting” longest. When fits occur, the files merge and together clients enter the next phase of contracts. Then, embryos are shipped from donor to recipient clinics. Each completed adoption file includes a contract that donors and recipients sign and notarize. As discussed earlier, the Blossom “Embryo Adoption Agreement” does not formalize the transfer of parental rights that is characteristic of adoption, but instead enacts the legal relinquishment and transfer of property between giving and receiving parties. The eleven-­page contract was initially drafted by Tim in consultation with a lawyer and has been refined periodically over the years. Client files also contain FedEx shipping records noting the pickup and delivery dates of embryos from donating to receiving client clinics; copies of significant email correspondence with Blossom staff; and pages of “Baby Steps,” which are handwritten notes tracking the various behind-­the-­scenes activities of staff that move each phase of the adoption process along. Staff created and managed client files through an organized workflow refined over years of practical expertise guided by religious principles and gained through trial-­and-­error. Sarah maintained a corkboard with

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Figure 4.1. Active Blossom donor and recipient organization board. Photo by author.

the pictures of unmatched donors and recipients, which she designed to help put faces to the files (figure 4.1). Once Monica gathered the information she needed from a clinic, she moved the file stacked on her desk to the matching table extending into the middle of the room where I sat. “Problem files” at various stages of the process were stored in a drawer next to Kathy’s desk. Large gray metal filing cabinets lining the walls outside the program office housed completed adoptions, organized in sequential order from 001–­919—­the latter number being the newest file opened last time I visited the office (figure 4.2). “Closed files” contain matches that did not result in pregnancy and “incomplete files” are applicants who dropped out of the program. Both kinds of files are numbered and stored in paper boxes in a storage room alongside other documents that conventional adoption agencies—­though not embryo adoption programs—­are legally required to keep.

Figure 4.2. Drawer of completed Blossom Adoption files. Photo by author.

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Shopping Kathy makes an audible “ugh” sound when reading an email from Lisa Janson, a prospective recipient rejecting another proposed match. “They’ve turned down so many,” she says. Eight, ten, she has lost count. Monica matched the Jansons with four embryos the year before, which they transferred and became pregnant with but miscarried. The Jansons, now wanting to be re-­matched, keep turning down proposed donors. Their criteria become more “unrealistic” with each rejection email, according to Kathy. Today’s rejection is because the donor husband looks too much like Lisa’s ex-­boyfriend from high school. “It’d be too hard having children who look like my former high school boyfriend. Perhaps we could stick with blondes and brunettes,” Lisa wrote in an email to Kathy that she reads aloud to the team. I ask if the Jansons are “embryo shoppers.” Definitely, she says. “You know the people whose criteria for matching include tallness, blonde hair, green eyes? These are those people,” Kathy explains. I pull a chair over to Kathy’s desk to look at the Jansons’ open file. So far, they want six or more embryos from donors who should have “absolutely no diabetes,” be “straight Caucasian,” and have some college education. They are opposed to donors with engineering backgrounds or red hair. I ask Kathy what she thinks they mean by “straight Caucasian.” “White kids who look like them,” she says. According to Kathy, the Jansons’ first match was with a couple who, she says, “are not even Caucasian! They’re Czech, Austrian, German, and English, but really fair-­ skinned.” In Kathy’s guffaw at the Jansons’ idiosyncratic understanding of “straight Caucasian,” she reveals her own peculiar ideas about what “Caucasian” means, which came through repeatedly in matching sessions with her as synonymous with white US American. Kathy wonders about the Jansons’ preference for college education: “That’s not inheritable. It’s not like they are going to inherit someone’s BA or Master’s degree.” Kathy rarely asks clients’ reasoning for their preferences but did about the engineers: “I had to know. Can you guess?” I could not. “She works with developmentally-­delayed youth, and in her experience, a disproportionate number of these kids have engineers for fathers.” No further remarks are made about this selective preference against disability or what, to me, are problematic assumptions about the

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cause and heritability of autism.26 In Lisa’s rejection email, she expressed appreciation to Kathy for “helping us in our search for the perfect family.” As Kathy reads this aloud, she states: “There’s no such thing as a perfect family.” “You see this, Risa, all the time,” Kathy begins. “It’s become a lot more where people want this and that type of thing. Matching is becoming more difficult.” While the list of donors looks long, she says that it “gets really narrow when you start looking at it closely”: Five of them have infectious diseases, or some kind of genetic disease, and those are very hard to match. I have five [Catholic donors] who only want Catholic recipients, so those are hard to match. Then you’re kind of half and half on if they [embryo donors] used a[n egg or sperm] donor or not . . . How’d we get here?

Monica, who has worked in the program longer, recalls what it used to be like. “We didn’t used to give people any information on embryos. No, we said, you cannot have that. We match based on two families and the embryology report information is not something that we used in our process. It was all about what religion, education, things like that.” Kathy chimes in: “Think about yesterday. All we matched on yesterday was embryo stage, embryo quality, how long they’d been frozen. Those are the things we match on now.” Monica remembers the specific client case when things changed. I remember the day that Will Beemer wrote a letter to me and Tim that said if we had known that the embryos were this quality we would not have adopted. We wasted our money, wasted our time, and we could sue you. He didn’t say we could sue, but his tone was that we led them into something that they would not have gone into if we had agreed to give them information that they asked for. When Tim read it, he said you have to give them what they want. You can’t withhold any of this information anymore. I was like, “Okay.” At the time, I thought our clients will be so happy with the change.

“Oh sure, it’d be nice,” Kathy says, and follows with:

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But now it’s become its own beast. When I think about the four families we matched yesterday, the only information we sent them was on the embryos. They will make a decision based upon the embryos and will know nothing really about the family. That will be secondary to them . . . I wish it was more like the traditional ministry that it started out to be.

Blossom staff members refer to the program as a ministry—­a term common in evangelical Christianity that means spiritual work tending to another’s needs. In the era of embryo shopping, I ask Kathy what she thinks could help the program return to its former ways. “We just need to be firm,” she replies. “We have to say that you just can’t choose or be selective in these ways.” Kathy decides that the Jansons are not ready to be matched again because they are turning down donors for “really bad reasons.” Upon hearing about the Jansons, social workers in ECA’s domestic and international program encourage Blossom to “drop” them from the program. Monica disagrees, noting that the Jansons are “very honest” about their unselections, a quality she appreciates for supporting successful matches. In an email to Kathy explaining their match preferences, Lisa expresses excitement and readiness for a donor who feels right: “In the profiles, we are looking for a connection in the form of a similar story or something that feels familiar. We are hoping to find a tiny piece of ourselves, too.” The next day Kathy searches the client database for another possible donor to propose to the Jansons. She lands on the Hoffmans, who have four embryos that were frozen twelve years ago. Their top preferences for a recipient are that they identify as Christian, have at least a high school education, have been married for five or more years, are aged from mid-­twenties to forties, and, ideally, plan to provide one stay-­at-­ home parent. They are open to contact if the recipients wish. “It’s a loose match,” Kathy says. She remarks that the Jansons’ profile letter mentions God but doesn’t say how devout they are. The Hoffmans have been turned down at least three times prior due to how long their embryos have been frozen, and Kathy worries the Jansons will reject them too. As she looks at other matching criteria, she notices that the Jansons’ clinic won’t transfer embryos from donors who tested positive for cytomegalo-

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virus (CMV). Mr. Hoffman tested positive, so this one is not a good fit. Kathy seems relieved for today, but the search continues. The Everetts rival the Jansons in pickiness. Their “must have” list for a donor match: no embryos that have undergone genetic testing; “Caucasian” donors only but, as they wrote, are open to “Italian”; advanced degrees (e.g., MA, PhD, JD); tall (woman 5'9"+ and man 6'0"+); blue or green eyes; at least one has an extroverted and outgoing personality; open to annual updates for contact. Based on a “divine dream” Holly Everett had about a 6'0" tall woman with brown hair who was serving breakfast to two twin boys and another single boy, they prefer a donor who has twins. Monica, overhearing Kathy recounting this list for me, says: “You’re not ordering a kid, Holly.” Sarah weighs in next: “And not doing a science experiment. She says she realizes God has a hand in all this but I don’t think so.” The Everetts just declined a match with the Sallers, “who are cute,” according to Kathy: “Two vitrified blastocysts, frozen individually. It doesn’t get better. Christian family, Caucasian, advanced degrees. This is Holly’s dream and they said no.” The team works together to find the Everetts a match. They begin with the Pletschers’ file because they have twin boys—­a good start!—­but discover that they have already turned down the Everetts in a previously proposed match. No match. The Blanchards want no contact and the Sweeneys want too much contact—­neither are good options. The Brants have three blastocyst embryos “frozen in the right year,” Kathy notes. One donor has an Associate’s degree and the other has a Bachelors. “They don’t seem like the type of people the Everetts would want,” Monica says. She looks at a picture of Mr. Brant, noting that he’s “hunky and attractive but a bit more laid back in appearance that might appeal to Holly.” Kathy agrees and puts the Brants on the “maybe” list. The Foresters look more promising: four embryos frozen using a slow-­freeze method, both under forty years old, Caucasian, college-­educated, parents of three boys—­twins and a single. “It’s ridiculous this is how we’re doing matching,” Kathy says. “I don’t think anything is wrong with the Foresters, but I’m pretty sure the Everetts will.” We look at well over a dozen possible donors and come up with six maybes. Kathy wonders how to propose these to the Everetts; she mainly wants to avoid sending them all six profiles to select from. Maybe just three, Monica suggests: “We should tell them no, you can’t shop. We can’t spend all day figuring

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out how tall people are. Maybe she needs to wait until she is really ready to adopt embryos.” Staff claim that pickiness is a sign of unreadiness to participate in embryo adoption. Sarah comes over with the Martells’ file in hand, a new donor who she thinks may be a good match for the Everetts. They come to her mind because she just posted them on her photo wall. The Martells have sixteen blastocysts, are open to contact, and have college degrees—­one’s an MD, the other has a Bachelors. The egg donor’s adult photograph looks a bit like Holly. As Kathy looks at their file, she becomes more excited: “Wait for it,” she says. “They have twin boys and an older brother!” The only problem they see is that the Martells’ family profile is minimal by contrast to the Everetts’ very descriptive application. “I think it sounds brilliant,” says Monica. Everyone returns to their desks as Kathy drafts an email to the Everetts about what the team is optimistically calling the “Martell miracle match.” While lamenting the fact of embryo shopping, Blossom contributes to client pickiness by priming participants to select for or against certain qualities in donors or their embryos. Embryo shopping reveals how various social factors inform recipients’ desires for pregnancy and the related phenomenon of picked-­over embryos. The Jansons’ and Everetts’ relationship histories, infertility experiences, religious beliefs, orientations to medical diagnoses, and financial considerations, among many other variables, actively shape what they want from the embryo matching and the family-­making process. In turn, these desires shape which embryos they perceive as savable and which they do not. Instead of dropping clients like the Jansons or Everetts, or “being more firm” about embryo shopping, staff developed saviorist strategies of marking and marketing to address the problem of picked-­over embryos. Rather than serving as a counterpart to the market forces subtending adoption and third-­party reproduction, staff use marking and marketing strategies to advertise picked-­over embryos in order to inspire prospective recipients to charitably choose them for procreative use. Christian charity logics are fundamental to saviorism and operate in embryo adoption by moralizing consumer choice and making certain forms of difference appear desirable. The following examples show how staff wield saviorism to peddle unselected embryos by transforming them from adoptable orphans into pitiable subjects, waiting to be saved.

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Mark(et)ing Multi-­Ethnicity Blossom racially marks embryos from non-­white donors as “multi-­ ethnic” to advertise them to prospective recipients. Marking begins when Kathy reviews a new donor application to fill out the one-­page fact sheet that condenses client information from over a dozen application pages to key criteria for matching. She finishes the sheet during a phone call in which she discusses donors’ preferences for prospective recipients. Once completed, the donor fact sheet is hole-­punched and fastened to the top of the donor file for quick referencing during matching sessions. Kathy designates “ethnicity of embryos”—­a line added to the donor fact sheets in 2008—­based on the “Physical Description” and “Personal Health History” portions of the donor application. Chiefly, she looks at how donors describe their “ethnic heritage” and “skin color” in the application. Even though Kathy draws on a range of factors to construct racial designations for donors, she then condenses them to a set of racialized abbreviations. As shown in figure 4.3, Kathy wrote C, which is her code for Caucasian. Other shorthand she uses includes AA for African American and Hisp for Hispanic. The letter C with no hyphenation means that both donors described their ethnic heritage and skin color in ways that Kathy interprets as Caucasian. When she perceives dissimilar ethnicities within a donor couple, she uses fractions, like 1/2 C, 1/2 Hisp, to distribute the embryos’ ethnicities into discrete percentages. When her impressions do not fit neatly into an established category, she creates unique descriptors for the embryos, such as Anglo-­Colombian, Korean-­ Chinese, and Swedish/Hispanic, which randomly blend racial, ethnic, and national self-­identifications. Embryos with designations other than C are entered into the program database as “multi-­ethnic,” which means non-­white.27 Kathy’s process for marking embryo “ethnicities” that are non-­white requires what sociologist Charis Thompson calls “too-­easy elisions.”28 An elision happens when something is contracted, folded, or omitted. In US gamete donation, elisions occur between egg and sperm donors and their gametes by collapsing donors’ phenotypic, biological, and social qualities into their gametes and, then, projecting racial imaginaries onto potential children based on beliefs about biological inheritance.

Figure 4.3. Blossom embryo donor fact sheet. Photo by author.

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Thompson notes that some gamete donation programs try to remind clients about the unpredictable role that egg and sperm play in creating children. Unlike the egg donation programs Thompson observes, Blossom does not warn clients about the unpredictable nature of heritability. Rather, the program maintains the idea of race as an identifiable, discrete, and durable substance that transmits stably and in equal proportions from donors to embryos—­an “essence.” Distributing percentages of “ethnicity” to distinct sets of embryos reproduces the racist myth of racial purity. Rephrasing legal scholar Dorothy Roberts, she might say that we can only imagine a one-­quarter Caucasian embryo if we have a concept of another as 100 percent Caucasian.29 Kathy elides embryo donors as they are reduced to two racialized component parts (e.g., Caucasian and Caucasian, or Swedish and Hispanic) and combined to form a racially distinct set of embryos (e.g., C, or Swedish/Hisp). It is through this process that some embryos in the Blossom program become racially marked as “ethnic.” The same year Blossom started racially marking embryos on donor fact sheets, it also began marketing embryos from non-­white donors online. Staff created a “multi-­ethnic” embryos web page to feature the small number of embryos in the program from non-­white donors. None of their client profiles had been featured on the web before. “There was a point in time where the multi-­ethnic page didn’t exist at all,” Monica explained. We just had the embryos sitting here being passed over all the time. I felt badly because I started to do matching with Sarah and it was like, “Oh, can’t match them, they’re African American,” or “Oh, can’t match them, they’re Asian.” The embryos would just sit so I thought we have to do something. So, a web page was born and a bunch of families went on it.

The top of the web page asks prospective recipients in large font, Want to Adopt Multi-­Ethnic Embryos? The tagline, “adoptive parents needed!” follows. A few sentences at the top explain the purpose behind the website and what the donors have in common: “The families listed below are seeking adoptive parents for their embryos. These particular families are highlighted because one or both of the donor parents is non-­Caucasian.

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Figure 4.4. Sample of multi-­ethnic embryo description.

Many of the children are biracial.” When visitors scroll down the list, embryos rather than donors are most prominently on display. The central focus of the web page is a list of titles that staff created describing embryos as possessors of “multi-­ethnicity.” Some featured on the website in 2011 were “Chinese-­Caucasian Embryos,” “African (Somali) Embryos,” “African American Embryos,” “Northern Indian-­Caucasian,” and “Filipino Embryos.” The longest descriptor I encountered was “European / Spanish / Moroccan / Israeli Jewish Embryos.” Below each title appear brief summaries of the donor family’s preferences for prospective recipients (figure 4.4), but the only detail on the embryos is their “multi-­ethnicity.” A later version of the website shifted from featuring racialized embryos to listing the fictional names of donor couples. The “African American embryo” in the previous image, for instance, became “Cindy & Jerome’s Embryo.” Staff crafts roughly 400-­word biographies about each pseudonymously named donor couple for the website and features a new list of details about the embryos, including number, year frozen, stage of development, and age of egg donor at time of retrieval. “Ethnicity” of the embryos continues to be listed first. Even while the revamped website strives to include more about the donors themselves, their self-­identifications for race and ethnicity are not included. Instead, Blossom advertises embryos marked as multi-­ethnic in hopes of “finding them homes.” According to Kathy, “people who go on the mixed race/ethnicity list are those who look different.” I ask her, different from whom? She replies, “Caucasians.” Marking difference in this way highlights the un-

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marked role of white hegemony operating in the program. Her view that “multi-­ethnic” means “looking different” from “Caucasians,” and thus merits a designated web page, makes clear how whiteness and white desires operate as the unmarked norm and ideal in the Blossom program—­and arguably much of assisted reproductive technologies.30 Three years after the website’s launch, each one of the original families posted on the website had been matched with recipients. The following year, the program celebrated the birth of the first Black baby in the program. “I was so happy about that because it means that it’s working and they’re getting adopted,” Monica said. I heard directly about at least a dozen inquiries and a few matches made with donors on the multi-­ethnic web page, which encouraged staff to conclude that marking and marketing “multi-­ethic” embryos online helps to save some unselected embryos. The web page worked as intended to help Bao and Diu’s “waiting” embryos be selected. Jack and Sally Alder, a white Catholic couple with one son adopted from Vietnam, wanted to provide their son with “a sibling that [sic] would share his ethnicity.” When Vietnam suspended international adoptions in 2008, the Alders considered other options. “I thought that adopting Thomas would free me from the desire to be pregnant, but it didn’t,” Sally said. “I still wanted to be pregnant and knew adoption would be a stretch. I’d been praying about it quite a bit.” Her neighbor lent her a copy of Parenting magazine, which featured a story about embryo adoption. “I don’t know how long it had been sitting there but I read it and was like, ‘Whoa, I never thought about this before.’” She shared it with her husband who, like her, thought it a bit “wacky.” A few days later she Googled “embryo adoption Vietnamese” and found Bao and Diu’s listing on the Blossom multi-­ethnic website. The ad read: Bao and Diu are a fun-­loving couple with two adorable little boys. They started their IVF journey with unexplained infertility. Moving forward with IVF, they created seven embryos that made it to Day 5. They transferred 2 and froze the other five. Lo and behold they became pregnant with twins! Their family of 2 was about to double. Diu carried the twins full term and gave birth to equally fun-­loving boys as Bao and Diu themselves. Having their plate overflowing with the blessing of their twins, Bao and Diu chose to place their remaining five embryos for donation through the Blossom Program.

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The “embryo information” section following the biographical narrative described the five embryos as “100% Vietnamese,” frozen in 2007 at the blastocyst stage, and made with eggs from Diu when she was thirty-­ three years old. The donors preferred recipients who identified as Asian and Catholic and have college degrees, stable careers, and no more than two children. They did not have strong preferences for age or length of marriage, and were open to single women recipients. “I called Blossom and said, ‘You might think I’m a nut, but I’m Caucasian and am interested in these Vietnamese embryos,” Sally said. “My husband is Catholic and we will raise kids that way.’” Monica, who answered the call, told her that the embryos had been “waiting” for “several years” and nobody else had called about them. She suspected the donors would be open to the Alders, which they were when learning that there were no Asian recipients in the matching pool at that time. Blossom is open to facilitating “transracial matches” with its majority white recipients and does not reserve embryos from non-­white donors for corresponding clientele, as some programs do.31 Bao and Diu were initially disinterested in contact, which disappointed the Alders, but they “came around,” according to Sally. The Alders did not tell their families until Sally was five months pregnant after a successful frozen embryo transfer (FET) with Bao and Diu’s donated embryos. “I wanted to make sure that things were going to be okay. I called my parents and said ‘We adopted an embryo and I’m five months pregnant with a Vietnamese baby. Go ahead and ask questions.’” Everyone responded positively to their news. One woman at her husband’s church was relieved to learn about embryo adoption, saying how concerned she is for frozen IVF embryos and grateful that they have a chance at birth. Soon after delivering her son, a stranger at the grocery store asked how she was able to adopt a baby so young, assuming Sally adopted internationally: “People didn’t always understand it but were happy for us.” The Alders, like all prospective recipients interested in multi-­ethnic embryos, were allowed to apply and be matched before having to pay the initial $500 fee. Monica implemented a flexible fee structure for these applicants because they may have only one matching option and she does not want the initial fee to be a deterrent. In her view, multi-­ ethnic embryos wait because people do not know they exist. Featur-

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ing them online ensures that people searching for particular “kinds” of embryos—­like the Alders—­find them. “In the multi-­ethnic embryo world, some embryos are rare, but we don’t think they’ll be waiting forever,” Monica said. Surging enthusiasm among white evangelicals for parenting children of color is another reason “multi-­ethnic” embryos might not wait forever. Rachel and Aaron Halbert’s embryo adoption story is an exemplar of this trend and illustrates the limits of embryo saviorism to fully reframe the racially fetishistic desires of white evangelicals to parent Black children as religious practice.32 The Halberts are white Christian missionaries who were living in Honduras and raising their two Black children through domestic adoption when Rachel gave birth to Black triplets through embryo adoption. The couple worked closely with the National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC), one of the largest and most established embryo adoption programs, to receive two embryos from Black American donors. Frozen for fifteen years, both embryos implanted when transferred and one split into identical twins. A few days following the triplet birth, Aaron published an op-­ed in the Washington Post explaining the couple’s story, saying they regard it as “the logical outcome of being pro-­life” and lamenting that it “often needs much explaining.”33 The Halberts had initially pursued domestic adoption in Mississippi, following their marriage, at the same time that they were also trying to conceive together. “While we were fertile,” Aaron wrote, “we were both deeply convicted [sic] that one of the ways to be pro-­life is to involve ourselves in adoption.”34 Aware of problems in US adoption placements that disadvantage children of color, the Halberts notified the adoption agency of their race-­specific preference, saying they “were willing to accept any child except a fully Caucasian child.” As Aaron explained, “if the Lord wanted us to have a fully Caucasian child my wife would conceive naturally.”35 According to the Halberts, desiring Black children allowed them to create a particular kind of family that conspicuously reflects and honors God’s racially diverse kingdom. In this request, the Halberts demonstrate a growing trend of white saviorism within US evangelicalism over recent decades promoting transracial adoptions between white adults and children of color. Their subsequent pursuit of embryos from Black donors exemplifies this through embryo saviorism.

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Critical adoption scholars link increasing support for transracial adoption to the movement for “racial reconciliation” growing in white evangelical congregations.36 According to Christian authors of Orphanology: Awakening to Gospel-­Centered Adoption and Orphan Care, the so-­called world orphan crisis “affords the church a tangible opportunity to live out a God-­based ethic of racial relationships and to engage in racial reconciliation to its utmost.”37 Racial diversity has become a status symbol in recent years within Christian congregations seeking “badges of diversity” as the numbers of white people affiliating with evangelical churches decline.38 In this context, evangelical “diversity experts” have emerged to address forms of racial conflict, often by focusing on transforming individuals through shared faith rather than addressing systemic forms of oppression.39 Like adoption, racial diversity appeared more prominently in twenty-­first-­century white-­majority evangelical Christian movements, and according to movement leaders, God seems “into it” too. White evangelicals’ emphasis on racial reconciliation and transracial adoption demonstrates how racializing processes can align with religious practices in a relationship of mutual reinforcement. The Halberts’ participation in “embryo adoption” illustrates this further. Soon after adopting their Black children, the Halberts felt called as saviors to embryo adoption due to their pro-­life commitment to the “protection of the unborn.” “All life,” Aaron wrote, “no matter how young or old, no matter the stages of development—­has inherent dignity and value” because “every human life bears [God’s] image.”40 After talking with a couple who bore a child through embryo adoption, the Halberts felt “deeply moved by the idea of adding more children to our family by rescuing these tiny lives.”41 Propelled by their belief that “life begins at conception,” Aaron wrote, “we should respond by being willing to support embryo adoption and even take part in it ourselves.”42 “We were again faced with the question of what ethnicity we would choose for our adopted embryos,” Aaron wrote. According to its website, the NEDC typically matches “minority embryos” with recipients sharing the same racial identity, but white parents who have adopted transracially can qualify for an exception.43 The Halberts requested “African American embryos” because, like the Alders discussed earlier, “we wanted additional siblings to feel connected to our first two children

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racially.”44 The NEDC supported their race-­specific selection, which ultimately resulted in Rachel’s triplet birth. While Aaron describes making “choices” and “decisions” along the way, the couple ultimately defers “selections” to God for determining if and how their family takes shape. Discourse about God’s plan for their family, which is common among embryo adoption participants, surfaces in remarks Aaron and Rachel make in a promotional video the NEDC created called “Three Times the Blessing: The Halberts’ Story.”45 Rachel explains that she and Aaron had remained open to parenting through adoption or biological conception when “God opened the door to adoption first.” In her narrative, God determined their family would begin with the adoption of children of color. Crying as he talks about the triplets, Aaron expresses awe in knowing “the Lord was considering us [for fifteen years before our three daughters were born].” Aaron acknowledges that their family composition “is not the way we planned it twelve years ago,” but he and Rachel express gratitude for God’s “blessing us with these sweet little ones he has placed in our care.” Racializing processes and savior sentiments worked in mutually reinforcing ways to facilitate the Halberts’ desires to “rescue these tiny lives.” Religious desires for a racially diverse family guided the Halberts toward selecting children and embryos that allowed them to compose their family based on a racialized imaginary about how heaven looks. Aaron demonstrates his religious commitment to a theology of racial diversity by actively “seeing” race in the contrasting composition of his family’s bodies.46 He described “sheer delight during this pregnancy watching my son and daughter, with his dark brown skin and her with the ringlet hair and slightly tan skin, kiss my white wife’s growing belly.”47 He then elaborates on some of his “beautiful and enriching” experiences as part of a white couple parenting Black children: There is something beautiful and enriching being the only white face sitting and chatting with some of my African American friends as my son gets his hair cut on a Saturday morning. There is also something wonderful in the relationship that is built as my wife asks a [B]lack friend on Facebook how to care for our little biracial daughter’s hair. The beauty of a multi-­ethnic family is found there, in the fact that the differences are the very things that make ours richer and fuller.48

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Embryo saviorism’s seductions and harms are rife in the Halberts’ narrative, as seen in descriptions of religious motivation to participate in adoption as missionary work; pro-­life commitments to “protect unborn life” and “rescue tiny lives”; faith in God’s procreative plan for their family and gratitude for “blessing us with these sweet little ones”; and focus on the Halberts’ white desires over what their children or other members of the Black community may want. Tropes of charity, altruism, and salvation in their narrative attempt to reframe their fetishistic desire for Blackness as enabled by selection practices within adoption and third-­ party reproduction. By foregrounding exotifying details of his family’s contrasting skin colors and hair types, Aaron makes conspicuous racialized bodily differences to demonstrate how their “family portrait” resembles their racialized vision of heaven.49 In doing so, he also makes conspicuous the racist commodifying logics, premised on consumptive desire for racial difference, that motivate their embryo savior desires.

Mark(et)ing Special Circumstances Following successes with the multi-­ethnic embryo web page, Blossom decided to address another variety of unselected embryos—­like the Bowers’—­said to have “special needs.” In 2011, staff debuted a “Special Needs” web page. Monica and Kathy began with a list of six unselected donors, who they asked for permission to feature in an anonymous profile online. Most agreed. As Kathy noted, staff tried being “positive, upbeat, and delicate” when pitching the idea to donors. “We say we’d like to put it on the website to have more visibility and a better chance of getting adopted.” Initially the web page featured profiles of donors with known health conditions (e.g., diagnoses of multiple sclerosis and 21-­hydroxylase deficiency, or positive result for infectious diseases like hepatitis B core total antibodies) and of donors with children who had varying diagnoses (e.g., neurofibromatosis, sensory integration dysfunction, pervasive development disorder not otherwise specified, human T-­lymphotropic virus). Each profile noted the so-­called special need implied by these medical diagnoses and encouraged visitors to “consult your doctor for more information.” A few months later, Blossom retitled the web page to “Special Circumstances” to include donors with a small number of em-

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bryos available and poor clinical rankings by embryologists—­additional factors that cause prospective recipients to unselect embryos. “Two [cleavage stage] Day 3 embryos are not likely to be matched willy-­nilly,” Kathy explained. “There’s nothing wrong with them, there’s just only two of them,” a circumstance that recipients believe narrows their chances for a successful FET and pregnancy. Eventually, staff merged the multi-­ ethnic profiles with the “Special Circumstances” web page so that all were listed under one header: Waiting Embryos. Laura Connell, a donor diagnosed with 21-­hydroxylase deficiency, was not interested in being profiled on a “special needs” web page: “There’s nothing wrong with our embryos. They’re not special needs! They’ve all been tested and they’re fine.” Laura resisted markings that suggested something is “wrong” with or risky about her embryos, yet staff remained worried about their selectability. “[Laura] says the embryos are not affected, but we don’t have any information saying that the embryos were tested and that they’re fine,” said Kathy during a program meeting about the new web page.50 “And she wrote all about it in her profile. My concern is if anyone sees [her profile and diagnosis] they’re going to be like, ‘No thanks.’” She continued: “We’ve sent them out and nobody takes them. These embryos are labeled now.” Kathy is suggesting that Laura, by identifying herself as having a genetic condition in the application, has marked her embryos as potentially having something “wrong” with them. In this example, Blossom staff approach disability as a problem inhering in individual embryos, which they perceive broadly as at risk of medical diagnoses, health problems, or any variety of physical, cognitive, or sensory impairments. This approach mirrors what critical disability scholars call the medical model of disability. While it partly explains why staff sees Laura’s embryos as having “special needs” that require extra advertising, the charity mode of disability that casts disability as pitiable and requiring helperism is most prominent in their marketing efforts. “To do our part to make sure they find a home,” Monica said about the Connells’ embryos, “we need to do a little more outreach on their behalf, a little more advocacy.” Kathy created an online profile against the Connells’ wishes, which happened to elicit the first recipient inquiry from the new web page. Waiting Embryos in large blue letters is emblazoned at the top of the Special Circumstances web page. Below the title, the program affirms

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its equal valuation of all embryos: “Each and every embryo is a precious human life, created by God, that deserves a chance to live out life to the fullest.” Then, it introduces the phenomenon of waiting: “Through Blossom many embryos are available for adoption and while some are adopted very quickly, others wait.” It lists common causes for waiting, such as: genetic mothers who were older at the time of egg retrieval, health issues in the genetic parents’ family or the embryos’ genetic siblings, a low number of embryos, a lower embryo grade assigned by an embryologist, or a positive infectious disease test result from the genetic parent(s).

Visitors are encouraged to peruse the profiles and “discuss risks with a physician,” but are told that most embryos listed “have the same potential to be happy, healthy babies.” If “one or more [profile] captures your heart,” visitors should submit a free preliminary application. Blossom borrows discourses of waiting from domestic and international adoption programs to suggest that embryos, like so-­called hard-­ to-­place children, actively anticipate adoption.51 “When you think about it,” Monica said, “waiting means you’re waiting on something. They are waiting for people, for you, for families. They are not just out there by themselves. Waiting conveys that they should be connected to something else, and possibly you!” Waiting is a discursive marker used in conventional adoption to market unselected children. According to Monica: Waiting embryos gives the idea that they are waiting like “special needs” children in the China program, which they call “waiting children.” Some are older and have been waiting a long time, which mirrors our [special circumstances] list a lot. Some have special needs or medical issues, minor or major, like our list. Waiting embryos have medical considerations, have been waiting for a while, or, based on experience, we expect will be harder to place.

Staff prefers the term waiting over “hard-­to-­place” because the latter suggests diminished value based on some flaw with the embryo. “If we say hard-­to-­place, then obviously somebody else didn’t want them and

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it seems like there’s probably something wrong with them,” Monica said. But she assures me that “half of the waiting embryos have no medical issues” and “even those with medical issues per se, children born from them will likely not have anything wrong with them.” “Wrongness” in her remarks serves as shorthand for a broad set of potential health conditions, which are captured under the umbrella term “special needs.” It functions euphemistically to avoid talking about the ableist assumptions that stratify the worth of some embryos bearing evidence of, or risk for, something “wrong,” even among staff who maintain that all embryos “deserve a chance.” Marking embryos as special needs illustrates one way disability is discursively produced.52 Feminist disability studies scholar Rosemarie Garland-­Thomson describes the production of disability through the framework of “misfits,” which is an apt descriptor for special needs embryos in a program inspired by “fitting” practices in US adoption. For Garland-­Thomson, fit “describes a predominantly unmarked and unrecognized way of being in the world,” while misfits occur when awkward juxtapositions arise between bodies and environments, as happens when round pegs meet square holes.53 A persistent myth is that the harmonious alignment of a good fit comes from the intrinsic qualities, or essences, of bodies. Garland-­Thomson argues instead that fits are contingent upon contexts, namely when a body is “suited to the circumstances and conditions of the environment, of satisfying its requirements in a way so as not to stand out, make a scene, or disrupt through countering expectations.”54 As a result, bodies that fit seamlessly within particular contexts are treated socially as unremarkable. Misfits, on the other hand, are discursively marked and made hypervisible; they become disabled, racialized, and othered figures made to bear the individual burden of responsibility for misfitting. At the same time, environments—­typically designed to sustain dominant norms, forms, functions, and needs—­bear no responsibility. Misfits draw attention to what Garland-­Thomson calls “context over essence” by showing how social “contexts,” rather than the perceived “essence” of a marked body, determine whether it “fits” or not.55 Misfits thus expose how social conditions mark difference and materially produce one form of it via disability. Similarly, processes for marking embryos as “special needs”

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render them paradigmatic misfits, which challenges embryo saviorism’s claim that all embryos “fit” in God’s world. Staff take turns searching for personal details in the donor applications to craft narratives for the website about how donors came to have remaining embryos and the qualities they are looking for in recipients. In this work, they strive to “paint an entire picture about the family and existing children and not just the embryo with a particular disease or issue,” according to Kathy. “We are trying to pull a bit at people’s heartstrings,” Monica follows. “We want people to be captured by the biography and think, ‘Yes of course I want to give this embryo a story.’” After Monica completes nearly a dozen narratives to add to the web page, it is Sarah’s turn, who hopes to be able to “package them as beautifully.” Crafting promotional narratives with the intention of stirring hearts is a tactic for transforming frozen orphans into pitiable subjects, marked by desirable differences, and waiting to be saved. Blossom advertises “Special Circumstances” embryos through posts on Facebook, announcements on the agency’s blog, and email features to client listservs—­like the leap of faith one I received about the Bowers’ embryo. For a short time, it also advertised in the biannual newsletter of Christian Homes and Special Kids (CHASK)—­a nonprofit Christian organization that helps match families through the domestic adoption of children with disabilities. The first advertisement begins, “Mommy Needed . . . for embryo with possible upper arm shortening”: A couple that could not conceive naturally, underwent IVF and created a number of eggs. They had some implanted, which resulted in a viable pregnancy. Nine months later, the baby girl that was born had a birth defect called bilateral upper arm shortening. The little girl has no other special needs except very short arms. The remaining embryo that is from this couple is no longer desired by them, and yet they are not wanting to destroy the baby [embryo]. Because a full sister to the embryo has a birth defect, no one wants to chance that the embryo will have the same defect. Blossom is just not sure what to do with it . . . Are you interested in trying to save the life of this embryo? . . . Currently, the issue of embryos with special needs has not been dealt with. No research. No genetic testing yet. What are your feelings on this

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issue? Is it just an embryo or a real baby? If you would adopt a baby with special needs, would you also agree to carry one in your womb? What about this baby with potential upper arm shortening? Can the CHASK family find a home for babies, who are still embryos, with potential special needs?

The next newsletter includes an editorial update about how CHASK supporters responded to the novel ad: In the last issue, we shared with you a new avenue of saving babies through CHASK. The response about the whole idea of accepting embryos was mixed, but almost overwhelmingly positive. Several families came forward to say that they would most certainly be happy to become parents for the embryo with possible missing limbs. Now we have another situation that we hope you will also be as enthusiastic about.

In the same newsletter, Blossom appealed to CHASK supporters to provide a “special home” for the Bondi’s eight embryos. “Unborn Babies lie waiting for Mommy,” the ad begins. The Bondi’s bore “three healthy children together” before “Baby Ryan sadly passed away as a stillborn at 25 weeks” due to skeletal dysplasia, according to an autopsy. Accepting to adopt a special needs embryo does not ensure a child will be born with a genetic defect or without a defect. For some adoptive parents, however, this is a chance they are willing to take for the sake of giving all embryos a chance at life . . . Blossom believes that each fertilized egg is a life which deserves its chance to live, however short or long that life might be.

Per CHASK’s rules, Blossom’s ad confirms that it “will not be charging adoption fees for this particular set of embryos.” For all other “special circumstances” embryos, Blossom offers a “Little Miracles” scholarship for interested recipients who demonstrate financial need in order to, as Tim said, “help get embryos adopted who might not otherwise move.” Discounting matches with embryos marked as “special needs” materially stratifies their worth in dollars and cents, which is another saviorist tactic for constructing pitiable subjects that require “help.”

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After reading about the Bondi’s embryos in the CHASK newsletter, Diana Maurer was inspired to provide them a “special home.” She is a white evangelical homeschooler and mother of eleven children—­six biologically, four adopted internationally, and one born through embryo adoption. I don’t have or didn’t have children with special needs. I do homeschool and have been to a bazillion book fairs and my name got on a mailing list for a group called CHASK, which helps families homeschool their disabled children. The article for these embryos was in one of these newsletters that I happened to read on the drive to my son’s college graduation.

Upon reading the ad, her first thought was that God was calling her. “It’s a God thing. I felt that these were our kids and we were supposed to,” she said. Identifying as a mother “blessed both ways through adoption and birth,” Diana felt uniquely positioned to step forward—­a savior’s view—­and respond to the gendered ad calling for “mommies” to help: “I realized that I was in a really good place to be mom to embryos . . . I felt I could go out on a limb.” She seemed more receptive to receiving embryos with “potential special needs,” as described in the ad, than a child with known disabilities. I’m not sure why they call these special needs anyway, other than full disclosure, because there’s no greater than normal risk. I didn’t want to risk that the baby would die in utero but also didn’t want to introduce a child into our home with needs beyond our ability to care for.

Learning more about the genetic condition assuaged her worries about the chance of raising a child with it: “With this disorder [skeletal dysplasia], if the baby had it, it would die. It’s something they can detect early whether they have likelihood or not. It would be tragic for me and my family, but not a lifelong tragedy.” Diana’s desire to “be a mom” to the Bondi’s embryos came with the understanding that she would not likely have to raise a child with this disability because it was a lethal condition. Saving embryos appeared to have stronger appeal to her than raising a disabled child. In this example, idealizing disability and responding charitably without having to care for a disabled child—­which may be

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what she meant by a “lifelong tragedy”—­calls attention to the paradoxes common in pro-­life politics in which saviorism cultivates rhetorical desire for disability-­as-­difference, yet not for disability justice.56 Above all, Diana trusted God to manage whatever happened. “I knew that whatever God chose would be best, whether or not it was the pregnancy we were hoping for,” she said. After matching with the Bondis, completing the application process, and shipping the embryos to her clinic, she had two FETs before delivering her daughter, Evelyn, who does not have skeletal dysplasia. Blossom has gained a reputation for “taking in special case embryos,” according to Kathy. “We take an interest in our waiting embryos and people come to us that way. People have heard of our reputation.” Some donors’ embryos go straight onto the Special Circumstances web page because staff expect them to wait and want to accelerate the process of “getting them adopted.” Sarah notices that embryos failing to meet criteria for clinic-­based donation programs sometimes end up on Blossom’s Special Circumstances list. “I know for sure we got two donors positive with hepatitis B and a cystic fibrosis carrier from one clinic in particular,” she told me. Gaining recognition as valuing all embryos, and working to place unselected ones in “forever homes,” is a point of pride for program staff. A year after starting the “Special Circumstances” web page, nearly half (25) of Blossom’s sixty donors are featured on it. Kathy dislikes this fact. “Most [embryos] aren’t special needs,” she clarified. “People are just being picky.” But client pickiness cannot fully account for the lengthy list of waiting embryos. Program policy of placing embryos in complete sets with recipients means that donors like the Bowers can give seventeen to the Daniels, their unused twelve to the Millers, and now await a recipient for their single remaining embryo. As the Bowers’ batch slowly dwindled to one, and as the clinic freeze date grew more distant, its risk of remaining unsaved intensified. More than half (14) of the “special circumstances” cases feature donors like the Bowers with one to three embryos, many of which resulted from program disruptions. During the Blossom team’s weekly meeting, staff prays for a few of the longest waiting embryos by printing the donors’ names on the agenda. Monica’s team celebrates matches and transfers of “waiting embryos” with agency-­wide announcements. Staff, too, wait for a future in which no embryo is passed over.

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Unselection Embryo adoption advocates promote the practice as an alternative to the commodifying fertility industry in which “life” is routinely treated as “cheaper-­by-­the-­dozen,” as Tim noted. Yet embryo shopping among prospective recipients challenges the program’s mission to treat all embryos as created equally. While staff members lament when clients come shopping for embryos, their matching practices promote selectivity, to which they respond with consumer solutions. Embryo saviorism creates conditions for embryo shopping and supports strategic efforts to mitigate its effects. Saviorism is evident in program decisions to borrow logics about “fit” through “matching” practices from US adoption, and infusing them with exclusionary program criteria that narrow which kinds of people can receive embryos and what preferences propel matches. These features of the matching process stratify notions of social worth, which shape the kinds of families people can and want to create. It is noteworthy that embryo shopping occurs among clients who otherwise strongly align with the program’s ideological valuation of whiteness, heterosexual marriage, conventional gender roles, and nuclear family formations. What staff more likely lament is that embryo shopping is an intractable feature of their program’s saviorist ideals rather than a circumstance of picky clientele. Embryo saviorism also inspires the marking and marketing strategies staff use to respond to the problem of picked-­over embryos. Transforming unselected embryos from “hard-­to-­place” frozen orphans into figures of pitiable, though desirable, otherness draws actively on Christian tropes of charitable do-­gooding—­a savior’s seduction. Presenting “multi-­ethnic” embryos in an online catalog and “special needs” embryos in disability newsletters mirrors strategies used to advertise “waiting” children within adoption agency binders and to sell racially “rare” and genetically “low-­risk” gametes online.57 The charity ideals of embryo saviorism may imply that moralities and market logics are contradictory, yet their compatibilities become clear when we look closely at everyday activities in the Blossom program. Enveloping all embryos in embryo savior discourses makes them more—­not less—­marketable, which also means more savable.

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More than a pragmatic concern, the phenomenon of waiting embryos poses a symbolic problem within the Christian Right’s political imaginary for conceiving a Christian America. As proxies for an idealized religious nation—­imperiled, worthy, and unborn—­unselected embryos represent barriers to saving not just misfit embryos but the nation itself. In this light, saviorist strategies focused on cultivating pity for desirable forms of difference provide important clues about the conceptions of humanity at the heart of the Christian Right’s political project. So far, we have seen that embryo adoption advocates maintain essentialist, fetishistic, and othering notions of race and disability; endorse binary and asymmetrical constructs of gender; revere patriarchal and biblical authority; and reward heteronormativity, among other conservative Christian beliefs. Taken together, it is becoming clear how efforts to make frozen embryos—­and the potential for Christian America—­savable are closely entwined. The next chapter takes us further into these entwinements to understand how advocates claim that what frozen embryos, and the nation’s unborn, need is a warm place to grow, and how they try to realize this religiously warmed and reformed “home” for a Christian nation.

Interlude A Warm Body

“Yes! Yes! Hallelujah!” Monica, the Blossom program director, exclaimed before closing her eyes and saying a private prayer. Sarah, a program assistant, had just delivered news to the team that the Crowns’ single frozen embryo had finally been thawed and transferred into a recipient client’s uterus. “We prayed for this,” Monica told me, then whispered quietly: “Keep growing, keep growing.” The single embryo, frozen in 2007, remained after Shirley and Mark Crown had twins through IVF with a gestational surrogate. Having completed their family, the Crowns donated their embryo through the Blossom program. The embryo’s solitary status and positive result for a common, though potentially risky, sexually transmitted disease meant that finding a willing match posed challenges for the team. The Messers were the first to accept the solo embryo but became pregnant with another donation before being able to use it. Two years after receiving the Crowns’ embryo, the Messers returned it for re-­matching. When the agency contacted the Crowns with an update, Monica was surprised by what she described as Shirley’s indifference. Shirley said it was okay if the Messers decided to stop paying storage fees and discard the unused embryo. “It’s fine,” she told Monica. “I feel like we gave it a chance.” This was not a typical response that Monica encountered from donors, even when facing news of a re-­match years later. Monica wondered why they donated through the Blossom program, with a mission to ensure every embryo has a chance to be born. “Nobody asked them to discard their embryo,” Monica said. “Shirley wasn’t a typical genetic parent. She was very fertility-­minded.” Two years passed before staff found Tanya, one of the program’s first single women recipients. Tanya was matched with four embryos in total—­three from one donor couple, and one from the Crowns. After 163

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driving many hours through a snowstorm, Tanya arrived at her fertility clinic on the day of her planned frozen embryo transfer (FET) to learn that the thawing process did not look promising. Tanya recalled her experience that day in a conversation with me months later: I didn’t have cell service and got there just as the office was closing. I came running in and, when Dr. Anderson said that the embryos had not thawed well, I start bawling. You go through all this. I had been working on this all year. This was my birthday and the only thing I wanted to do was the transfer. He took me into the back room and showed me what they looked like. He said my embryos had been frozen once before. I had no idea that they had been refrozen. He said that this is what they look like, and here’s what they should look like.

Despite her low chances of becoming pregnant, Tanya and her doctor went ahead with the transfer of all four embryos for her much-­ anticipated chance at pregnancy and first-­time motherhood. Two weeks later, Tanya called Blossom to share news of her negative pregnancy test. Staff felt sadness for her and, following Tanya’s wishes, started looking for more embryos to offer her. “I’ve had a couple people tell me I was courageous and brave, but I don’t really feel that way about myself,” Tanya explained. I just thought that I had done a ton of fertility meds, did the ultrasounds and blood draws, and got my body prepared for a couple of months to get ready to do the embryo transfer. I drove to doctor’s office the day I agreed to do the procedure and they hadn’t thawed successfully. But they were still alive. They weren’t dead; there was still life in them, and whether they were deemed “successful” or not, I didn’t want to put them in a trash can . . . I feel at ease knowing that they went into a warm body that was prepared for them and that loved them. I got to love them for two weeks and then I got to pass them back to God.

Even though the Crowns’ embryo did not keep growing, as Monica prayed that it would, she was relieved that the Blossom team achieved its mission. “Risa,” she said to me, after hanging up the phone with Tanya, “we saved this embryo.”

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*** Saving embryos, in Monica’s sense of the term, requires the alignment of time, temperature, and uteruses. Blossom does not fulfill its saving mission when successful matches are made between donors and recipients, when legal responsibilities for embryos are transferred through property contracts, when embryos are shipped between fertility clinics, or when babies are born. Program staff celebrate each of these milestones, but they are not the prize. Rather, advocates succeed when recipients thaw and transfer embryos from freezers to wombs, where they say God decides their fate. It may seem counterintuitive that saving embryos is not about successful birth, given that many embryo adoption programs prominently display the number of children born on promotional websites and focus on “emphasizing numbers.” Advocates’ disproportionate attention on birth rather than FET metrics is likely due to the fact that most “saved” embryos share the fate of the Crowns’ embryo. In fact, the vast majority of embryos donated through the Blossom program fail to survive the thawing process, do not establish pregnancy, or do not result in a born child. On average, each frozen embryo has a 12 percent chance of establishing a gestational sac following FET, which a group of researchers affiliated with the National Embryo Donation Center calls “implantation potential.”1 Each embryo has an even lower chance of being gestated to term and born alive. Saving embryos, it turns out, involves a sizable amount of loss.2 Because of this fact, program staff are accustomed to receiving far more correspondence from clients about reproductive losses rather than joys. According to Sarah, a program assistant, “You get those calls quite a bit and we honestly hold our breath. There’s a few right now that just found out they were pregnant last week or two weeks ago or something, and we’re like, ‘Aw.’ We just hold our breath until the three months because we’ve seen it [miscarriages] happen.” Recipients like Tanya come to the program for a variety of reasons, often for a combination of lower costs and lower perceived risk, when compared to conventional adoption and other forms of assisted reproduction. The chance at pregnancy is especially attractive to those who experience years of recurrent pregnancy loss or inability to become pregnant through other means.

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Yet Blossom, like all assisted reproduction services, delivers chance and not certainty. After completing the process of applying, passing a home study, creating a family profile, being matched, signing contracts, shipping embryos, and preparing physically for a FET, some recipients are devastated when few or none of the embryos survive the thawing process. Many wait weeks or months to experience failed FETs, chemical pregnancies, miscarriages, and stillbirths.3 Kathy, the program’s social worker, was keenly aware of challenges that recipient clients experienced. “Let’s face it,” she said, “the rates are not good to start with. It takes a lot of faith to be in this program.” Faith is something the Blossom program’s clientele—­the vast majority of whom identify as Christians—­have in abundance. But Monica wished she could be “less frank” with clients about their likelihood of successful pregnancy because, she lamented, “the news isn’t great.” When Sarah interfaces with clients experiencing loss, she tries to “put myself in her place. I’m crying with her. I’m just like, ‘You’ve been so amazing,’ and, ‘God has a plan for you,’ the whole thing.” During an informal conversation one afternoon with program staff, Monica said, with typical earnestness, “I really want these families to get pregnant.” We swiveled in our chairs toward the center table in the office suite to talk about a recent spate of unsuccessful FETs and new expectations from agency leadership to double the number of Blossom births within two years. Such a goal is at odds with program staff ’s efforts focused on getting embryos from freezers into wombs rather than optimizing birth numbers. In this conversation, Monica clarified what she sees as the underlying goal of embryo adoption. More than birth for clients, as leadership began pressing for, she wants to “find homes for embryos,” regardless of the reproductive outcome. I would like all of these waiting embryos that we have to get adopted, get their chance, be out of the freezer, and to close genetic parents’ files . . . I don’t care if they’re born or not and I can’t guarantee that they will be born. When Tim [the executive director of the adoption agency] says, “Have more babies be born,” I think, so you want us to only place good embryos? I have a lot of embryos that are not going to be born that I need to be adopted. It hurts my feelings a little. We [at Evangelical Christian Adoptions] are now all about making more babies born, and I’m on a different page.

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Emphasizing her appreciation for clients who take a chance on embryos like the Bowers’, she continued: “I mean it when I tell Tanya and other families that you gave these embryos a chance at life. Especially Tanya, when both thaws didn’t look good and she transferred them [into her uterus] anyway. She gave those embryos an opportunity many wouldn’t.”

5

Making America Uterine Again

“Finding homes for embryos” is a common euphemism in embryo adoption with deep signifying power. In its everyday use among staff, it describes efforts to find willing recipients like Tanya who will thaw and transfer embryos into their wombs. More powerfully, it operates as a shorthand for the goals of embryo adoption, which are advanced through saviorist discourses aimed at expanding the influence of white evangelicalism via nationalist politics. “Finding homes” rhetoric animates the “frozen orphanage” imagery we encountered in previous chapters that advocates developed to cultivate concern for “orphan” embryos deemed out of place, in cold peril, and deserving of adoptive “homes.” To realize this goal, proponents deploy theologies of time and politics of temperature to transform uteruses into rhetorical “homes”—­warm places that are nurturing, protective, and governed by God. Exploring the reproductive politics fundamental to this process takes us to the heart of how embryo saviorism aligns finding homes for embryos with realizing the potential for a warmed and religiously reformed national “home.” The uterus figures as a space of divine agency within Christian theology. According to scripture, it is where the word of God bore fruit within Mary, mother of Jesus, and where God “forms” and “knits” each person before they are born. Biblical stories of prayerful infertile women, like Sarah and Hannah, had their wombs “opened” by God, after which they bore sons. For many supporters of embryo adoption, they feel God actively working within their uteruses to assist conception in order to realize his divine plan for each person—­including each embryo. Inspired by its theological significances, the uterus has become a key feature in embryo saviorism as a material site and metaphoric symbol for advancing embryo adoption’s practical and political ambitions. Symbolic conceptions of the uterus are not unique to evangelical theology, yet similarly reveal the power relations constitutive of this “prena169

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tal space.”1 Cross-­culturally, the “symbolic womb” has featured in diverse ritual processes of transformation, which anthropologist Victor Turner was among the first to notice.2 In the United States, the uterus has long operated as a physical and discursive site for expressions of power.3 As a link between institutions of law, medicine, religion, technology, and politics, the uterus has served symbolically as a “point of articulation for society, a space where society quickens itself.”4 These articulations are especially evident in US antiabortion advocacy in which the movement’s strategic rhetoric “liquidated boundaries” between uteruses, women, family, and the nation such that wombs became “the battlefield for the social body’s survival.”5 Relatedly, embryo adoption proponents use strategic proxies that blur distinctions between the uterus and the US nation, both conceived as saving spaces, while obscuring the foundational role of women’s bodies in their saviorist ambitions.6 Uteruses function in embryo adoption as the thermal corollary to cryopreservation tanks as well as a symbol for the qualities of an imagined Christian nation. Embryo adoption supporters regard uteruses as physically, metaphorically, and rhetorically warm places prepared to provide a nurturing and protective environment for human life to develop, according to God’s plan. In the same way they describe cryopreservation tanks, supporters consider social, legal, and political hostility toward pro-­life Christian politics as evidence of a threateningly cold society that requires ideological warming, which, if successful, will conceive a Christian nation by making America more uterine. To be clear, making America more “uterine” does not mean more woman-­centered, matriarchal, maternalistic, or feminist in its regard for people who bear uteruses or their personhood and embodied labor. It is, in fact, quite the opposite. My phrasing of advocates’ goals in this way recasts the 1980s presidential campaign slogan of Ronald Reagan, “Let’s make America great again” and Donald Trump’s unoriginal repurposing of it for his 2016 presidential campaign. Recasting it through the rhetoric of embryo adoption proponents foregrounds how the Christian nationalist saviorism undergirding all of them, aimed at realizing a “New World Order” through the sustained efforts of the Christian Right alliance, is propelled by making reproduction a strategic site of political activity. Discerning the reproductive politics active in Christian na-

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tionalism requires attuning to the “familiar grammar” that links white supremacy, Christianity, patriarchy, heterosexuality, and nationalism through idioms of reproduction “into an established syntax of national belonging under threat,” as feminist anthropologists Sarah Franklin and Faye Ginsburg encourage us to do.7 Moreover, it requires wariness of saviorism in all of its forms. When we do so, we find that embryo saviorism operates simultaneously at multiple scales: as a family-­making practice committed to relocating embryos from freezers and as a political discourse for conceiving a Christian America. Saving embryos such as the Crowns’ requires the trinity of time, temperature, and place. Discourses of God’s temporal “plan” for each person include every frozen embryo, for which their divine fate is interrupted by freezing (suspension through cold temperature) and cryo-­storage (suspension out of body). Proponents wield thermal metaphors to assert that changing temperature through thaw, and changing location through uterine transfer, are necessary actions in order to “save” embryos from their interrupted fates in a cold society. Only in such conditions may God’s warming plan for each frozen embryo, and the nation, be realized.

Interrupted Fate A decade after the first human was born via in vitro fertilization (IVF), the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—­a defender of the Catholic tradition—­issued a statement responding to new biomedical technologies, like embryo experimentation, fetal surgery, and prenatal genetic testing, as they related to the “dignity of human life.” Entitled Donum Vitae, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation, it stated that frozen IVF embryos suffer “an absurd fate.”8 Meanwhile, cryopreservation became quickly mainstreamed in US fertility clinics soon after the first child born from a frozen IVF embryo was announced in the mid-­1980s. Now part of the mundane infrastructure of IVF laboratories across the country and many parts of the world, cryopreservation is commonly regarded by US fertility specialists, such as those introduced in chapter 1, as a tool for preserving viable embryos for possible future use.9 By contrast, the Congregation’s interpretation of Catholic doctrine regards embryo freezing as “exposing them to grave risks or harm to their physical integrity.” The

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Congregation also objects to their vulnerable location outside of uteruses, which it claims “depriv[es] them, at least temporarily, of maternal shelter and gestation, thus placing them in a situation in which further offenses and manipulation are possible.” Two decades later, the Church issued another statement, Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions, in which it reasserted that cryopreservation “is incompatible with respect owed to human embryos.”10 Evangelical advocates of embryo adoption share with Catholics the belief that human embryos deserve rights and respect as persons and regard cryopreservation tanks as risky places, as we saw in earlier chapters. But they differ from Catholics in key ways that are elemental to embryo saviorism. Promoters of embryo adoption approach it as necessary action in response to a moral crisis, whereas the Catholic Church claims that nothing can be done to rectify the problem: “Thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved.”11 While the Catholic Church directly acknowledged embryo adoption as “praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life,” it maintains that embryo adoption is not a “morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos.”12 Evangelicals, as well as some Catholics, disagree.13 They see frozen embryo destinies as imperiled not because of their so-­called absurd fate but rather their interrupted fate. Cryopreservation disturbs what evangelical supporters of embryo adoption call “God’s plan” for each embryo, which is shorthand for a theology of time that requires faithful obedience in allowing God’s divine intentions to manifest in one’s life and world. Dr. James Dobson, a prominent evangelical radio show host, Christian Right leader, and early supporter of embryo adoption, teaches Christians to theologically orient to time through patient faith in God’s schedule. In his book, When God Doesn’t Make Sense, he writes: He does not explain Himself to man. We can say with confidence that while His purposes and plans are very different from ours, He is infinitely just and His timing is always perfect. He intervenes at just the right moment for our ultimate good. Until we hear from Him, then, we would be wise not to get in a lather.14

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Scholarship regarding religious communities that interface with assisted reproductive technologies suggests that they often find ways to “embrace” them to “fulfill devotional, vocational ends that are integral to their religious transitions as they understand and practice them.”15 This is evident in both the Catholic Church’s long-­standing opposition to IVF, cryopreservation, and—­as of 2008—­embryo adoption, as well as the active promotion of procreative donation and FETs among evangelicals through embryo adoption. Responding to the interrupted fates of frozen embryos makes sense to evangelicals with respect to a theology of time.

Divine Time Evangelical Christianity expresses a theology of time through talk of God’s “plan,” in which God is said to manage for each believer, according to his will, wisdom, and schedule. Talk of God’s “plan” is also common in embryo adoption. “We don’t always know God’s plan,” Sarah, Blossom’s program assistant, shared in a conversation about Tanya’s failed FET. She, like many Blossom professionals and participants, makes sense of reproductive losses in embryo adoption through theological notions of God’s divine timing. Providing embryos “a chance” to be born matters to Sarah, and many others, because they “trust that God knows which embryos are going to be [born].” God’s intentions for each client and embryo were often mentioned in workplace discussions, from explaining how clients learned about Blossom to addressing issues with challenging cases to making sense of FET outcomes. Some, though not all, clients liked to hear from staff that God had a plan for them and their embryos, even ones that are not born. Many times, I heard Monica try to soothe grieving clients on the other end of the phone who had experienced failed FETs, miscarriages, and stillbirths by saying that they “returned” embryos “home to heaven.” Blossom participants and proponents interpret scriptural support for embryo adoption in biblical passages that illustrate God’s omniscience and perfect timing. “The Bible talks about how we can plan whatever we want to do, but it’s not us that’s in control,” said Jacklyn Bristow as we sat in her living room the evening before her first FET through embryo adoption. Jacklyn is a white evangelical and marketing professional in

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her early forties who met her husband through a Christian online dating service. We met when they submitted their Blossom application in person on their third wedding anniversary—­the minimum number of years required for married recipients. “It’s God that’s in control, and he determines how everything factors out,” she said. “He uses those things to shape our lives and help me to grow and grow closer to him.” Jacklyn referred me to two biblical passages, recited by heart, that I encountered frequently among other embryo adoption supporters. The first was Jeremiah 1:5, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart,” and, the other, Psalms 139:13–­14, “You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” In a sunny café the next state over, I spoke with Melissa Olivier, a new mother through embryo adoption, who shared with similar ease her faithful trust in God’s plan for her life. A devout Christian, she feels “comfort knowing that you have a good God who loves you and knows more than you do.” During our conversation, she paraphrased Jeremiah 29:11, “I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, to bless you, to give you a future and a hope,” and Romans 8:38, “All things work together for those who love God and all according to his purposes, and all things work together for good.” An effect of evangelical discourse about God’s planful role for the embryos “saved” by advocacy efforts is no more evident than in the perspectives of Hannah Strege, the first child born through embryo adoption. When asked by her high school biology teacher whether she “had survivor’s guilt as the only one of the twenty embryos to survive,” she replied with an explanation of God’s divine timing: “I never felt that way because I knew the outcome,” which involved sending her “nineteen siblings” to heaven, “was God’s plan.”16 Hannah’s narrative de-­centers the individual with respect to God’s ultimate authority yet also promotes individualist beliefs that are consistent with saviorist ideas about one’s personal destiny. Participants’ attunement to God’s timing as it shaped their everyday lives came through poignantly in narratives about their fertility experiences. Annie McNabb is a forty-­four-­year-­old white Christian and stay-­at-­home mother of five whose youngest child was born through embryo adoption. When sharing her experiences of miscarriage, failed

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international adoptions, and embryo adoption with me, she carefully noted her deference to God’s will and trust in his wisdom each step of the way. Over the course of a two-­decade marriage to her college boyfriend, Annie and her husband discovered that she “could get pregnant quickly and often but would lose them.” After many miscarriages and the successful birth of four children, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that explained why she had difficulty staying pregnant, so they pursued international adoption. After failed attempts in Taiwan and China, they learned about embryo adoption when researching alternatives. Pregnancy loss and adoption failures reminded Annie that her desires for another child, even when called by God to pursue them, were not guarantees: If God puts it on our heart to adopt a child, we know that one doesn’t always come home. We know of a family whose child died after coming home from China. We know that birth moms can change their minds after placement. With these embryos, I could have had more miscarriages. God chooses us to be parents for however long he wants. We have to trust His sovereignty to guide us. We are His instruments to care for these children.

In moments of doubt and fear, Annie tried to “remember that I was doing this because God was calling me . . . He will take care of his children and honor our obedience to take care of these kiddos, however the end results look.” At the start of the embryo adoption process, Annie felt that their chances to match with donors were slim because, she said, “we didn’t fit the mold of young couples wanting to start families.” Nevertheless, they were quickly matched within a few months of applying. “We had no criteria [for the donors] and still don’t. The family that accepted us has to be a God thing. This family was looking for someone in their early thirties with no children and both parents with college degrees. We fit nothing . . . Monica [the Blossom program manager] contacted them and opened a conversation. They were just like us in the beginning, when we were closed [to embryo adoption], but then God changed our hearts.” Annie received six donated embryos to her clinic that, according to her fertility doctor’s interpretation of the embryology reports, would

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have a “one percent chance” of surviving thawing and establishing a successful pregnancy. In response to this disheartening news, Annie turned to her faith: “We thought, God helped [the donors] choose us and he’s bigger than all of these statistics. These are children that God chose for us. I knew in my heart of hearts that these are our children and we will somehow figure it out.” Nine months after finding a doctor willing to transfer three of the four low-­graded embryos that were frozen for twelve years and survived thawing, their fifth child was born. Reflecting on her original fertility doctor’s doubt, she remembered thinking, “God, you’re showing them, aren’t ya?” Annie never expected to have a newborn daughter through embryo adoption; she only trusted and hoped for her. “We don’t take for granted that we became pregnant on our first transfer . . . There were too many things saying that we needed to move forward [with embryo adoption] but that didn’t mean that we knew we’d come home pregnant and have a baby nine months later. We’re just excited to be part of God’s plan to help these children.” As her daughter grows up, Annie plans to tell her about God’s intentions for her life. “We’re going to be very open with her about her origins, with pictures of the donor family from the very beginning. Embryo adoption is part of her story that God gave her.” She imagined saying to her child one day, “You were not left to be in a freezer and you were not forgotten. In His timing, you were brought out of the freezer and into our family.” Throughout Annie’s narrative, God plays an active role in shaping her life. In tone, tenor, and topic, it parallels many of the embryo adoption stories I encountered by foregrounding God’s persistent planning in each person’s life. Some recipients who experience severe tests of their faith find solace in submitting to God’s will. Crystal Clayton, a stay-­at-­home, white Christian mother, was pregnant through embryo adoption at the time of our tear-­filled conversation. When asked how many children she had, she responded, “I’ll say seven: three in Heaven, three at home, and one on the way.” She and her husband received four embryos through the Blossom program and transferred two “very good embryos”: “I fully expected to get pregnant and got pregnant right away,” with a single embryo. Her faith in God’s plan for her family helped her make sense of cryopreservation, which she considered “a pretty wild concept”: “It’s hard for people to wrap their head around it, which I totally get, be-

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cause it’s hard for me to think that those [embryos] have been sitting here since October 2007 looking for a family. When processing it, God always comes to mind. He doesn’t function around time like we do. I know and believe that everyone’s place in time is handpicked by God so I don’t get too worked up about it . . . One thing I’ve learned is I’m going to have to stand before God and answer to him, and [embryo adoption] is what we feel like God is leading us to do.” After an uneventful pregnancy, Crystal’s delivery ended tragically with the stillbirth of her son at 39 weeks, who she named Victor. “For many months [afterward], I needed to know what the purpose of all of this is, for my baby’s life to end like this. I’m not okay with that. I’m now at a place where, on this side of eternity, I accept that I do not get to know everything that I feel I need to.” When she was seven months into her second pregnancy, following transfer of the remaining two embryos, Crystal focused on putting her faith in God’s will. “My faith comes in where I just have to trust. I can walk in fear or faith. It doesn’t feel good sometimes and I have to really focus on trusting God, trusting that I don’t have control over this.” Her family, also reckoning with tragic loss and new possibility, are navigating the uncertainty of God’s plan. “My son Adrian has been saying that he hopes the baby makes it. When he says it, I say, ‘Yeah, of course, we don’t know but God does and we’re going to trust that he knows what’s best.” God’s planful presence is abundant in the everyday details of supporters’ lives, as we see in Annie’s and Crystal’s narratives. Many like them found faith a comforting resource through the physical, emotional, financial, and social stressors common in embryo adoption and assisted reproduction more generally. These examples illustrate how embryo adoption staff and participants invoke an evangelical theology of time to “pragmatically but artfully” incorporate embryo adoption “into a religious vision of the world.”17 Importantly, promoters see God’s planning not just in their own lives but in the afterlives of IVF embryos. Faith in God’s wise schedule stirs advocates’ concern for embryos experiencing what I characterize as their interrupted fates. To return embryos to God’s planned path, advocates must find ways to resolve two fundamental problems: their temperature and their location.

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Cold Climate The evening before Annie McNabb’s first FET, she received a call from her fertility doctor with an update about how her six embryos thawed. In the event that any had perished before the morning transfer, Annie wanted clinical staff to know her wishes: We were very clear that any of our children [embryos] that did not make it, that died, we wanted to have them in a petri dish because we wanted to be able to bring them back home for a memorial service. Apparently, we were the first ones to ask them for this, so they had to check and see if it was okay. I mean, these are our children.

She was eager to make this agreement with her clinicians because she believed she felt differently about her embryos than they did: “Our beliefs did not match at all with what was going on at the fertility clinic. They do not value that those [embryos] are living beings. To them, they are a group of cells.” The call shifted to the topic of thaw. Annie learned that one embryo, which her clinician described as “great” when seeing the embryology report, was “apparently frozen a little late and was already hatching out looking for a uterus to attach to. But, since there was not one, it just stopped. It ‘expired,’ she said. I immediately started bawling. I was upset and I didn’t even expect to respond that way.” Her clinician said another embryo had “collapsing cells” on one side and might not “make it through the night.” The call ended soon afterward. “That’s it, that was the call. I didn’t sleep at all that night, if you were wondering.” Annie’s retelling amplifies differing sentiments she noticed between herself and fertility clinic staff toward embryos: “That’s why I started [this conversation with you] with how much I’ve learned from working with these doctors and the coldness of how this all works and how they treat these little lives. It was just very cold.” In Annie’s narrative, coldness suggests a lack of feeling that fertility clinicians have for embryos as valued human lives, which draws on negative idioms about coldness that are rife in the English language. Etymologically, coldness describes people, acts, and circumstances without affectionate feelings or emotions of any kind. Leaving “out in the cold”

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or giving a “cold shoulder” describe forms of social rejection. Acting in “cold blood” is an expression of merciless, calculated, and passionless violence. “Pouring cold water” on something has a halting or sobering effect. Something seen in “cold light” is starkly lit and bare, without protection. By invoking negative cultural connotations of coldness in her account, Annie challenges what she sees as the damaging consequences of leaving embryos, literally and figuratively, in the cold. Thermal metaphors like Annie’s are prominent in embryo saviorism discourses that critique how the world currently is, in contrast to how evangelical advocates believe it should be. Her descriptions of coldness are not about the climate inside of cryopreservation tanks—­which examples featured earlier suggest is cold, risky, and worrisome—­but rather the broader social, legal, and political environment in which embryos have come to exist in overabundance within fertility clinic freezers around the country. Advocates like Annie use thermal discourse to frame mainstream US society as dangerously cold toward “life” and desperately needing warmth.18 Cool indifference to the interrupted fates of frozen embryos takes many forms in the United States, according to embryo adoption advocates, and all are considered problematic. In my first conversation with Tim, Blossom’s founder and ECA’s former director, he described embryo adoption as a “life-­a ffirming” alternative to the “cheaper-­by-­ the-­dozen” mentality within the US fertility industry that creates and commodifies human embryos seemingly without restraint. To emphasize his point, he showed me a copy of Deborah Spar’s book, The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception, which he kept on his office bookshelf. While Tim did not fully agree with the Harvard business professor’s representation of embryo adoption in the book, he shared Spar’s critique of the nation’s statistics-­ oriented, profit-­driven, and sparsely regulated fertility market. Blossom staff echo his criticism of what they call a “fertility-­minded” society, populated by clinicians who are sometimes unwilling to schedule FETs for clients matched with poorly graded embryos, “picky” program clients who routinely turn down proposed matches, and policies that treat embryos as personal property rather than persons. For advocates, frozen embryos exist not only in the deep cold of liquid nitrogen but in a chilling social, legal, and political environment shaped by practices

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that overproduce and undermine what they regard as each embryo’s intrinsic worth. Using cold metaphors to critique the unfeeling, disenchanted, and socially disconnecting qualities of the modern fertility industry—­arguably an exemplar of biomedical rationalism, capitalism, bureaucracy, and technology—­echo other thermo-­political critiques of Euro-­American societies, albeit from a twenty-­first-­century evangelical vantage point.19 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels characterized the bourgeoisie as cold figures who use the “ice-­cold water of egoistical calculation” to transform “personal worth into exchange value,” wives into instruments, and other dehumanizing actions.20 In Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky organized the social order thermally into “Haves,” who “are cold and determined to freeze the status quo,” and “Have-­Nots,” who are “a mass of cold ashes of resignation and fatalism, but inside there are glowing embers of hope which can be fanned by the building of means of obtaining power.”21 Notably, Protestantism is famously aligned with coolness in Max Weber’s observations presented in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he notes the compatibility between capitalism and the “cool reserve” of modern Protestant subjects, who he says are gripped willingly by the “cold skeleton hands of rational orders.”22 In embryo adoption, we see a different expression of thermal politics that frames white evangelicalism as a socially warming agent in an otherwise chilly climate for valued “life.”23 This view is literalized in thermal rhetoric used in Blossom’s public outreach efforts, such as a mailer sent to fertility clinics entitled, “We’ve Got a Warm Reception for Frozen Embryos,” illustrated by floating faces of children inside cryopreservation tanks. In narratives such as Annie’s, we see how embryo adoption advocacy aspires to transform not just the cold climate of fertility clinics but US society generally. She and other advocates cast the nation in thermo-­political terms in which powerful social figures and indifferent everyday citizens wield coldness with harmful effect. Whereas before we encountered critiques of cryopreservation tanks as risky spaces for “frozen orphans,” here we see how evangelical advocates use thermal rhetoric to characterize US society more broadly. In this rendering, the expressed goal of “finding homes for embryos” by relocating them from freezers to wombs signifies advocates’ more ambitious goal of warming

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up US society to the evangelical “family values” advanced by Christian Right politics. The alignment between saving embryos and saving the nation’s moral character is evident in the way Annie casts fertility clinicians as uncaring managers of “these little lives” within clinical settings that she says are “just very cold.” At the same time, she presents herself as a devout pro-­life would-­be mother who is deeply sensitive to the fates of frozen embryos, which she regards as human lives. Advocates like Annie wish to thaw not only embryos but also the hearts and minds of embryo makers, handlers, and recipients by, as Tim says, “remind[ing] people that life begins at conception” and that “life is not cheaper-­by-­the-­dozen.” Thermal rhetoric of embryo adoption advocacy strives to raise the temperature, so to speak, on the topic of frozen embryo fates. It highlights proponents’ desires to warm US Americans to Christian nationalist imaginaries for realizing the potential for a warmed, normed, and religiously reformed national “home.”

Warm Place On the day of her ill-­fated FET, Tanya felt grateful for the sensitivity her fertility doctor showed to her and her embryos that did not endure the thaw well. Based on her expectations of fertility clinicians, she was surprised by Dr. Anderson’s kind treatment: “There was something about him as a person that he didn’t throw them in the trash can.” Their decision to move forward with the planned FET was driven by Tanya’s commitment to expressions of warmth as moral action. I had already gotten my body prepared. I thought that my body is warm, so I should put them in my warm body and I will love them, I will talk to them, I will pray for them, I will nurture them. And in two weeks, when I got my period, I passed them back to God and they died in a warm place . . . I feel at ease knowing that they went into a warm body that was prepared for them and that loved them.

Tanya’s retelling captures how many Blossom donors, recipients, and staff regard uteruses—­as a warm place that “saves.”24

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In embryo adoption, saviorist discourse casts uteruses as the thermal counterpart to cryopreservation tanks as well as a proxy for the US nation. Advocates regard uteruses physically, metaphorically, and rhetorically as warm places prepared to provide a nurturing and protective environment for embryos to grow, according to God’s plan. At the same time, proponents regard the US nation as an aspirational womb—­a symbolic space requiring ideological warming that should embody the nurturing and protecting qualities of what pro-­life Christians often call a “culture of life.” Essential to realizing a more uterine America is reducing women to wombs and effacing their reproductive labor. This is not a unique facet of embryo adoption advocacy, but rather is a well-­worn strategy within medicine and other social domains that claim authority over reproductive processes and mobilize reproductive idioms to advance broader political agendas.25 One effect of these strategies is giving the appearance of care for the persons who bear uteruses when the opposite is true. In embryo adoption, this occurs in participants’ narratives that aggrandize frozen embryos as autonomous, rights-­deserving citizens while erasing the people who make and bear them.26 Erasure and augmentation are especially evident within evangelical women’s narratives when they diminish their role in saving embryos from freezers in order to, instead, emphasize the active agency of embryos and God. Advocates maintain that the nation’s thousands of frozen embryos are “waiting for a welcoming womb,” as printed on a Blossom program promotional brochure. Strategic efforts to cast embryos as orphans and pre-­born children, as we saw earlier, render them in positions of need for what proponents call a “home.” Marlene Strege, the first embryo adoption parent and mother of the oldest “snowflake,” described the practice as synonymous with adopting a child nine months earlier. The first “home” her frozen embryos encountered was not a nursery but her uterus, which she claimed offered what every child needs: shelter, warmth, safety, and nourishment. When signing the contract to officially receive donated embryos frozen many years prior, Crystal, another recipient, said she began “thinking of all these babies sitting around waiting for a womb”: “Some will get them, some will survive that, and some won’t. But these people need a womb to live among us, so to speak.” I heard similar tropes among program staff as well. Monica was professionally motivated by the belief that embryos belong in uteruses.

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“Embryos need a uterus in a woman to grow into a healthy person,” she said. “They are not supposed to be outside; it’s supposed to be inside.” She described the uterus as “the most respectful place for [embryos]” and “where they’re meant to be naturally.” Yet, based on her experience over years of working with clients, she knew not all embryos were fated for birth: “The uterus is also where they’re meant to die, where they can be reabsorbed into your body.” Supporters conceive of the uterus as a “home” with specific qualities as a prepared, nurturing, and protective environment where God has ultimate authority—­each of which we will consider in greater depth. Characterizations of the uterus-­as-­home draw actively upon constructions of white Christian motherhood, foundational to which are ideals of white middle-­class femininity cohered through the figure of the good mother—­a self-­sacrificing caretaker.27 As we will see, the uterus-­as-­home metaphor has a few notable effects: it diminishes women’s reproductive risk-­taking and their bodies’ fundamental role in saving embryos; it constructs embryos as autonomous persons; and it asserts God’s role as the authority of wombs and prime assister of reproduction. White evangelical women participants in particular, many of whom actively contribute to pro-­life advocacy, diminish their activism—­embodied and otherwise—­in order to emphasize how “complete” embryos are independent of their uteruses, and that God is ultimately in control of reproductive outcomes.

Uterus as Prepared Environment Per Blossom program requirements, recipients’ uteruses must be medically verified as being capable of carrying a pregnancy. Blossom requires prospective recipients to complete a home study from a certified adoption agency, which involves parental education courses and an in-­depth review of their home for evidence of child-­proofing and other safety mechanisms. It also requires applicants to provide evidence of uterine health through medical examination—­a “home” study of a different sort. According to Leslie, ECA’s home study coordinator for all adoption programs, Blossom applicants must submit a doctor’s letter verifying that the “adoptive mom has no contraindications to pregnancy”:

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Obviously, it’s not a guaranteed process and the doctor can’t guarantee that it’ll work either, but the doctor is required to attest to the fact that he [sic] doesn’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work for her. So, a signed original on letterhead for the file before she can proceed. Every client who comes to us has a different diagnosis or issue that has kept them from being pregnant, if they are indeed infertile, which most are . . . There aren’t any other requirements in terms of pregnancy health. I think we just basically default to their clinic to do the FET, which they monitor very carefully, and we just let them take care of that.

When Blossom began allowing recipients to use surrogates, it still required documentation that the surrogate “is physically able to carry a pregnancy to term as determined by her attending physician,” according to directions on the application. Some recipients actively ready their bodies to help embryos thrive. Maria Townsend focused on diet and exercise to optimize what she believed her body could provide to her frozen embryos: “From the very beginning I wanted them to be nurtured. I was careful about my diet, and anything that I could read up on, I did. I started drinking green tea, for instance . . . I wanted them to be taken care of and in a good home and have every chance at life.” Some made medical decisions based on “the health and well-­being of these embryos.” Janice Fisher had a preference for a “natural” FET procedure without hormones, but her “bottom-­line interest” in “protecting the embryos” persuaded her to use hormones, per her doctor’s recommendation, to create the best conditions for implantation. Diet, exercise, medical decisions, and prayer were types of uterine preparation that recipients performed to make their bodies feel like “home” to embryos.

Uterus as Nurturing and Protective Environment Supporters imagine uterine “homes” as bearing qualities of nurturance and protection. Many participants consider their uteruses as intrinsically prepared, through God’s design, to care for embryos. When Rebecca Bourke, a white evangelical mother and early program recipient, first heard about embryo adoption, she reached out to her friend, a Christian

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medical doctor, who helped her see that “God is so good” in designing women’s reproductive bodies: In all the intricacies of what it is for life to be granted and for life to happen, a woman’s uterus is the one place where there is no magic that needs to happen. A woman’s uterus is built, it’s made in such a way, to nurture and protect life. Normally, your body is stressed at any foreign body that comes into it and your body is designed to attack it. But a woman’s uterus is meant to nurture and to protect the life that comes within it. There is no DNA mapping that needs to be done. There is nothing that needs to be added in order for this to happen. Its job is to nurture and to protect. That’s the thing with embryo adoption. I didn’t add anything to the embryo. I just gave it a warm place to go.

Echoing Rebecca’s claim that she “just gave [embryos] a warm place to go,” many recipients perceive their uteruses as providing little more than ambient care to embryos, which they cast as active, independent agents of their own becoming. In dozens of conversations with participants, women often described their own bodies as “appropriate shelter,” a “special place,” and an “environment for implantation.” These metaphors echo descriptors among Israeli gestational surrogates who contract to carry pregnancies to term for commissioning individuals or couples, who use the metaphors to demarcate the kind of work their bodies do, and do not, contribute to nurturing fetal life.28 Embryo adoption recipients differ from gestational surrogates in that they plan to parent any children born, though their similar use of metaphors suggests that we might think of embryo adoption recipients as surrogates for God.29 Jessica Stohl’s narrative offers an illustrative example of how some participants conceive of their bodily labor simultaneously through active nurturance and passive care. Jessica is a white evangelical mother of four—­her youngest born through embryo adoption—­professional photographer, and vocal pro-­life advocate. In our conversation, she downplayed her body’s labor during pregnancy to foreground what she called her son’s “genetic uniqueness.” She expressed relief about his distinctive red hair color because it meant she would not need to have “so many conversations with people about epigenetics.”

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Curious about her interpretation of epigenetics, which is a branch of biological sciences investigating the impact of environments—­like uteruses—­on biological development, I asked her to explain further.30 “My understanding of the meaning of epigenetics is that some people believe that my biological contributions to [my son] while carrying him impacted his genetic makeup to some degree.” She, by contrast, held a genetically deterministic view of her pregnancy that privileges what she called the “blueprint of who he would be that . . . was already stamped before he was put into my womb”: Were there things about the final outcomes [of my son’s biology] tied to my care of him in the womb? Yes, I am sure of it. What I ate, what medications I took, and all that, I am sure would have contributed to a degree. But, do I think that his true genetic influence, the things that are dictated by DNA, were all influenced? I think science would be hard pressed to convince me of that. Because all I was giving him [when pregnant] was the same thing that I gave him outside of the womb: a warm place, a protected place, and food.

In Jessica’s view, her body both actively and passively nurtured the frozen embryos she conceives as “complete persons” that “have all of the contents inside to develop into a human being, if everything lines up.” Her invocation of genetics and epigenetics was unique among the narratives I encountered, yet it reflects a common feature in pro-­life politics of cloaking religious beliefs in the language of science.31 Louise Holton also diminished her role—­as well as God’s—­in the retelling of her daughter’s gestation. We think of an embryo as a created being. I know a lot of people don’t and I know that they don’t like to define them that way, but, nothing was done to [my daughter] other than her being thawed and she was put in[to my uterus] and she’s a person. I think it’s pretty convincing that, versus a sperm or an egg, you wouldn’t end up with a child unless you put them together. For frozen embryos it’s, literally, just thawing them and putting them in [a uterus] to implant and you have a baby. Nothing is placed with them when they’re put in. They’re already complete in a whole other way [than sperm or eggs].

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In describing her body as a passive environment where an embryo was “just” put in “and you have a baby,” Louise makes frozen embryos appear as independent agents with person-­like qualities that self-­direct their development. Notably, she called the embryo by her daughter’s name and assigned gendered pronouns, saying “she” was “already complete” when thawed and transferred into Louise’s uterus. Naming and gendering her frozen embryo are noteworthy rhetorical choices because they confer qualities of personhood. Louise shared this view with me during our first conversation, a formal interview recorded in a conference room at the adoption agency where she worked while pursuing a PhD in psychology. Louise is one of the handful of Blossom clients who program staff called “rescue” families for already having children, not experiencing infertility, and participating primarily to serve the program’s saving mission. She is a married, white evangelical Christian in her early forties and the daughter of missionaries. She homeschools her twelve children, most of whom she and her husband adopted after their original placements were disrupted by the families who first brought them to the United States from Vietnam, Guatemala, and Haiti. I had the opportunity to glimpse inside the Holtons’ family home where I saw how Louise’s nurturance of her twelve children was anything but passive. As a school and home for more than a dozen people, the Holton’s suburban farmhouse is well-­organized with designated cubbies, daily routines, weekly chore lists, and a large monthly schedule on the wall to track goings on. They transformed the attic into a multi-­age schoolroom that contains an assorted collection of metal and wood desks gathered from garage sales, and it is decorated with brightly colored educational posters common to grade-­and middle-­school classrooms. Working with a minimal dual-­income budget, the Holtons make expert use of coupons, second-­hand stores, and public assistance to keep their family’s basic needs met, including a rotating schedule of therapies to support their children’s various disabilities. Once I attended a quarterly birthday party celebrating Louise and three of her children, hosted in their backyard with a massive sheet cake and barbequed burgers and hotdogs. After family members and neighbors trickled home, and their children fell into the familiar routine of their home life, I sat with Louise and her husband in their kitchen to

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chat about their lives. This is when Louise opened up about the harrowing pregnancy and delivery she experienced with her daughter born through embryo adoption, an experience her husband told me she barely survived. Despite months of bed rest prior to delivery and an emergency surgery that almost cost Louise her life, she was considering pursuing another embryo adoption match. Her husband laughed at the wild idea. They told me about their dreams to move their family to Haiti for missionary work, which they realized within a year of our conversation. I was impressed by how easy they made it all seem—­their home, professional, and personal lives—­while recognizing the immense labor and skill it all entailed. Without a brief glimpse into their daily lives, I might have been left wondering “how do they do it?” with twelve children, as Monica and Kathy voiced to me more than once from the Blossom office based in another state. Without invitations to their home, I might be more easily convinced that Louise added “nothing” to its function, as she said of her uterus, thinking it “just” a place for “already complete” persons to thrive. In providing a brief look into the Holtons’ home, I aim to make visible the extraordinary efforts I recognized in Louise’s labor as mother, caretaker, wife, professional, missionary, and student. In turn, I wish to emphasize the essential labor of the uteruses, bodies, and people who bear them in saving embryos, even while Louise and other embryo adoption participants actively diminish their contributions. Downplaying the nurturing or protective work of uterine “homes” and the embodied labor of women who bear them, narratives of participants like Rebecca, Jessica, and Louise actively construe embryos as persons—­“complete” figures growing autonomously in ambiently warm uterine environments. At the same time, they efface women’s reproductive experiences as well as the elemental role of their own bodies in saving embryos, which would not be possible without them, in favor of emphasizing God’s active plan.

Uterus as God’s Vessel and Instrument of His Will Advocates imagine wombs as places where God has ultimate authority. Once embryos are transferred into a prepared uterus, supporters claim God has the power to decide what happens next. More than a few

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referred to biblical stories about God “opening the womb” of infertile women, like Sarah, wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac, and Hannah, wife of Elkanah and mother of prophet Samuel, as scriptural evidence of God’s sovereign rule over women’s wombs. Vanessa de Witt, a white evangelical recipient and mother of two, interpreted biblical stories “about God visiting her womb” as a “huge spiritual thing; it’s a very intimate, spiritual thing to have life growing in you because only God can make it happen.” Tamara Howland, a white evangelical recipient and mother of one, expressed awe in God’s participation in her daughter’s birth: “The first miracle is that she survived thawing. The second miracle is that God allowed her to attach to my uterus. The doctor can transfer the embryo into a womb but can’t make it attach. That’s God.” Advocates bolster their view of God’s hand in establishing pregnancy with oft-­cited Bible passages, like Psalm 139:13, in which God is said to have “created my inmost being” and “knit me together” in utero. In embryo adoption, God makes a laboratory of uteruses wherein he actively works as the prime assister of reproduction, realizing his divine plan for all. Some donors, perceiving themselves as stewards of God’s property and instruments of his will, applied to the Blossom program upon realizing their bodies could no longer be “homes” for frozen embryos. Ten years passed before Sally and Jonah Anderson, a white Catholic couple with two pre-­teen children living in the Northeast, returned to their fertility clinic to resume using their five frozen embryos. At the appointment, they learned that Sally’s uterus was no longer compatible with carrying a pregnancy to term: “The sonogram of my uterus showed that it was too thin and misshapen, that it would not support a pregnancy. I was so mad but my faith was saying that you’re not in charge. God’s in charge.” The Andersons grudgingly discussed other options for their embryos. Physically and financially, Sally accepted that she “could no longer provide for them . . . We weren’t able to be a vehicle to be used for them, and we felt it to be a burden. We couldn’t accept responsibility anymore to give birth ourselves but we had the responsibility of finding a solution.” By donating through the Blossom program, Sally “felt that they had the best chances for life in another body.” Eileen Tyler is an embryo donor who offered a nonreligious interpretation of the responsibility she felt, similar to Sally’s, for relocating her remaining embryos to uteruses. Eileen is a married, Canada-­based

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mother of two and one of the only Blossom participants I encountered who described themselves as non-­religious and pro-­choice. She does not consider herself as an instrument of God’s will but expressed a feeling of sincere responsibility once becoming aware of her uterus’s limitations for becoming pregnant. During her first IVF cycle, Eileen’s endocrinologist realized that she had severe problems with her uterine lining that precluded her from ever carrying a pregnancy. They halted the IVF cycle by freezing six embryos and faced the issue of having embryos but “nowhere to put them,” which she described as a “cart before horse problem.” She and her husband decided to hire a surrogate to gestate their embryos, who received four through a FET and delivered twins. With two children to parent and depleted finances, Eileen felt a nagging responsibility toward their remaining two frozen embryos. Knowing they would likely not establish a pregnancy in her body, Eileen approached the decision to donate as a practical task: I view embryos as potential babies and always felt that any embryo created should be put in and get a chance at life or, you know, have a shot. Our one objective was to get embryos into the uterus. We could have put them in my uterus, which would have been the cheapest way to go, but the medical advice we received was that the embryos wouldn’t survive in me, so that would be fairly akin to throwing them away. Transferring to me would not provide them a good chance, not a good enough chance anyway.

While not identifying as a Christian or a divine instrument of God’s plan, Eileen conveyed a familiar fidelity expressed by embryo adoption supporters to the original intent for the creation of her embryos. This feeling ultimately compelled her to donate them through Blossom rather than to an anonymous clinic-­based program or scientific research, or discarding. This example illustrates how people with diverse identities and beliefs find seductive some of the ideals of embryo saviorism, even while rejecting white evangelicalism and the broader agenda this political discourse advances. Recipients also conceive of their bodies as vessels for enacting God’s plan. Carla Meier, a white evangelical and actress living in a Southwest suburb, was forty years old when she and her husband learned that he

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was a carrier for a genetic disease that causes infertility in men. “We did a lot of praying around what God wanted us to do. It was clear that he didn’t want [my husband] to father a biological child. God was laying on our hearts that this isn’t meant for you, so we decided to go the adoption route.” They reached out to Christian adoption agencies about domestic and international options, and eventually considered embryo adoption when feeling called by God to it. After numerous people over a year’s time mentioned embryo adoption to them, she said, It started to hit me. Then my sister-­in-­law from Florida called to share that she had heard about this embryo adoption program. I was like, okay, God, we got it . . . I read the article [people recommended] and sobbed the whole way through it. I knew God was speaking to me. It’s never been so clear in my life. We are meant to save a life. We are meant to do this. This is what I want. I literally heard God say to me that, yes, this is what I want you to do. We knew from that moment on that we were to save a child. We were going to release a child from a frozen state and give that child a chance at life.

Blossom initially matched them with six embryos. After thawing four and transferring three, the Meiers learned that Carla was not pregnant. “It was devastating,” she said. “I couldn’t believe God brought us to this point and didn’t bring us a child.” Carla notified the director of the Blossom program of the failed transfer, who offered relief through words about God’s sovereignty over her uterus as an instrument in a divine plan. She said to me that it is hard to deal with now but sometimes God calls you to be his vessel for children to go home to him. It was hard to accept but I felt incredibly blessed that God would use me to be his vessel to send babies home. I don’t want to say I felt like Mary but I felt incredibly chosen. It was so hard, though, that it didn’t happen, that I didn’t get pregnant. I couldn’t understand it, but to be used by God for this was an incredible privilege.

Carla might have emphasized her active role in sending children home to God, like the figure of Mary in the Bible. Instead, like many program

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recipients I spoke to, she prefers a narrative of being used by God, which frames her reproductive losses as something that happened to her for a divine reason. In the United States, where pregnant people bear extraordinary blame and burden for all reproductive outcomes, some relief from reproductive responsibility may be experienced as a benefit by Christian women.32 Tropes of religious obedience provide Carla and others like her meaningful explanations for their inexplicable losses, while they also position God as the ultimate authority over their reproductive lives and themselves as dutifully submissive to his will. Narratives of God’s authority over wombs make religious efforts to monitor and control reproductive behaviors politically conceivable, especially as the narratives transform the US nation into a rhetorical uterus and, therefore, God’s divine domain.33 Based on Carla’s age and the clinically ranked quality of the remaining two embryos, her fertility doctor encouraged her to procure more embryos so they could transfer at least four at the next FET. Noticing “God’s hand” each step of the way, Carla was not sure if she should keep the remaining two. “I really struggled about what to do because I feel that I truly believed God sent me those six for some purpose, whatever that purpose was. To me, those four were just to send home [to Heaven]. For some reason, I wasn’t able to keep one here. They went home to be with the Lord.” She and her husband decided to return them to the donors and accepted a match of fifteen embryos from another donor. They thawed six, transferred four, and Carla became pregnant with her first child. Six years later, she and her husband scheduled another FET with their nine remaining embryos. “They had to thaw all nine to get four [to transfer]. The doctor said they’re in a mediocre condition and two weeks later, I was not pregnant.” Having received news of the negative pregnancy test a couple of weeks before our conversation, she was still actively processing her feelings. She sounded teary when saying, I am going through the process right now where I’m trying to heal my broken heart. I’ve been going through a very difficult time. I think my daughter is sobbing her eyes out right now hearing me talk about it. My journey is done. It is a very difficult process right now that it’s over. I had one beautiful baby and sent eighteen of them home to be with the Lord. It was a privilege to send eighteen home.

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I expressed how sorry I was for her loss. “Thanks,” she said. “It is a loss. It really is a complete grieving process that you go through. It’s eighteen children, eighteen babies. I just keep thinking of [my daughter], the only one left here, has such an incredible purpose in life. God wanted her to stay here.” After her daughter’s birth, Carla became involved on the recipient listserv hosted by Blossom through which she interacted with people grieving various losses, from failed matches and transfers to failed pregnancies. “We’re a support system on that website,” she said, “and we seem to all experience loss similarly.” At this moment in her grieving process, she was sitting with questions about God’s plan and feelings about her role in it. I don’t understand why eighteen went to be with the Lord. You led me to this, God, why didn’t you let me have a baby? I don’t know God’s plan and don’t understand it, and am still angry. It’s been hard to share my story with people, but, when I do, I say what a powerful responsibility it was that God used me to send these babies home.

When experiencing reproductive losses, such as detailed in Carla’s story, God’s active role in reproductive outcomes feels personally meaningful for many Blossom staff and clients. Responding to God’s call and submitting to his instrumentalization of their lives and bodies for enacting his will helps some, like Carla, find meaning in their reproductive losses. Her narrative, in particular, exemplifies what anthropologist Linda Layne describes as transformative reversal narratives common in pregnancy loss stories that recast devastating losses as blessed gifts, which she astutely notes draw explicitly upon narrative paradoxes that are common within New Testament Christian scripture.34 Meanwhile, some participants genuinely struggle with their faith’s expectation that they serve as God’s vessel. Tara Channing, a pro-­life evangelical recipient we encountered in chapter 3 whose donor agreement dissolved, had a difficult time making spiritual sense of her multiple failed FETs. In a blog about her embryo adoption experience, she posted reflections under the title “Clinging to the Truth” about feeling “unloved” by a “cold” God. She inverted the prominent thermal metaphors in embryo adoption advocacy to express her disappointment in

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what she described as God’s coldness. After three unsuccessful FETs, Tara wrote that she felt “used” by God as if she were “merely a vessel” to “transport [embryos] from the freezer to God’s presence.” By the end of the blog post, she acknowledged that “we are each called to be vessels to transport God’s grace” in the world, but admitted that “it felt very cold and impersonal and utilitarian” for God to make her endure repeated failed FETs after calling her to embryo adoption in the first place. “I am comforted by the scriptures below, and by the knowledge that my babies are with Jesus, but I still ache,” she wrote.35 Even in her aching and lack of understanding, Tara took some solace in embracing a theological identity as a steward of God’s divine gifts, which she helped return to heaven. In each of these narratives, God is perceived as the prime assister of reproduction, a righteous embryologist actively working within the womb to realize his divine plan for embryos and bearers of them alike.

Making America Uterine Again Embryo adoption proponents developed what I have described as a theology of time and politics of temperature that conspire through embryo saviorist discourses to cast uteruses as warm places—­prepared, protective, nurturing, and governed by God. Embryo adoption advocates frame the United States as a cold environment for embryos, evident in their social treatment as manufactured, ownable, fungible, and expendable cells in mass supply. They maintain that the nation’s chilling social, legal, and political orientation to “life” interrupts God’s plan for each IVF embryo, for which they envision the warming effect of conservative Christian political realities as the solution. Finding uterine “homes” calls for counteracting coldness by recognizing embryos as valuable and vulnerable lives with potential, and deferring to God as ultimate possessor and agent of their fates. In this discursive work of saviorism, we can discern the practice’s simultaneous saving agenda angled toward making America uterine again. The “familiar grammar” of embryo saviorism that animates efforts to save embryos and save America are evident in many embryo adoption narratives I encountered, though perhaps none more explicit than in Jessica Stohl’s, which we encountered parts of earlier.36 Jessica is an evangelical, vocal advocate for embryo adoption, and actively involved

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in pro-­life politics in her community. After receiving embryos through the Blossom program, Jessica became politically involved by making regular statements to the press and testifying against human embryonic stem cell research in state legislative hearings. She testified as a parent through embryo adoption in a state assembly health committee hearing to, as she explained, “help put a real face on a hard-­to-­visualize group within the human family: frozen embryos.” In her testimony opposing public funding for human embryonic stem cell research, she stated that frozen embryos ought to be recognized as persons because the “right of personhood begins the moment that life begins, which we have an obligation to protect.” Protecting life, in her view, is not only a Christian calling but a founding principle of the US nation. “By assigning a personhood title to life, there is an expectancy of protection. Protection and prioritization of life is one of the fundamental principles that our country was established upon,” she said. Jessica concluded her remarks with a patriotic appeal to protecting embryos under threat, which she described as “ourselves”: “I would like to remind you of something Plato once said. ‘What is honored in a country will be cultivated there.’ If we cannot honor, respect, and protect ourselves, how then will we stand?” For Jessica, and for other advocates I met, her sense of religious duty is closely entwined with her perception of the US nation as built on white pro-­life Protestant principles. Her participation in embryo adoption and advocacy for embryo personhood are closely linked to expressions of Christian nationalist nostalgia for a return to what is imagined as an originally Christian country. Stated another way, advocates like Jessica work to conceive a future when white pro-­life evangelical values may “find a home” in the United States (again). Jessica told her state legislators—­and later, me—­how she began protecting her eleven “adopted” embryos before they left the cryopreservation tank. Like many recipients, she felt anxious about the shipping phase when embryos are transported from the donors’ to the recipients’ fertility clinic. She described it to me in this way, emphasizing her identity as a protective mother: I was absolutely stressed to death with that trip. When it’s your children being shipped to you, it’s enough to take the air out of your lungs. On the

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day of the shipment arrival, the wrong zip code got placed on our package. I wanted to scream that this was exactly what I was worrying would happen. The cryopreservation tank was sitting in a FedEx warehouse in Arizona in August.

So she took matters into her own hands. I went to the warehouse counter and told them, “You have my children. I am absolutely not going to leave without them.” This is [my son’s] favorite part of the story because I got to carry them and put them in the front seat of my car. I put a seat belt around the canister, and held my hand on them the whole way and prayed for them the whole time. [My son] loves that story because I told him I was loving him and protecting him even before he was put into my womb . . . It was nice to have that experience with the cryopreservation tank. I got to touch them and make a commitment to care for them, to give them a chance at life, and to say that I hoped to hold them all in my arms.

In her version of the story prepared for the state assembly, Jessica emphasized her faith in God’s authority as it shapes her political convictions for protecting embryo life. Calmly reminding myself that God is in charge of the drama of my life, I quickly drove to pick up my little ones. The shipping error turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I had the privilege of holding my children while still in their frozen state. I placed the black canister in my car, put a seatbelt around it, offered up a prayer of thanksgiving for their safe arrival, pleaded with the Lord to allow me the chance to one day hold them in my arms. For at least two [of the embryos] this was my first and only chance to hold them as they did not survive.

Jessica’s narratives strategically extend qualities ascribed to uteruses in embryo adoption—­as nurturing and protective—­to social roles of white Christian motherhood and domains beyond her body. Her account demonstrates a form of religious protectionism via maternal responsibility at the warehouse, where she prayed for and protected her “little ones.” The act of testifying to lawmakers, who she hoped to convince

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to share her “obligation to protect . . . life the moment that it begins,” exemplifies her perceived religious and civic duties to protect embryonic life not just in her uterus but through advocacy at the warehouse, in her state legislature, and beyond. The uterus-­as-­home metaphor in Jessica’s account conflates the expectations of uteruses to nurture and protect with obligations she believes all pro-­life evangelicals bear, which is to realize a more womb-­like Christian country. Endorsing the uterus, and by extension, the United States, as God’s territory aligns with white Christian nationalist ideologies that favor expanding forms of reproductive governance to monitor and control traditional gendered roles and relations, sexual identities, reproductive behaviors, borders, and beyond.37 In Jessica’s story, we can see how “finding homes for embryos” links directly to the Christian Right’s allied effort to make the United States uterine again by realizing the nation’s potential as a whiter, righter, religious place. In this light, frozen embryos await an anticipated ideological “home” that some Christians are striving to realize through embryo adoption with resonances far, far beyond assisted reproduction.

Interlude Supreme Appeal

On July 27, 2021, Hannah, John, and Marlene Strege—­the first family forged through the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program—­filed an amicus curiae brief with the US Supreme Court in support of Mississippi’s “Gestational Age Act” banning abortion after fifteen weeks.1 First staged behind President Bush in a national press conference about embryonic stem cell research, the Streges returned to Washington politics with a supreme appeal to the nation’s highest court concerning the most consequential abortion case in half a century, in order to advocate “for the lives of all embryos in or out of the womb.”2 Mississippi’s governor signed the “Gestational Age Act” into law in March 2018. Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the United States, state lawmakers have succeeded in passing over 1,200 antiabortion laws restricting access that has made abortion more challenging, expensive, and risky to obtain.3 Antiabortion lawmaking intensified in the previous decade, during which hundreds of new restrictions like Mississippi’s passed in state legislatures, many of which were designed for legal challenge to test the core holdings of Roe. At the time of enactment, Mississippi’s law was unmatched in severity, as no other state had approved a ban earlier than twenty weeks.4 Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the state’s only licensed abortion facility, filed a suit challenging the law the day it was signed. The federal district court reviewing the case ruled the law unconstitutional based on nearly fifty years of US Supreme Court precedence disallowing states from prohibiting abortions prior to fetal viability.5 Viability is defined in Roe as occurring when a fetus is “potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid.”6 When the Supreme Court revisited Roe in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, it established viability as the legal line before which states can regulate 199

200 | Interlude: Supreme Appeal

abortion so long as it does not impose an “undue burden” or prohibit the right, and after which it can regulate more heavily. The line of viability has remained at 23–­24 weeks gestation since then, which Mississippi’s fifteen-­week ban blatantly disregarded. Mississippi appealed to higher courts. The Fifth Circuit of Appeals upheld the lower court’s ruling based on what it called the “unbroken line” of Supreme Court cases that “established (and affirmed, and reaffirmed) a woman’s right to choose an abortion before viability.”7 Then, as planned, Mississippi asked the US Supreme Court to weigh in. At the time of Mississippi’s request in June 2020, the Supreme Court featured two of President Donald Trump’s new appointees—­Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh—­and was two weeks away from delivering the June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo decision, which struck down a law restricting abortion in Louisiana.8 The June Medical decision disappointed abortion foes who hoped the new 5–­4 conservative majority on the Court would seize the chance to further erode or overturn Roe. It was a welcomed win for abortion rights supporters who remained concerned about the Court’s conservative composition with future cases on the horizon. Soon after, the Supreme Court’s makeup changed dramatically. Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020 and, with unprecedented speed, US Senate Republicans ensured that President Trump’s replacement, Amy Coney Barrett, was nominated, confirmed, and sworn in as a Justice on the Supreme Court by the end of October, days before the end of Trump’s presidency. The Court’s ultraconservative 6–­3 majority set a new stage for abortion jurisprudence, for which Mississippi’s case was teed up. After a dozen private meetings on the matter, the Court announced in May 2021 its agreement to take up Mississippi’s case by addressing one main question: are pre-­viability abortion bans unconstitutional? This move sparked a flurry of speculation. Given the lower courts’ rulings in support of long-­standing Supreme Court precedence securing rights to abortion, legal commentators on both sides of the issue surmised that the only reason to take up the case would be to significantly revise or dismantle the established legal landscape for abortion. They were right. Starting in July 2021, over 140 amicus curiae briefs were filed for the case named Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, set for oral argument in front of the Supreme Court in December of that year. Am-

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icus briefs are filings from persons or organizations not party to a case that provide the court with information and arguments to assist with deliberations. The Streges’ filing was one of eighty submitted from pro-­life advocacy groups, legal societies, medical associations, state and federal legislators, and individual supporters of Mississippi’s ban.9 Allan Parker, acting as the Streges’ pro-­bono attorney from the pro-­life legal organization he founded that “seeks to protect the fundamental freedoms and rights essential to the preservation of American society,” submitted their brief.10 Parker’s claim to fame is representing Norma McCorvey in unsuccessful legal challenges to abortion rights. Better known as the “Roe” plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, McCorvey, in whose name abortion rights were won, later became a strategic figurehead for the antiabortion movement.11 Like McCorvey, Hannah plays a strategic role in antiabortion advocacy as the “face” of the movement’s absolutist view that embryos ought to be recognized and treated as legal persons. The Streges’ brief opens with introductions of Hannah as “a former IVF frozen embryo” and John and Marlene as “adoptive parents of the first ‘adopted’ frozen embryo in America.”12 It argues that states should be allowed to pass and enforce “all ‘pre-­viability’ prohibitions on elective abortions,” which would mean enshrining in law their absolutist view that “life begins at fertilization.”13 The “modern scientific advancement called in vitro fertilization,” they claim, has moved the line of viability “all the way back to fertilization.”14 As a “former frozen embryo person,” they maintain that “Hannah’s life proves life begins at fertilization” and therefore all embryos, made in vitro or gestating in utero, deserve protection as persons under the law.15 Their position aligns seamlessly with absolutist antiabortion strategies that began months after Roe, which tried unsuccessfully to amend the constitutional definition of person to include “all human beings, including their unborn offspring at every stage of their biological development, irrespective of age, health, function, or condition of dependency.”16 The Streges’ direct challenge to abortion rights reflects an uncompromising view on the legal status of embryos and concomitant disregard for the rights of people who make and bear them. In leveraging their family’s conception story to challenge abortion rights, the Streges make clear how “celebrating life” through embryo adoption and opposing abortion remain deeply aligned efforts.

202 | Interlude: Supreme Appeal

Following a retelling of Marlene and John’s experience with embryo adoption, the brief features photographs from Hannah’s baby book beginning with images of embryos. A fertility clinic photo of the three embryos transferred into Marlene’s uterus is titled “Hannah and Two Siblings Viable Outside the Womb Day of Thaw.” Naming Hannah as pictured in this image and claiming all the embryos as viable aim to substantiate their claim that frozen embryos meet Roe’s viability criteria for “living outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid.” Further images include pictures of Hannah swaddled as a newborn, at eight months old, and in her college graduation gown. Ordering Hannah’s story from in vitro embryos, to newborn, to girl, to adult woman echoes the pro-­ life intentions we saw in Blossom’s promotional video, “Making Dreams Come True,” of tacking between images of embryos and children to create an effect, as Tim, the Christian adoption agency’s executive director, said, in which they “just kind of merge in terms of the embryo becomes baby. Embryo, fetus, newborn, child—­it’s a natural progression.” The political logic of this progression aims to constitutionally redefine “person” as including “every stage of their biological development”—­a subtle move that has severe social and political consequences. The Streges end their appeal with a prayer that “this Court find that viability occurs upon fertilization.”17

Conclusion Life after Roe

On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court answered the Streges’ prayer. “Roe and Casey must be overruled,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in the majority opinion.1 After forty-­nine years of constitutionally protected abortion rights, the unfettered authority to govern abortion was returned to the states. In anticipation of this moment, twenty-­six states were positioned to ban abortion through established “trigger” laws, near-­total bans, and constitutional bars on protecting abortion.2 Only sixteen states and the District of Columbia had laws protecting abortion rights to some degree.3 The effects of a variegated legal landscape for abortion across states were already well known due to the systematic erosion of abortion rights by opponents for decades.4 The ruling has profoundly impacted people’s lives. According to numerous accounts from journalists and scholars, accessing abortion care in the post-­Roe context requires people to have more money, travel farther, forego privacy, take longer leave from work, and experience graver risks to their health and well-­being. Those opting to self-­manage their abortions, such as by ordering safe medication online, are vulnerable to legal risk through increased forms of state surveillance and criminal punishment. Socially vulnerable and marginalized populations are facing the gravest hardships, especially people who are young, trans and nonbinary, undocumented, low-­income, precariously housed, and of color. Many in these constraining conditions are bearing forced pregnancies, in a country with egregiously high maternal mortality rates for Black and Brown people, no universal parental leave or childcare, and inaccessible supports for mental health. Adoption and safe haven relinquishment are being promoted as viable options for people who cannot parent, exponentializing the reach of saviorism and its harms. 203

204 | Conclusion

And yet this historic decision answers only part of the Streges’ prayers. Embryo adoption, as I have argued in this book, is a family-­making practice that dovetails with the Christian Right’s political effort to expand the influence of right-­wing religious agendas in the United States, with global implications. It merges assisted reproduction with adoption through discourses of embryo saviorism that create a strategic cast of characters that play important roles in nationalist narratives aimed at transforming the social order: frozen embryos as white innocents in peril, recipients as charitable and dutiful saviors, donors as irresponsible, and society as cold. While not directly intersecting with abortion care, embryo adoption wields pro-­life rhetoric and strategies to promote its mission. In turn, embryo adoption now plays a strategic role in antiabortion politics by providing “faces” in the movement’s political efforts to restrict access to abortion by redefining personhood as beginning “at fertilization.” This extended look inside the world of embryo adoption has traced part of the political playbook that aligns white supremacist and Christian nationalist legacies as they cohere in the Christian Right alliance, which has had pervasive influence on right-­wing populist movements and regimes around the world.5 Examining the reproductive politics of white saviorism in embryo adoption, as I have done here, brings the constitutive work of whiteness, righteousness, and reproduction within right-­wing politics to the fore and reveals its broader stakes. Overturning Roe and returning abortion rights to states has been a means, rather than the ultimate goal, for religious right activists focused on realizing a new social order that is organized around putatively Christian “family” values. Recall John Strege’s response in his memoir to claims about embryo adoption being a backdoor assault on abortion rights: “Not once throughout this entire process, from its inception in 1997 to President Bush’s veto in 2006, had we ever heard anyone on the embryo adoptions side—­publicly or privately, public figures or private citizens—­ever suggest that overturning Roe v. Wade was the endgame or even a means by which to weaken the abortion industry. This was a fabrication by the media.”6 In light of his family’s appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States opposing the core holdings of Roe, in which they argue that their daughter’s life is “living proof ” that “life begins at fertilization,” we can doubt his sincerity that none in embryo adoption advocacy believed their efforts could “weaken the abortion industry.” His family believed they could.

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But I think we should believe John when he says that overturning Roe is not their endgame, which explains why I described their prayers as remaining incompletely answered by the Dobbs decision. Spokespersons for the Christian Right have made very clear that their sights are set higher. “We’re just getting started,” wrote Lila Rose of Live Action, a prominent antiabortion activist group, in her first email to supporters following the Dobbs decision. With Roe out of the way, Christian right-­wing strategists began working toward a federal ban that would prohibit abortion everywhere, not just in states with antiabortion majorities among elected officials.7 Since 1984, the Republican Party platform has called for adopting the Human Life Amendment to the US Constitution and enacting legislation extending Fourteenth Amendment rights to “children before birth” while eroding those very rights for communities of color, queer and trans people, children, and women.8 The majority opinion in Dobbs lays the legal foundation for achieving such goals by differentiating abortion from other privacy-­based rights because it is said to “end an innocent life”—­a figure cast in savior terms as deserving individual rights and protections.9 Outlawing abortion and codifying embryo personhood do not appear to be the endgame for Christian Right activists either, whose vision for social change reaches beyond the domain of abortion.10 Abortion has always been a stratagem for the Christian Right alliance for realizing broader goals. Remember that conservative Christians did not ally in opposing abortion until many years after Roe as a result of political strategizing for an agenda organized around “family values”—­a moniker developed to align white evangelicals and conservative Catholics with right-­wing neoconservatives in a Christian Right alliance that gained traction with Reagan’s election in 1980. The suite of racist, sexist, anti-­ LGBTQ, and classist issues organized under the umbrella of “family values” are all implicated in Dobbs. The Court’s takedown of Roe and Casey has weakened protections for what are called “unenumerated rights” rooted in constitutional notions of privacy, including use of contraception, kinds of sexual activity among consenting adults, marriage for same-­sex and interracial couples, protections of gender equality in the workplace, among many others. Weakening abortion rights weakens other rights opposed by “family” values advocates, paving the way for a new social order that undermines major civil rights gains for women, LGBTQ people, communities of color, and countless families over recent decades.11

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And yet advocates’ aspirations for a new social order reach even further as discourse about “family issues” acts as a dog whistle for the Christian nationalist movement.12 Evidence linking embryo adoption advocacy and white Christian nationalist ideals is peppered throughout the stories featured in this book. We heard embryo adoption advocates voice nostalgia for “a country that was originally founded on Biblical principles” and their desire to “return to the great nation that we once were.” We saw proponents conceive of God’s dominion as including uteruses and the United States. We witnessed supporters merge religious duty with civic duty through testimony about the “protection and prioritization of life” being cast as “one of the fundamental principles that our country was established upon.” We encountered Christian nationalist ideals of economic self-­interest in participants’ approaches to embryo shopping and “colorblind” tropes of “racial reconciliation” in staff ’s efforts to market racialized embryos and fetishistic desires for them. In tracing the reproductive politics of white saviorism through embryo adoption advocates’ acts and desires, we see the indisputable outline of white Christian nationalism at work—­a cultural framework advanced through a “familiar grammar” that idealizes white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity as well as nativism, authoritarian control, and militarism.13 While this book has focused on domestic matters, the Christian Right’s nationalist focus on conceiving a Christian America has long been a global project with transnational significance. For decades, the Christian Right has expanded the influence of “family values” politics by globalizing its domestic concerns, shaping domestic activism based on insights from abroad, and forging transnational alliances across religious orthodoxies and national contexts.14 Reproductive politics, expressed variously through emphases on gender, sexuality, race, and religion, have served as the “symbolic glue” in their global activities, which has supported the rise and influence of religious right-­wing movements worldwide.15 In turn, the US Christian Right has taken inspiration from the playbooks of authoritarian, ethno-­nationalist, and populist leaders in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Brazil, the Philippines, the UK, India, and elsewhere.16 Understanding the constitutive role of reproduction in shaping the ascension of illiberal regimes is a crucial task that draws attention to the “familiar grammars” operating across diverse right-­wing

Conclusion | 207

movements that have, nevertheless, successfully politicized reproduction for political gain.17 In light of the grand ambitions of these religious political alliances with global reach, the Streges’ return to Washington politics to sway the US Supreme Court may be easy to dismiss as minor league political theater. Their unconventional filing foregrounds a white evangelical couple’s infertility narrative with photographs from a baby book and folksy quotes excerpted from children’s stories, including Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who and Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes. They draw egregious analogies between frozen embryos and enslaved African Americans—­a strategy common in decades of antiabortion advocacy—­to claim that both are “unjustly considered property” and deserving of recognition as persons before the law.18 Along with this brief, their lawyer, Allan Parker, coordinated legal theater outside the Supreme Court on the days leading up to the Dobbs oral arguments through “live prayer and worship events” and a “global 40-­hour broadcast in support of the Dobbs case.”19 Coinciding with the oral arguments, Parker and the Streges participated in a Zoom-­recorded YouTube video interview with Father Frank Pavone in a program entitled “Praying for America with the world’s first Snowflake baby fighting for the end of abortion.”20 At the end, Pavone thanked the powerful actors aligned with Streges’ appeal, from the staff at Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency to Dr. James Dobson to former Presidents Bush and Trump.21 But, as I have argued throughout, we ought not dismiss embryo adoption or its agents. We should take the Streges and their conceptions of Christian America very seriously.

Be Wary This book makes a case for being wary, on many fronts. Wariness is a mode of curiosity characterized by alertness, prudence, and care. Wariness encourages us to not take the world at face value, but rather, to explore beyond dominant narratives and “familiar grammar” so that we can consider what may be operating discreetly within them, hidden from view.22 As an ethnographic approach used in this book, wariness has been useful for highlighting power relations at work, tracing their patterns, and “constellating” new stories.23

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More than two decades ago, Lila Abu-­Lughod called anthropologists to be wary of saviorism. In response to her provocation, this book has taken us inside a practice focused on saving embryos from freezers and has shown these efforts to be about realizing so much more. Revisiting lessons gleaned from this book’s analytic wariness about embryo saviorism includes considering what wariness can look like in places near and far where the global Christian Right’s idealized social order is taking root.

White Saviorism This book has located embryo adoption within what Teju Cole calls the “white savior industrial complex” to trace the seductive promises and insidious effects of embryo saviorism—­a form of white saviorism that reveals how Christian Right activists leverage reproductive politics for political gain. Wariness of white saviorism draws critical attention to the undersides of embryo adoption, especially as they intersect with legacies of white supremacy and Christian nationalism that enroll reproduction in US politics. Wariness lays bare a few of embryo saviorism’s core qualities. Like other saviorist discourses, embryo saviorism reduces complex social forces into oversimplified tropes focused on white saviors’ desires. They often want to fulfill charitable roles in do-­gooding narratives aimed at addressing harms that so-­called imperiled innocents face. As we saw in chapter 2, embryo saviorism casts other people’s embryos as orphans, donors as negligent, cryopreservation tanks as threatening, prospective recipients as responsible, and embryo adoption as an intrinsic social good. It moralizes embryo adoption as a righteous practice by shoring up patriarchal, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and racist social relations as the ideal moral order. And it promises salvation for embryos, their “saviors,” and broader society. Wariness puts into relief the generativity of embryo saviorism, especially how it maintains political prominence and persuasive power despite the practical problems it creates for the everyday work of relocating embryos from freezers to wombs. In chapter 3, we witnessed the creative workarounds of staff members who moralize parental responsibilities and stewardship duties to motivate participation in embryo adoption. Donors’ efforts are elemental to the movement, yet embryo savior nar-

Conclusion | 209

ratives frame donors as having abandoned embryos and their alleged responsibilities for them. In chapter 4, we encountered program recipients motivated not by the altruistic do-­gooding role scripted within embryo saviorism, but by consumer desires for particular kinds of embryos that might help them achieve birth. In response to embryo shopping, embryo saviorism inspired processes of marking and marketing embryos that revealed how Christian notions of charity organize advocates’ orientations to constructs of difference through race and disability. Wariness here also highlighted the long-­standing, though often obscured, compatibility between morality and markets. In chapter 5, we saw white Christian women self-­efface their own reproductive risk-­taking and active role in “saving” embryos by, instead, emphasizing the authoritative work of God’s divine hand in their lives. The diminishment of women’s reproductive labor, oftentimes by women themselves, illustrates how embryo saviorism promotes patriarchal authority and asymmetrical gender relations of power. As this book has made clear, constructs of white innocence are fundamental to transforming IVF embryos into savable subjects. Frozen embryos, like other figures that occupy liminal social spaces (e.g., children, animals, women), became enrolled in the innocence politics of the Christian Right that supported the emergence of embryo adoption. The enrollment of frozen embryos within Christian nationalist politics was not obvious or inevitable. Rather, embracing IVF was a strategic move that substantiates what anthropologist Miriam Ticktin calls the “logic of expansion” of innocence politics, “in which new territories of innocence must be constantly discovered and incorporated.”24 Frozen embryos became figurative terrain for expanding the reach of white evangelicalism—­an imperializing project itself, as we saw in their efforts to influence public policy, recruit high-­profile political supporters, secure taxpayer financing, publicize framings of the “problem” and metrics of their “successes,” and impose their values on others.25 Given the ceaseless expansion of innocence within saviorist projects, we ought to be wary of new figurative “frontiers” for innocence politics in the post-­Roe world. If and when frozen embryos fail to satisfy the purity politics that propel embryo saviorism, “new landscapes to produce innocent victims” will emerge.26 Invariably, many already are. Remaining watchful for new savable subjects is one way to be wary of savior-

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ism’s innocence politics as well as to disrupt how it reproduces stratified constructs of social worth.

Reproductive Proxies Life after Roe calls for heightened wariness of reproductive proxies—­ stand-­ins for something else that can obfuscate power relations—­in all of their forms and fronts.27 Embryo adoption is rife with strategic stand-­ins, and wariness has helped to parse them out. As we have seen, advocates cast frozen embryos as orphans, pre-­born children, God’s property, pathways to personal salvation, and the potential for a white Christian country. They regard uteruses as homes, God’s laboratory, saving spaces, and warm places for nurturing a future Christian nation. In evangelical narratives, reproductive risk-­taking signifies obedience to God’s call and reproductive losses become God’s plan. Professionals in the field of embryo adoption remind each other that they are engaging in spiritual warfare and clients that they are like blessed women in the Bible impregnated by God. Examining the metaphoric activity within embryo adoption makes clearer how patriarchal, white, Christian, and heteronormative power relations conspire and their effects. Taken together, we see how the practice of embryo adoption’s expressed saviorist mission operates figuratively as a strategic proxy for saving the nation—­an imagined Christian domain premised on white evangelicalism and governed by God. What this teaches us is that proxies in saviorism mask power and behave powerfully. Wariness of powerful proxies draws attention to the strategic role embryo adoption plays in pro-­life advocacy by giving frozen embryos a “face,” like Hannah Strege’s. The making of persons is always political and the stakes of definition are especially high for people excluded by the stratified constructs of personhood in the United States based on race, gender, class, disability, and religion. This is no more true than for pregnant people of color, as evinced by the deleterious effects of fetal personhood policies already in place and doing harm. As of 2014, more than 330 variations of legislation have been introduced at state and federal levels that champion the personhood rights of the “unborn.”28 Many of these policies secure legal protections of personhood for fetuses in utero with the effect of undermining the rights of pregnant people.

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By May 2018, thirty-­eight US states passed fetal homicide laws that created increased penalties for crimes, such as violence toward pregnant people or drunk driving, that result in the loss of a fetus, based on their separate rights.29 Further, arresting, detaining, and prosecuting pregnant people for “child endangerment,” such as exposing their fetuses to illegal substances, has been increasingly common in the United States since Roe. Low-­income women and women of color—­especially Black women—­have been disproportionately harmed by such policies. The legal advocacy organization National Advocates for Pregnant Women identified 413 cases like these in the United States that treat embryos and fetuses as separate legal entities at the expense of pregnant people’s personal liberties.30 Securing personhood rights for in vitro embryos provides further legal basis for undermining reproductive rights and justice. Reflecting on the disproportionate prosecution of pregnant persons of color in fetal endangerment and fetal homicide cases, Loretta Ross, the Black feminist founder of the reproductive justice organization, SisterSong, said constitutional amendments advanced by embryo personhood proponents would have the most detrimental impacts on communities of color. When facing a voter referendum on a personhood amendment in Mississippi, which eventually failed, Ross warned, “Women of color will be the first and majority of the casualties of the so-­called ‘personhood’ initiative.”31 An important message here is that the pro-­life movement advanced its cause by interfacing with assisted reproduction technologies through the practice of embryo adoption. While this book shows how pro-­life activists seized opportunities in response to emerging biotechnologies, like human embryonic stem cell research, other scholars have done similar work within fetal surgery, safe haven laws concerning infant relinquishment, and neonatal intensive care units.32 Insights from embryo adoption add to these discussions by demonstrating that pregnancy is not an essential condition for advancing pro-­life politics—­a fact that could inform global feminist solidarities when strategizing forms of resistance to antiabortion activity around the world. The proxy work required to make IVF embryos signify pre-­born children, and uteruses to represent homes, is instructive for responding to the wave of pro-­life activism occurring after Roe.

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This discussion so far has focused on proxies for antiabortion advocacy, though it is important to remember that abortion also serves as a strategic proxy within religious right-­wing politics, domestically and abroad. This book provides further evidence for how abortion represents a wide set of political ambitions, for which efforts to control people’s reproductive freedoms have provided tremendous traction for right-­wing religious movements around the globe. As noted earlier, the Streges’ prayers are only partially answered by Roe’s demise. In this light, Hannah Strege has provided a “face” not only for frozen embryos that need saving, or for the sanctity of embryonic life that deserves protection, or for the values of white Christian womanhood. Hannah’s face also stands in for what advocates are wishing to realize by making America uterine again. Described as a “seed of the next generation” by President Bush, her face represents the vision of a world emboldened by whiteness and righteousness taking root. Reproductive processes, from abortion to infertility to adoption, have long served as material and metaphoric resources for major political activity around the world, even though this fact is too often obscured. Wariness is one way we can better discern how “all politics are reproductive politics” and where to strategically focus our attention when proxies conceal this fact and the workings of power.33 For instance, feminists rightfully concerned about the creep of personhood politics within embryo adoption focused their attention on how embryo adoption operated as a proxy for antiabortion advocacy. My effort here has been to affirm this concern by tracing the depth of its reach, as well as highlight how pro-­life politics stand in as a mobilizing tool for realizing much grander goals. As we are seeing, attacks on abortion are never solely about abortion, and thus we ought to be wary about proxies operating in pro-­life activism, as well as for pro-­life activism.34

Reductive Othering Another domain for wariness involves those whose identities, ideologies, and ideas are featured most prominently in this book: white evangelicals. Through stories and experiences, we have had a rare ethnographic look inside the lives of a social demographic that has comprised one of the largest and most influential religious groups in the United States for

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over forty years. For good reason, scholars across various fields have taken seriously their theological beliefs, social practices, political views, voting patterns, and advocacy efforts in order to understand how they became influential in shaping US politics. This book contributes to these discussions by detailing ethnographically how embryo adoption advances white evangelicalism and Christian nationalism, even when proponents do not bear these racial, religious, or political identities. In doing so, this book builds on the study of US evangelical Christianity within anthropology that is deeply wary of homogenizing, essentializing, and othering assumptions about religious conservatives.35 It bears repeating that white evangelicals are not a uniform group, nor are the professionals and participants involved in embryo adoption. We have encountered a range of dynamic figures with conflicting perspectives and religious, racial, and political identities. At the same time, this book has traced how embryo saviorism enrolls diverse peoples into white evangelicalism and Christian nationalist imaginaries. Some, like the Streges, have been steadfast champions of embryo saviorism, though not all have embraced its goals or effects. Recall Sharon, who was disturbed by the Channings’ claim of “rescuing” her embryos. This experience was conversionary for Sharon, after which she reconsidered her political identity and allegiances. Last we spoke, she had become involved in birth mother advocacy and began identifying as pro-­choice. In the post-­Roe landscape in which adoption is promoted as a social good and viable alternative to abortion, I wonder how Sharon—­a white evangelical mother through IVF and former embryo donor—­is responding to the saviorism explicit in promotional narratives about adoption. I have similar questions about Jessica Stohl, an early Blossom recipient, vocal advocate for embryo adoption, and pro-­life evangelical and activist. Over a decade’s time, she became discomfited by embryo savior discourses after once championing them more vociferously than most. As her child through embryo adoption grew older, she grew sensitive to the negative effects of savior discourses on donors and children born: The terminology that adoptive families use that diminishes the role of the genetic and birth parents subsequently diminishes the child. They don’t see that at the time but eventually the child does. I have learned to

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hate the words “rescued,” “orphaned,” and “abandoned,” but I had to be educated into it . . . I just absolutely hate the language because it’s at the expense of somebody else . . . I don’t agree with myself now, but at the time [when I was first married], I saw adoption as a beautiful thing that I could do for this child, you know, a kind of a rescue. Now, eighteen years later, I would tell you that that is the last reason I would want to adopt . . . I started out wanting to rescue babies, but it turned out that the babies rescued me.

Jessica shifted gears in another way by withdrawing her son from the advocacy spotlight to protect his privacy. Certain that his red hair “makes a statement to his uniqueness before I got him,” she allowed his photograph to be displayed on a billboard opposing stem cell research and for him to be chosen to stand behind national lawmakers when making historic decisions concerning human embryos. The fact that he is evidence to me of a great humanitarian issue is a big deal but, at the same time, his security and his relationship with his family trumps that by a long shot. I now feel more protective of him as a mom until he is old enough to make a choice for himself . . . When he is older, if he personally wants to do anything political to stand up for the pre-­born, then I would support him. If he doesn’t, that’s okay too.

Some perspectives shifted for Jessica while others remain firmly in place. A critic of embryo saviorism rhetoric, she is not fundamentally opposed to saviorism, evinced in how she described herself as someone whose “babies rescued me.” An ardent pro-­life advocate, she reserves her son’s right to choose for himself if and how he becomes politically involved. Her protective orientation to parenting persisted and aligns with her ideas about Christian citizenship voiced in testimony to state lawmakers. “Protection and prioritization of life is one of the fundamental principles that our country was established upon,” she said. I wonder about the children born through this process—­the so-­called seeds of the next generation. What will their origin stories generate for their identities and political orientations? Will Jessica’s son feel like “evidence of a great humanitarian issue,” identify as pro-­life, or practice Christianity? How might Gregory, the Channings’ “rescued” son, feel

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about his conception story? How might the Halberts’ Black triplets make sense of their birth to a white missionary? From a young age, Hannah Strege has been told that she was saved and is a born savior of embryos whose face and name, as she put it, “showed America and the world that embryos are worth saving.” This identity has been reinforced throughout her life with numerous occasions to meet the US president, visit the US Congress, participate in national press conferences, be discussed on conservative airwaves, and, most recently, appeal to the US Supreme Court as “living proof that life begins at fertilization.” Today a young woman and aspiring social worker, she is following in her parents’ sense of “obligation,” as her father writes in his memoir about their family, to “make a stand on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves, as the Bible instructs us to do, and we agreed to do so.”36 As she experiences more years of adulthood, in and out of the political spotlight, how might her personal and political perspectives take shape? All along the way, Monica, Blossom’s program manager, has not easily fit into a mold. She was deeply committed to “finding homes” for the embryos of clients in the program, though bristled at saviorist talking points and initiatives led by agency leadership. Feeling overwhelmed by encouragement to engage in spiritual warfare, she opted to not “embrace” the pro-­life mission of the program as much. In public outreach and client engagement, she resisted likening embryos to orphans based on the view that children in orphanages have fundamentally different needs than frozen embryos. She struggled with the Blossom contract’s antiabortion policy when consulting clients with fetal anomalies incompatible with life after birth. Yet, in many other ways, Monica was a programmatic innovator in lockstep with embryo saviorism and its goals. She left her position around the same time I left field research in order to pursue a Master’s degree in social work. Today, she is the wife of an adoptee, mother of three daughters whom she delivered, and staff member at a Christian adoption agency focused on foster care. She sends me a multi-­page update of her family’s life every year in a Christmas card. While I did not always or often agree with her, I respected her openness in dialogue and refusal to easily accept the scripts handed her as a Christian, white woman, wife, mother, adoption professional, embryo savior. I would not be surprised if she is bristling at the world her em-

216 | Conclusion

bryo adoption colleagues and their political allies are actively realizing for her daughters and for all children. Sarah, Blossom’s earnest program assistant, took a path after employment at Blossom that heartens me. The daughter of a Baptist mother and graduate of an evangelical university, Sarah is well-­versed in Christian Right politics and its hypocrisies, as she calls attention to fellow believers in thoughtful ways on her social media platforms. Following impassioned conversations about Blossom’s policies toward LGBTQ clients, she and I later came out to each other in one of the handful of conversations we had since my research, and her time at Blossom, ended. By coincidence, she texted me the week the Supreme Court delivered the Dobbs ruling. Soon after, I noticed a post on social media voicing her frustration with Christians who claim to be pro-­life but who do not adopt from foster care, promote sex education in schools, or fight for living minimum wages and affordable housing and health care. And not only are Christians failing to do these things, she pointed out, they are actively voting against laws and policies that would improve conditions and well-­being of children, families, and communities. So this is why I am angry when I see people who I grew up with, who I was mentored by, celebrating the victory of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but whom I have never seen fight for any of these other pro-­life human rights.

In calling out fellow Christians’ harmfully narrow view on which “life” to care about, Sarah makes clear, in her own words, that what we call things matters. What “pro-­life” means and looks like in practice matters to her, an angry and ardent supporter. Inspired by her remarks, I wrote to her: “Beautiful post this morning in the wake of Roe’s demise. My heart is heavy too. You have a powerful perspective and voice. Keep pushing, you’re making a difference.” I am wary of too-­simple stories about the people whose religious beliefs and politics are under scrutiny in this book. Anthropologist Susan Harding reminds us in her study of US Christian fundamentalists of the merits of “opening up,” an approach I have tried to practice in researching this book. Opening up is about starting from a “situated, implicated, and self-­reflexive” place.37 Doing so supports “more nuanced, complicated, partial, and local readings of who they [Christian fundamentalists] are

Conclusion | 217

and what they are doing.”38 For Harding, openness is not for the sweet sake of openness. Understanding the cultural complexities of people whose ideas we may find harmful helps us, as she wrote, to “design more effective political strategies to oppose directly the specific positions and policies they advocate.”39 Opening up describes, in fresh terms, how we may be wary of, as well as at risk with, those who hold diametrically opposing views. This is vital in an era of extreme polarization when the future of democracy, humanity, and all life on this planet feel—­to use a savior’s sentiment—­imperiled.

What We Call Things Still Matters Advocates for reproductive rights and justice ought to be wary of saviorism in our efforts to realize a better world. A poignant example of wariness comes from one of the staunchest supporters of reproductive freedom in US legal history. Kitty Kolbert is the lawyer who argued in defense of abortion rights in front of the US Supreme Court as lead legal counsel for Planned Parenthood in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey case. Her case was expected to fail, which would have resulted in the overturning of Roe. What happened instead is that the Casey decision supplanted Roe with a new legal framework organized around viability. Leading up to Casey and every subsequent case when abortion rights went before the Court, reproductive rights advocates organized behind a common mantra: “Save Roe.” In the lead-­up to Roe’s anticipated overturning, Kolbert told advocates to “give it up . . . that strategy is no longer feasible. We need to stop banging our heads against the Supreme Court’s marble walls. We need new strategies.”40 Kolbert’s dismissal of “Save Roe” rhetoric, which she had long championed, is chiefly about an activist strategy of building power from the grassroots rather than appealing to the halls of power, but it resonates with an argument developed throughout the book on the need for wariness about saviorism wherever it occurs, including within progressive politics. Relatedly, Lila Abu-­Lughod implored feminist anthropologists to “be wary” of saviorism, especially when it appears in sympathetic form.41 To illustrate, she showed how claims that US military invasions and occupations in the Middle East were “a fight for the rights and dignity

218 | Conclusion

of women” shared “uncanny echoes” with late nineteenth-­century Christian missionaries and colonial feminists “who devoted their lives to saving their Muslim sisters,” as well as with contemporary trends in mainstream US feminism.42 Being wary of the “virtuous goals” of saviorism when wielded by right-­wing, religiously extreme, and war-­ mongering politicians is an easier task than sustaining skepticism of it when used to advance progressive agendas.43 Appeals to save whatever we may hold dear are deeply seductive.44 Yet Abu-­Lughod recommends staying “suspicious” by challenging our presumptions of superiority and reductive simplifications whenever we set out to save.45 In addition to wariness, Abu-­Lughod encouraged leaving “vocations of saving others behind.”46 A “more productive alternative,” she said, is “training our sights on ways to make the world a more just place.”47 Others share her desire to dispense with saviorism altogether. Donna Haraway expresses “impatience” with what she calls the “touching silliness” of grand saving narratives and focuses, instead, on “staying with the trouble” of living in the ruins of capitalism.48 In Miriam Ticktin’s critique of innocence as it morally animates Western politics, she encourages imagining a world “without” and “beyond innocence.”49 Doing so, she says, may “challenge the binaries that structure our moral vocabularies” toward eliminating purity, absolutism, and other violent hierarchies of humanity.50 Leaving saviorism behind or moving beyond it is no easy task, though wariness is a necessary companion to imagining otherwise, and therefore a vital mode in the wake of Roe’s demise.

Acknowledgments

Bringing such a project to fruition would not have been possible without the care and encouragement of many people. To begin, I wish to thank the research participants who invited me into their homes and workplaces, and who gave generously of their time. I am grateful for the chances to practice “opening up” together. The reproductive justice volunteer and community advocacy efforts I participated in over the past two decades have shaped my thinking immeasurably. Thank you to the fierce friends and allies in the full-­spectrum doula, all-­options pregnancy peer talkline, salon conversation communities, and online accompaniment groups in New York, California, Oregon, Indiana, and beyond, whose commitments to reproductive justice have inspired me deeply. And thank you, more importantly, for your work initiating hard conversations, fighting for a more compassionate world, and walking the walk. I am appreciative of the various institutions that provided material support during the training, research, and writing phases of this project, including the City University of New York, Purdue University, Stanford University, Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly Woodrow Wilson Foundation), and Wenner-­Gren Foundation. Faculty and students at the CUNY Graduate Center played vital roles in seeing this project to completion. A resounding thanks is owed to my dissertation committee whose mentorship inspired my initial questions, methods, and theoretical orientations. Katherine Verdery, John Collins, Dána-­A in Davis, Jeff Maskovsky, and Rayna Rapp have touched this project and me in numerous ways. I am grateful to Ida Susser, Murphy Halliburton, Rosalind Petchesky, Faye Ginsburg, and Emily Martin for their guidance during early stages of this research. I appreciate the collegiality and collaborative spirit among CUNY students, and owe a special thanks to Elan Abrell, Kyla Bender-­ Baird, Carwil Bjork-­James, Sophie Bjork-­James, Maggie Dickinson, 219

220 | Acknowledgments

Daisy Deomampo, Martha Lincoln, Janny Llanos, Michael Polson, John Warner, and Karen Williams. Thank you to dissertation writing group members, whose encouragements helped generate the first pages of the dissertation on which this book is based: Maggie Dickinson, Harmony Goldberg, Nazia Kazi, Michael Polson, and Preeti Sampat. My thinking has benefited immensely from incredible people I met during my postdoctoral years at Stanford. In the Thinking Matters program, Lauren Hirshberg, Erin Johnston, Zenia Kish, Katie Lennard, Stephen Spiess, and Ian Zuckerman were consistently generous with their time and kindness. I am grateful to David Magnus of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics for inviting me into the world of bioethics, where I am delighted to have crossed paths with Alyssa Burgart, Mildred Cho, Kate Darling, Heather Dron, Anna Jabloner, Nicole Martinez, Christine Morton, Krista Sigurdson, Sandra Soo-­Jin Lee, and Anna Weichselbraun. I feel very lucky to have supportive colleagues at Purdue University in the Department of Anthropology, Programs in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Critical Disability Studies, and Critical Data Studies Collective. I owe a special thanks to Andrew Flachs for reading any draft sent his way with speed and positivity, to Jennifer Johnson, Holly Okonkwo, and Zoe Nyssa for feedback on early drafts, to Sherri Briller for always seeing the bright side, and to Mary Mitchell for commiserating. This project is indebted to many brilliant minds who have read and responded to portions of the book presented at various stages in talks, presentations, and workshops held around the world. In particular, I have benefited from the insights of the Race & Reproductivities collective, including Christa Craven, Dána-­A in Davis, Daisy Deomampo, Nessette Falu, and Natali Valdez, during the panels and workshops we created together. Sarah Franklin’s ReproSoc group at Cambridge University is endlessly generative, and where I especially enjoyed cross-­ pollinating ideas with Lea Taragin-­Z eller, Lucy van de Wiel, Noémi Merleau-­Ponty, Karen Jent, Jaya Keaney, Marcin Smietana, and Robert Pralat when a visiting scholar. Thank you to the intrepid organizers of powerful workshops in which I have been able to participate, including Jennifer Hamilton, Rayna Rapp, Séverine Mathieu, Michele Goodwin, Kim Mutcherson, Johanna Schoen, Rana Jaleel, and Emily

Acknowledgments | 221

Yates-­Doerr. I still remember the thoughtful remarks made by Ian Whitmarsh, Helena Hansen, Susan Falls, Carole Joffe, Lynn Morgan, Sarah Franklin, Claire Wendland, Sallie Han, Faye Ginsburg, Rayna Rapp, Hannah Landecker, Charis Thompson, and Lisa Ikemoto on conference and workshop papers, and appreciate them. I owe a special thanks to those who have been thought partners in sustained ways, including Judith Arcana, Jessica Hardin, Lea Taragin-­Z eller and other Reproductive Righteousness Project members, Sandra Bärnreuther, Natalia Rodriguez, Lucy van de Wiel, Sophie Bjork-­James, and Elise Andaya. With Natali Valdez, nothing is unthinkable. The book writing crew—­L indsay Bell, Ken MacLeish, Carlota McAllister, Sandra Rozental, and Emily Yates-­Doerr—­read every word of this book in its final stages of drafting. I am grateful for your gentle and firm nudges, and I am proud of us. Book publishing takes a veritable village. Jennifer Hammer’s consistent professionalism and kindness throughout the proposal, review, revision, and production processes have been incredibly supportive. The book greatly benefited from the commentary of four anonymous reviewers, whom I would like to thank here. Hallie Wells has been a comforting coach, editor, and companion in my ongoing quest to deepen the creative pleasure of putting words on a page. I have been sustained by all whom I have loved and been loved by along this journey, my friends, family, and dear ones near and far. I owe a special gratitude to Jeff, for taking big leaps with me; to Mary, for reminding me that things take the time they take; and to Matt, for being my buoy. Throughout the project I have thought often and fondly of two devout women in my life: Sr. Maureen Hilliard, my high school teacher, who planted the seeds, and Mary Ellen Peterson, my godmother, who helped me sow them. Mary Ellen Peterson has been a model of grace and fortitude whose positivity was a balm during periods of doubt. My parents, Jim and Elaine Cromer, held fast to their conception of a family for more than a decade of infertility before their only child came. For the subsequent forty years they were, and remain, beacons of love and unwavering enthusiasm for all I have set out to achieve. I am deeply pleased to be able to share this with them.

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This project has been supported by so many, yet all mistakes are solely mine. Portions of chapter 4 were previously published as “Making the Ethnic Embryo: Enacting Race in Us Embryo Adoption,” Medical Anthropology 38, no. 7 (2019): 603–­19, and “‘Our Family Picture Is a Little Hint of Heaven’: Race, Religion and Selective Reproduction in US ‘Embryo Adoption,’” Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online 11 (November 1, 2020): 9–­17. Portions of the conclusion were previously published as “Saving: Towards a Feminist Reckoning,” Feminist Anthropology 3: 345–52.

Notes

Preface

1 Terms like “antiabortion,” “pro-­life,” and “embryo adoption” are rhetorically and politically charged. At the end of the preface, I discuss how I use them throughout the book. 2 Thomson et al. (1998). 3 Maienschein (2003). 4 Wade (1998, 29). 5 Vogel (1999). 6 According to Chris Scott, “In an election year riddled with controversy, the stage was set for a raging battle in which scientists, politicians, religious leaders, doctors, and patients would find themselves unwilling soldiers” (2006, 9). Belluck (2005); Crockin (2005a); Green (2001); Hurlbut (2017); Korobkin and Munzer (2007); Maienschein (2014) provide a range of commentary on this period. 7 Wade (2000, 1). President Clinton made history first by turning the de facto moratorium on federal funding for human embryo research into a de jure ban when signing the NIH appropriations bill with the Dickey-­Wicker amendment in 1995. 8 Bush, “The President’s Decision” (2001). 9 As noted in the memoir of John Strege (2020), who is the original Snowflakes recipient and father of the first “snowflake” born, US Congressman Joe Pitts (R-­ Pennsylvania) emailed Marlene Strege and Nightlight Christian Adoptions expressing interest in hosting a news conference featuring Snowflakes families before the House vote scheduled for May 24. Marlene promoted the opportunity to other Snowflakes families: “This is a wonderful opportunity to once again let the world know that these are children that we are talking about, not cells for scientists to kill and dissect” (123). 10 Bush (2005). 11 Finlay (2006); Flanders (2004). The “war on women” phrase amplified the impact of the president’s anti-­sexual and reproductive rights agenda on cisgender women, though obscured the harms to trans and nonbinary people, whose human rights were also under attack. 12 Ryan (2009). 13 Reproductive rights and reproductive justice describe distinct approaches to similar issues concerning reproductive politics. Luna (2020); Ross and Solinger (2017); Silliman, Fried, Ross, and Gutierrez (2004); Zavella (2020) provide thorough histories of the meanings of each term.

223

224 | Notes

14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22

Ginsburg and Rapp (1991; 1995). Ginsburg (1989); Luker (1984). Ziegler (2015). Inhorn and Birenbaum (2008). According to sociologist Rebecca Willis, “An important advantage of composite narratives is that they allow the presentation of contextualized stories, without resorting to fiction, and whilst offering a significant degree of anonymity . . . Composite narratives protect anonymity through mixing accounts, thereby preventing the possibility of identifying a research subject through a combination of details” (2019, 476). Inhorn (2004). Riles (2006). Luker (1984, 2). Haraway (1997, 191).

Introduction

1 Due to the largely unregulated US fertility industry, which chapter 1 examines in detail, actual numbers of embryos produced, frozen, discarded, and donated are not systematically documented, reported, or aggregated in the United States. An oft-­cited study from 2003 estimated the number of frozen embryos in US fertility clinics to be 400,000 (Hoffman et al. 2003), which was twice as high as the previous estimate. According to the Washington Post, this estimate “reignited debate” about “what should be done with the nation’s prodigious stores of nascent human life” (Weiss 2003). In 2013, some guessed there were more than a million (Lomax and Trounson 2013). 2 Green (2001); Hurlbut (2017); Maienschein (2014); Scott (2006); Thompson (2014) provide comprehensive analyses of the debates. 3 Historically and cross-­culturally, embryos have been ascribed social roles as patients (Casper 1998), consumers (Taylor 2008), citizens (Berlant 1997; Casper and Morgan 2004), persons (Hartouni 1999), spokespersons (Thompson 2005), and kin (Roberts 2012). Some are deemed testable (Rapp 1999), tentative (Rothman 1986), dangerous (Reagan 2010), haunting (Gammeltoft 2014), fetishized (Franklin 1999), and made (Franklin and Roberts 2006). Some are lost (Layne 2003) and let go (Scheper-­Hughes 1992); others have been made to tell tales about tails (Morgan 2003), race (Tsing 2007), and environmental risk (Steingraber 2001). 4 This claim is inspired by Sarah Franklin and Celia Roberts’ insight, “It does not really make sense to speak of the embryo as a singular entity” (2001, 4). 5 Morgan (2003). 6 Hopwood (2000) and Morgan (2009) provide histories of the embryological sciences. Withycombe (2018) provides an historical perspective, and Layne (2003) and Craven (2019) provide anthropological perspectives, on pregnancy loss. 7 Andaya and Mishtal (2017, 51). 8 Briggs (2003; 2012; 2020).

Notes | 225

9 Joyce (2013) and Perry (2017) provide critiques of the Christian orphan movement. Cruver et al. (2010), Merida and Morton (2011), and Moore (2009) are examples of “orphan theology.” 10 Chapter 2 explores the making of embryos into frozen orphans and chapter 3 traces programmatic challenges these efforts pose for the saving mission. 11 Opportunities and Advancements in Stem Cell Research Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, 107th Cong. (2001). 12 Oxford English Dictionary (n.d.). My ideas about saving have been enriched immeasurably by conversations with Jessica Hardin (2018a; 2018b; 2019) and Zoe Nyssa (Cromer, Hardin, and Nyssa 2020). 13 Charo (2005); Davis (2006); Dolgin (2004; 2006); Green (2008). 14 I heard extensive details about a single male widower and donor based in France, and interviewed a Canadian-­based donor. 15 Who evangelicals are is an ongoing site of cultural contestation and therefore an appreciably difficult demographic to demarcate (Noll, Bebbington, and Marsden 2019). For histories of white evangelicals and the politics of white evangelicalism in the United States, see Butler (2021); FitzGerald (2017); Gorski and Perry (2022); Jones (2017; 2020); Kobes Du Mez (2020); Stewart (2020); Williams (2012; 2021); Yukich and Edgell (2020). For ethnographies of white US evangelicals, see Bialecki (2017); Bielo (2009; 2011; 2018); Bjork-­James (2021); Elisha (2011); Harding (2000); Luhrmann (2012). 16 The United States is home to diverse faith traditions with disparate representation in the population and social influence. According to a 2020 study, 70 percent of US Americans identify as Christian (e.g., Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, or Orthodox Christian), 23 percent are religiously unaffiliated, and 5 percent identify with non-­Christian religions (e.g., Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Unitarian Universalism, and others). More specifically, 44 percent of US Americans identify as white Christian and 30 percent as white Protestants. Researchers often divide the latter category into two main groups: white evangelical Protestants (14 percent), who are theologically conservative, and white mainline Protestants (16 percent), who are theologically moderate or liberal. White Catholics make up 12 percent of the population, and small percentages identify as Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, and Orthodox Christian. “The American Religious Landscape in 2020” (2021). 17 “The American Religious Landscape in 2020” (2021). 18 A quarter of US Americans identify as Christians of color, including Hispanic Catholics (8 percent), Black Protestants (7 percent), Hispanic Protestants (4 percent), other Protestants of color (4 percent), and other Catholics of color (2 percent) (including Asian or Pacific Islander American, Native American, multiracial, or any other race or ethnicity not listed). Evangelicalism has become strongly affiliated with whiteness in dominant media narratives and scholarship, which obscures diversities across evangelical traditions, especially among evangelicals of color (Bare 2021; Mathews 2017; Sharp 2023; Smith 2008; 2019).

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19 Kobes Du Mez (2020). 20 While most embryo adoption programs operate like Blossom as brokerage firms for embryos, the National Embryo Donation Center differs by being based in a fertility clinic in Knoxville, Tennessee that manages a frozen embryo inventory of embryos donated from all over the country for procreative use. 21 A completed donor application includes: application with an extensive medical history; donor family profile with a letter, autobiography, and pictures; health authorization release forms for obtaining embryology reports from their clinic; FDA risk assessment questionnaire; physical evaluation form from within 12 months of applying; copies of egg and/or sperm donor profile and consents; and bloodwork for infectious disease to comply with FDA regulations on tissue donation between non-­sexually intimate partners. 22 Donors are asked to number from 1 to 10 the importance of the following qualities in an ideal match, listed in the order they appear on the application: religion; educational background; number of children in the family; prior marriages; length of current marriage; age; works full-­or part-­time, or at home; ethnic background; and financial position. They also indicate if they are open to single women recipients and how much contact they desire with recipients. 23 Chapter 4 elaborates on what “special circumstance” embryos are. 24 Program fees had increased from $8,000 to $9,000 by the time of publication. 25 In order to streamline the shipment and transfer of embryos between clinics, Monica consulted with donating and receiving clients’ clinics to ensure potential matches would work at the clinic level. For example, she developed a system to ensure that donors with vitrified embryos are not matched with recipients whose fertility clinics cannot thaw embryos frozen by that method. Another example: After a handful of disrupted matches due to clinic incompatibility, Monica began requiring donors to provide proof of testing for cytomegalovirus (CMV), a virus in the herpes family most frequently passed on to babies during pregnancy; recipient clients need a letter from their doctor indicating whether or not they will transfer embryos from donors who are CMV positive. 26 Chapter 4 examines embryo matching processes in detail. 27 Keenan et al. (2008). 28 The title of this section echoes a rallying cry arising from the consciousness-­ raising efforts of US second-­wave feminism that led activists to powerfully claim, “The personal is political!” A key organizing strategy involved consciousness-­ raising through in-­person gatherings to discuss oppressions at home, on the street, and in the workplace. These conversations challenged dominant distinctions between the so-­called private and public spheres as well as the personal and political. Yet whose personal experiences were represented by the political efforts of the predominantly straight middle-­class cis white women of second-­wave feminism was a topic of critical debate. Taking the “personal is political” seriously, as radical Black lesbians of the Combahee River Collective argued in 1974, requires interrogating whose personhood, and therefore which politics, are recognized

Notes | 227

within social justice movements (Taylor 2017). Drawing inspiration from the Collective’s critique, I direct attention to the dominant racist and religious constructions of personhood propelling antiabortion activism. 29 Carrithers et al. (1985); Kaufman and Morgan (2005). 30 Hartouni (1999, 300). 31 Conklin and Morgan (1996); Gammeltoft (2007); Howes-­Mischel (2016); LaFleur (1992); Morgan (1998; 2006); Morgan and Michaels (1999); Roberts (2007); Strathern (1996). 32 Petchesky (1987). 33 Casper (1998); Franklin (1999); Holland (2020b); Morgan (2009). 34 Christoffersen-­Deb (2012); Kaufman and Morgan (2005); Layne (1999a). 35 MacPherson (1962). 36 Mills (1998, 110). 37 Dayan (2001); Glenn (2002); Hartman (1997); Mills (1997); Ngai (2014); Patterson (1982); Riss (2006). 38 Bielo (2007); Cannell (2006); Robbins (2012; 2014). 39 Bjork-­James (2021); Butler (2021); Goetz (2012); Jones (2017; 2020); Schneider and Bjork-­James (2020); Yukich and Edgell (2020). 40 Martin (2014). Personhood proponents have focused on securing legal recognition of human embryos as having inalienable and absolute rights of persons, as granted by God, recognized by law (cf. Becker 2011). For more histories of the US antiabortion movement, see Ginsburg (1989); Haugeberg (2017); Holland (2020b); Luker (1984); Matthiesen (2021); Petchesky (1990); Reagan (2007; 2010); Schoen (2005); Williams (2016); Ziegler (2015; 2018; 2020). 41 Martin (2014); Ziegler (2020). 42 US Congress (1973). 43 Following Dobbs, the legal landscape has undergone rapid change. Georgia legislators in 2019 passed an abortion ban at six weeks that included language changing the definition of “natural person” to include “an unborn child at any stage of development who is carried in the womb” (Fowler 2022). While the law was blocked by a federal judge in 2019, another judge in 2022 allowed it to go into effect after the Dobbs decision. Its personhood language bears implications for law related not just to abortion but also child support, tax exemptions, homicide, and carpooling, which state officials are scrambling to sort out (Bernstein 2022). In 2021, Arizona legislators passed a personhood bill that a US District Court judge blocked from taking effect; it was in litigation at the time of writing this book (Yeager-­Malkin 2022). Relatedly, governors of Kentucky and Oklahoma have signed into law abortion bans from the moment of fertilization (Guttmacher Institute 2022). While the US Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority chose not to take up a case explicitly about fetal personhood during the 2022 session (Asma-­Sadeque 2022), these examples corroborate arguments that embryo and fetal personhood policies are part of the antiabortion movement’s enduring goals (Carlisle 2022).

228 | Notes

44 Connolly (2002). 45 In 2004, California voters passed Proposition 71, entitled the Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, which catapulted California onto the international scene as a world leader committed to the promise of research with human embryos. Voters agreed to invest $3 billion of taxpayer funds into the promise of hESCR over a decade’s time. This unprecedented budget quickly surpassed in dollars the entire National Institutes of Health’s annual funding for human embryonic stem cell research in the United States, which in 2003 totaled $24.8 million (Benjamin 2013, 13); it also surpassed all public investments made by other countries committed to this research. 46 One of the organizations, Personhood USA, was dedicated to “protecting the innocent unheard voices of defenseless children in subjugation,” according to its website. By “children,” the organization means fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses. It aimed to “change the cultural mindset through action to respect the dignity of the human person” in ways that “glorify Jesus Christ.” Personhood USA supported efforts to bring personhood initiatives to ballots in Colorado again in 2010 and 2014, Mississippi in 2011, and North Dakota in 2014, all of which failed by significant margins. They also supported international organizations in challenging legal protections for abortion, including the ratification of the Dominican Republic’s pro-­personhood constitution in 2009 and the passage of personhood amendments in eighteen Mexican states. Another group, the National Personhood Alliance, was a “Christ-­centered, biblically informed organization” that functioned as “a confederation of organizations and pro-­life leaders who believe that the strategy of pursuing personhood is essential to protecting every innocent human being in the 21st century,” according to its website. Until the passage of the “Alabama State Abortion Policy Amendment” by voters in November 2018, campaigns to amend state constitutions and other legal efforts to recognize embryos as persons at state and federal levels had failed. Personhood activists working internationally and at county and municipal levels have seen some successes (Blue 2015). 47 Caplan and Patrizio (2009). 48 Huckabee (2009, 44). 49 Personhood USA “Republican Presidential Candidate Pledge” (2011). 50 Republican Party Platforms (2012). 51 Pro-­life activists and right-­wing Christian conservatives in the United States have attracted significant scholarly attention in recent decades. These groups share many demographic features and intersecting histories, though they are not entirely synonymous. For histories of the US antiabortion movement, see Ginsburg (1989); Haugeberg (2017); Holland (2020b); Luker (1984); Munson (2009); Petchesky (1990); Reagan (2007; 2010); Schoen (2005); Williams (2016); Ziegler (2015; 2018; 2020). For histories of white conservative Christian politics in the United States, see Butler (2021); FitzGerald (2017); Gorski and Perry (2022); Jones (2017; 2020); Kobes Du Mez (2020); Stewart (2020); Whitehead and Perry (2020); Williams

Notes | 229

52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59

60

61

62

(2012; 2021); Yukich and Edgell (2020). For ethnographies of US evangelicals, see Bialecki (2017); Bielo (2009; 2011; 2018); Bjork-­James (2021); Elisha (2011); Harding (2000); Luhrmann (2012). Chapter 1 provides a detailed analysis of the relationship between the pro-­life movement and rise of IVF in the United States. Davis (2006). Brakman and Weaver (2007) compiled Catholic critiques of embryo adoption. Sallam and Sallam (2016). Traina et al. (2008, 20). Foundational ethnographies of religion and ARTs include Inhorn (1994; 2003; 2015) on Islam, Ivry (2010) and Kahn (2000) on Judaism, and Roberts (2012) on Catholicism. Thompson (2006) introduces a landmark special issue on religion and reproductive technologies. Czarnecki (2022) is a notable exception. Chapter 1 examines some of the social, political, legal, and economic factors contributing to the stratified access to IVF as it emerged in the United States. Mundy (2006). The quote about the “backdoor attack” comes from Weil (2006, 35). Flavin (2008) and Paltrow and Flavin (2013) provide comprehensive analyses of the arrests and forced interventions of pregnant women in the United States. One exception to this rule is a clause in Blossom’s embryo adoption contract that disallows recipients from terminating pregnancies. Feminist anthropologist Laury Oaks uses the term “unspoken omnipresence” in her analysis of safe haven laws (2015, 48). In a sociological study with pro-­l ife activists, Ziad Munson (2009) categorizes antiabortion activism into four main streams of activity: politics, direct action, individual outreach, and public outreach. Following Munson’s schema, embryo adoption professionals and participants are predominantly involved in “public outreach,” which involves trying to change policies by altering public opinion through education. Evidence of this are the heaps of promotional materials in the form of printed pamphlets, oral sermons, prayer guides, radio and magazine ads, YouTube videos, television commercials, op-­eds, conference speeches, and webinars. Each outreach item is strategically targeted to intended audiences in Christian and non-­Christian adoption, fertility medicine, churches, and beyond. Some embryo adoption supporters are also involved in the “politics” stream, which focuses on changing foundational law. Examples include when advocates deliver legislative testimony, sign onto strategic lawsuits, and gather signatures for initiatives to codify embryo personhood in state constitutions. According to sociologist Ziad Munson (2009), abortion is often framed in antiabortion rhetoric as irresponsible, killing life, harming society, abusing civil rights, and resulting from deceitful abortion providers. Embryo adoption advocates mirror these frameworks to promote embryo adoption as a counterpart to abortion when using rhetoric to describe it as responsible, life-­saving, helping society, promoting civil rights, and holding the fertility industry accountable.

230 | Notes

63 Other scholars have documented the strategic opportunism of the antiabortion movement within fetal surgery, safe haven laws concerning infant relinquishment, and neonatal intensive care units—­all of which involve pregnancy (Casper 1998; Davis 2019; Oaks 2015). 64 Strege (2020, 145). 65 This statement is inspired by anthropologist Lynn M. Morgan, who argues: “All practices of personhood are political gestures, played out in a social matrix in which power is unevenly distributed” (2006, 13). 66 Ginsburg and Rapp (1991; 1995); Rapp (2001). 67 Briggs (2017). 68 To be clear, I did not find evidence directly linking embryo adoption to white supremacist movements that enroll reproductive processes in fomenting racial holy war. Kamali (2021) provides a deeper look inside white racist religious movements. 69 Butler (2021); Goldberg (2006); Gorski and Perry (2022); Harding (2000); Jones (2017; 2020); Kobes Du Mez (2020); Stewart (2020); Whitehead and Perry (2020); Williams (2012; 2021). 70 This approach echoes religious studies scholar Anthea Butler’s analysis of racism in white evangelicalism, in which she argues: “Evangelicalism is not simply a religious group at all. Rather, it is a nationalistic political movement whose purpose is to support the hegemony of white Christian men over and against the flourishing of others” (2021, 138). 71 Bialecki (2017); Bielo (2009; 2011; 2018); Bjork-­James (2021); Elisha (2011); Harding (2000); Luhrmann (2012). 72 While my focus in this book is on the Christian Right’s activities in the United States, the alliance’s nationalist strategies have always been shaped by, and in turn shaped, religious right-­wing regimes around the world through transnational networks that share ideas, funding, and political support (Buss and Herman 2003). 73 Williams (2012, 3). 74 Kobes Du Mez (2020). 75 The Christian Right, also called the Religious Right and New Right, typically describes a network of conservative politicians, think-­tanks, single-­issue activist organizations, and religious denominations focused on “family issues” that rose to prominence in the 1970s (Berlant 1997; Bjork-­James 2021; Erzen 2006; Jakobsen and Pellegrini 2003; Klatch 1987; Petchesky 1981; 1990). Advocates organized variously in groups self-­named the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition, among others. 76 Franklin and Ginsburg (2019). Their insights cohered in the wake of the 2016 election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, illustrating how his campaign slogan to “Make America Great Again” signified a host of issues linking sex, race, reproduction, religion, guns, and nation. 77 More than representing matters of personal or private concern, “family” politics extend a legacy in the United States in which the “family” operates as both

Notes | 231

78 79 80 81 82

83 84

85 86 87 88 89

90 91

92

93 94 95 96

97 98

a mediator and metaphor for the nation, perceived under threat (Berlant 1997). The family in conservative Christian politics is exemplified by white heterosexual households organized according to conventional gender roles and patriarchal authority and, when strong, is resistant to incursions by secularism, feminism, multiculturalism, and globalism. For Christian nationalists, protecting so-­called family values is interchangeable with defending the nation as a Christian moral order. Butler (2022); Roberts (1997). Harding (2000); Holland (2020b); Stewart (2020). Franklin and Ginsburg (2019). Abu-­Lughod (2002; see also 2013). This point parallels feminist scholar Gayatri Spivak’s (1988) earlier critique of how the British government justified colonialism in South Asia as “white men saving brown women from brown men.” Abu-­Lughod (2013, 34). Abu-­Lughod (2013, 47). The significance of Abu-­Lughod’s scholarship is once again clear as US media became awash with saving discourse following the Taliban’s regaining of power in Afghanistan in August 2021. Ticktin (2017). Ticktin (2017, 582). Ticktin (2017, 583). Ticktin (2017, 583). Lutz and Collins (1993) provide a feminist analysis of National Geographic images. Schwartz-­DuPre (2010) and Sensoy and Marshall (2010) present feminist critiques on Western portrayals of Muslim girls. Ticktin (2017, 577). Baldwin (1992) writes about innocence as the willful ignorance and refusal of those who believe themselves to be white to accept responsibility by facing past horrors of US American racism and its future implications. Bernstein (2011) presents an historical analysis of the racialized child in the United States. Omi and Winant define racialization as the sociohistorical processes that ascribe difference via racial meaning “to a previously unclassified relationship, social practice, or group” (2014, 111). Bernstein (2011); Zelizer (1985). Davis (2019). Davis (2019, 141). Elsewhere I examine the racist politics of embryo personhood activism, including examples of how IVF embryos are racialized through constructs of whiteness and Blackness within pro-­life personhood advocacy (Cromer 2019b). Cole (2012). Cole (2012).

232 | Notes

Interlude. Coming to Terms 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (2016). Crockin (2005b). Revillard (1974, 393). Revillard (1974, 395). West (1982). West (1982). West (1982). “Thatcher orders study of test-­tube ethics” (1982). Philadelphia Daily News (1984). Renfrew (1984). Cattapan and Baylis (2015) trace the historical semantics of “abandoned embryos,” which intersect with discourses of adoption. Veitch (1984, emphasis added). O’Sullivan (1991). O’Sullivan (1991). Edwards and Beard (1997, 4). Cooper (1996); Franklin (1999); Utley (1996). Faggioni (1996); Utley (1996). Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2008). Ibrahim (1996); Schreuder (1996).

Chapter 1. Life after IVF

1 2 3 4 5 6

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2018). Dunn (2019). Lomax and Trounson (2013). Steptoe and Edwards (1978). Franklin (2013). According to typical narratives of IVF history, the world’s second IVF baby—­ Alastair MacDonald—­was born in the UK on January 4, 1979, followed by Candice Reed in Australia on June 23, 1980, and Elizabeth Jordan Carr in the United States on December 28, 1981. Few histories of IVF acknowledge the work of Indian scientist Subhas Mukerji and colleagues who, on October 3, 1978, announced the birth of baby Durga (pseudonym) in Calcutta from IVF—­just two months after Steptoe and Edwards’ announcement in the UK. Unlike Edwards’ and Steptoe’s success with a “natural” IVF cycle without ovulation stimulating hormones, Mukerji used hormones to stimulate and trigger ovulation, as is done in animal husbandry, which required harvesting and fertilizing numerous eggs. Mukerji’s IVF method used the drug Pergonal—­a human menopausal gonadotropin that contains follicle stimulating hormones (FSH) and luteinizing hormones (LH) derived from the urine of postmenopausal women—­and an injection of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). He also experimented with cryopreservation

Notes | 233

7 8 9

10

11 12 13

methods inspired by successes in research with mammals. Notably, he reported that Durga’s birth resulted from the transfer of three embryos that had been cryopreserved at the eight-­cell stage using dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as a cryoprotectant and stored for 53 days in liquid nitrogen—­an achievement in human IVF that would take other scientists nearly six years to replicate. Part of the reason Mukerji’s successes are little known is because he faced severe professional backlash in his home country that resulted in sanctions on his research, which disallowed him from presenting or publishing his data. Mukerji “gave up fighting the system” in 1981 by ending his own life, according to successor Dr. Anand Kumar, who helped to establish posthumous recognition for Mukerji as the “architect” of India’s first IVF baby and world’s first birth from a cryopreserved embryo. For a detailed history of Mukerji’s research, including scientific assessment and endorsement of his claims, see Dr. Anand Kumar TC, a reproductive biologist who earned recognition in 1997 as progenitor of the first “scientifically-­documented” test-­tube baby in India named Harsha (Kumar 1997). Kumar used the spotlight to return recognition to Mukerji, whose contributions had been heretofore lost to history. Bharadwaj (2016) analyzes this case in a discussion on the role of Indian media in creating scientific credit. Radin and Kowal (2017). Landecker (2005). According to the Melbourne team: “To provide the patients with the best chance of pregnancy, all the eggs collected should be fertilised and the required number of embryos immediately transplanted. Therefore, to achieve the best chance of pregnancy, a number of embryos in excess of immediate requirements for transfer may be produced . . . Other groups have not followed our lead to develop freezing, which means that they may have to either penalize their patients’ chance of success by not fertilizing all the available eggs or they have a different view as to their disposal or the use of embryos in research. In our own view, freezing is an ethical obligation in in-­vitro fertilization” (Trounson, Wood, and Leeton 1982, 333). Leeton (2013) offers an early history of IVF from the perspective of a core member of the Australian team. According to West Fertility’s consent form: “It is important to note that since many eggs and embryos are abnormal, it is expected that not all eggs will fertilize and not all embryos will divide at a normal rate. The chance that a developing embryo will produce a pregnancy is related to whether its development in the lab is normal, but this correlation is not perfect. This means that not all embryos developing at the normal rate are in fact also genetically normal, and not all poorly developing embryos are genetically abnormal. Nonetheless, their visual appearance is the most common and useful guide in the selection of the best embryo(s) for transfer.” Baxter Bendus et al. (2006). Behr and Hedge (2012, 398). American Society for Reproductive Medicine (2012).

234 | Notes

14 Celada and Bosch (2020). 15 This quotation depicts dominant assumptions in IVF that patients undergoing oocyte retrieval procedures are cis women, which obscures the experiences of nonbinary and trans men who seek and support fertility services. Be wary of social science scholarship also promoting biologically essentialist ideas by regarding oocytes as human cells that are “specific to women” (cf. Waldby 2019, 1). 16 Romain (2010) develops the notion of “buying time” in analyzing the phenomenon of egg freezing. 17 Graham (2005). 18 Andrews (1986); Fox (2017). 19 Dowling-­Lacey et al. (2011); Zhang (2017). 20 Christensen and Kounang (2022); Cramer (2020). 21 Lyerly et al. (2010); Nachtigall et al. (2005). 22 Pflum (2019). 23 Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (2013). 24 Inhorn and Birenbaum (2008). 25 Carbone and Cahn (2010, 16 and 2, respectively). 26 The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1974). 27 Marsh and Ronner (2019, 64). 28 Harris (2000). 29 Walters (1979) and Franklin (1979). 30 Bennetts (1980). 31 Some examples include the UK, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, France, Australia, and New Zealand. 32 Daar (2008); Jasanoff and Metzler (2020); Marsh and Ronner (2019). 33 “Insurance Coverage by State” (2022). 34 Louisiana’s statute disallows IVF patients from donating embryos to research or discarding; they can only be used for procreative purposes or kept frozen. I met a reproductive endocrinologist from Louisiana while attending a pre-­conference session at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine meetings in 2011 on legal issues. He told me that the statute posed logistical challenges for his and other clinics. He recommended to his patients that they move their embryos to long-­term storage facilities out of state, from which point they could legally discard or donate without statutory concern. The director of one of the long-­term cryo-­storage facilities in the country told me that the company opened a storage site specifically to meet the demand coming from Louisiana fertility clinics. Louisiana’s statute also allows IVF embryos legal standing in court to sue and be sued, which made possible an ongoing saga across multiple states between actress Sofía Vergara and her ex-­fiancé Nick Loeb. In April 2015, reports surfaced about Loeb suing Modern Family TV sitcom star Vergara over their two cryopreserved embryos made when undergoing IVF in 2013. After their breakup, Vergara expressed wishes for their embryos to remain frozen indefinitely, while Loeb, as he stated in an op-­ed letter that the New York Times

Notes | 235

35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

49

published, regarded them as his “daughters” that he wished to save and raise (Loeb 2015). The letter from Loeb attained placement in the high-­profile paper because, according to the Op-­Ed page editor, his “strong pro-­life position . . . reflects an important debate that is going on around the country [concerning the] so-­called personhood movement” and “is intended to spark discussions, debate, controversy, and even some yelling” (Sullivan 2015). After a series of failed lawsuits, Loeb coordinated the filing of another in 2017 against Vergara in Louisiana, where Loeb moved his residence to take advantage of the state’s legal designation of embryos. The suit named the two frozen embryos “Emma” and “Isabelle,” and claimed that Vergara is neglecting and preventing them from receiving their expected inheritance by not allowing them to be transferred into a surrogate for potential birth. He attempted to convince the court to give him “custody” of the embryos, which he planned to raise following birth. Louisiana courts denied his claims, describing them as making a “mockery of the Louisiana legal system.” Carbone and Cahn (2010) note that reporting focused on outcomes has shaped the industry toward valuing successful pregnancies over other kinds of outcomes. Marsh and Ronner (2019). Marsh and Ronner (2019). Marsh and Ronner (2019); Thompson (2016). Becker (2000, 20). US IVF is a paradigmatic illustration of what Shellee Colen (1995) called stratified reproduction, or “the hierarchical organization of reproductive health, fecundity, birth experiences and child rearing that supports and rewards the maternity of some women, while despising or outlawing the mother-­ work of others” (Rapp 2001, 469). As a site for promoting procreation through technological intervention, IVF has long been exclusionary of certain people’s reproductive capacities (Becker 2000; Bell 2014; Colen 1995; Thompson 2016; Winddance Twine 2011). Thompson (2016). Marsh and Ronner (2019, 102); Roberts (1997). Roberts (1997, 253–­56). Hevia and Vacaflor (2013). Inhorn (2006). Larijani and Zahedi (2007). Inhorn (2015; 2016). Roberts (2007). IVF embryos are not coherently or consistently defined in US law, though are often managed as forms of personal property in fertility clinics due to the FDA’s inclusion of human embryos in its regulation of human tissues intended for implantation, transplantation, infusion, or transfer into a human recipient (Carbone and Cahn 2010). Most studies about US embryo disposition are based on single or multi-­site clinic studies. Since clinics vary considerably in size, services offered, and patient demo-

236 | Notes

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65

graphics (e.g., age, race, ethnicity, religiosity, insurance coverage, socioeconomic status), research is difficult to extrapolate for national trends. Most clinical studies follow two types of study design—­prospective (e.g., what patients think they will do or feel) and retrospective (e.g., what patients did)—­using methods like large surveys, qualitative interviewing, and systematic reviews of patient records. Ethnographic and longitudinal studies are less frequently represented in clinical scholarship on embryo disposition, which would help situate people’s attitudes, preferences, and experiences within broader social contexts. Lyerly et al. (2010). de Lacey (2007); Lanzendorf et al. (2010); Lyerly et al. (2006; 2010); Nachtigall et al. (2010). Brzyski et al. (2000). Brzyski et al. (2000); Samorinha et al. (2014). Lyerly et al. (2006; 2010); McMahon and Saunders (2009); McMahon et al. (2003); Nachtigall et al. (2005). Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (2020). Emphases on expertise in cryopreservation services have become more prominent following a series of high-­profile freezer failures (Fox 2017). Nachtigall et al. (2005); McMahon and Saunders (2009). Lyerly et al. (2006; 2010) are examples of prospective studies and Nachtigall et al. (2010) is an example of a retrospective study. Lyerly and Faden (2007); McMahon et al. (2003); Parry (2006). Cromer (2018). Dr. Moto believes that donating embryos is a process of “honorable discard” and a “savior option” for fertility patients. Some biobank donors expressed hope that their embryos would advance science. Miriam, for example, told the biobank coordinator that she hoped her embryos would improve IVF techniques that could benefit other fertility patients, like her. She described wanting “to give someone the chance in the future to have a child as great as ours” and “really wanted mine chosen for research and to be the one that will cure something.” Kawwass et al. (2016). Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (2016). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention et al. (2015, 2). The clinic director sought to end the program in 2005 after the FDA announced new regulations for human tissue donation that made anonymous embryo donation more challenging. Ellen removed donation for procreation from the list of disposition options for a few years, but patient demand compelled West to resume the program in 2010. For a couple of years, a billing specialist served unofficially as an embryo donation coordinator who, Ellen said, liaised well with patients and doctors and helped facilitate matches. Her role was not replaced when she left employment at West, so the clinic’s fertility doctors became the main facilitators of matches between donors and recipients, often with the primary goal of helping the latter become pregnant. Ellen made sure that patients who indicated inter-

Notes | 237

est in donating on their embryo disposition forms signed the requisite consent forms. In the few years Ellen had been in this role, she noticed that patients who participated in anonymous embryo donation “don’t want to know much” and inferred that those who did not participate “want to know” what happens with their embryos. 66 Frith et al. (2011) discuss an exception concerning New Zealand policy. Collard and Kashmeri (2011) and Paul et al. (2010) are other research teams who have examined the practice of embryo adoption. 67 Office of Population Affairs (n.d.). 68 According to journalist Rebecca Buckwalter-­Poza, the recipient pool has diversified over the past two decades: “To date, Obama has signed off on the use of $13.4 million to promote embryo adoption—­bringing the total US federal funds used for this purpose to over $24 million. The early proponents and recipients of ‘frozen embryo adoption awareness’ grants were conservative Christian activists and adoption agencies. They tended to be strongly pro-­Christian, anti-­single parent, and anti-­gay. But the newest grantees are less polarizing and more transparent” (Buckwalter-­Poza 2017).

Interlude. Claiming Adoption

1 The Economic Recovery Tax of 1981 established an itemized deduction for expenses related to adoption, which was replaced by a tax credit in 1996. One of the effects of this shift was that the relative cost of private adoption was decreased while families who adopted children through foster care did not receive benefits because they did not have any associated “costs” after federal matching funds that covered their up-­front costs. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 brought reform to foster care and adoption. The US Congress made the adoption tax credit permanent in 2013, allowing taxpayers six years to use the credit from the time the adopted child enters their custody. 2 Lawsky and Cahn (2009, 9). 3 See https://community.babycenter.com for the original post; the section quoted is a response to it. 4 Embryo Adoption Awareness Center (2020). 5 In their legal interpretation of Georgia’s statute, Lawsky and Cahn (2009, 19) disagree that it enables state or federal adoption credit for expenses incurred in “embryo exchange.”

Chapter 2. Embryo Saviorism

1 White saviorism has been the subject of scholarly discussions since the mid-­ twentieth century and has gained popular attention recently through critical discussions in social media and journalism, of which Hughey (2014) provides a comprehensive overview. 2 Briggs (2012; 2020); Eng (2010); Gondouin and Thapar-­Björkert (2022); Kim (2010); Oh (2015); Yngvesson (2010).

238 | Notes

3 Historically, adoption has been shrouded in secrecy and stigma, as well as not systematically tracked, which has left a spotty trail of evidence about its diverse forms and social effects. Briggs (2012), Carp (2004), Gordon (1999), Howell (2006), and Modell (1994) provide foundational histories of adoption in the United States. Presently, individual states govern adoption processes, which are typically forged by private adoption agencies, public adoption agencies, and independent attorneys with secular or religious affiliations. Descriptors for the kinds of adoption programs range, though generally include domestic, intercountry, foster, and relative placements for children of all ages, needs, creeds, and racial and ethnic heritage. 4 Howell (2006). 5 Briggs (2012); Modell (2002); Raible (2015); Solinger (2001). Modell (2002) provides a particularly compelling analysis of how adoption became the subject of conservative policy-­making, federal funding initiatives, and a strategic feature of the erosion of the welfare state starting in the 1980s. Perry (2017) critiques the efficacy of the Christian Right’s “orphan” movement. 6 Abu-­Lughod (2013); Davis (2019); Ticktin (2017). 7 These examples draw from Matthew Hughey’s helpful genealogy of white saviorism (2014, 8–­10). 8 Hughey (2014, 17). 9 Johnson (2013). 10 Butler (2021); Fletcher (2017); Goetz (2012); Jones (2020); Keel (2018). 11 Trenka, Oparah, and Shin (2006, 1). 12 Zill (2017). 13 Trenka et al. (2006). 14 Briggs (2003, 181). 15 Briggs (2012). 16 Ticktin (2017, 583). 17 Joyce (2013); Perry (2017). 18 Cruver et al. (2010), Merida and Morton (2011), and Moore (2009) are examples of “orphan theology.” 19 Joyce (2013); Perry (2017). 20 Some adoption watchdogs estimate that roughly half of the US adoption industry is composed of evangelical agencies, though David Smolin found the tally to be lower in a survey of 200 accredited adoption service providers. Even if evangelical adoption agencies do not constitute the majority, Smolin suggests the biggest and most powerful agencies are Christian (Joyce 2013, 65). 21 Brace and the Children’s Aid of New York (1859). 22 Gordon (1999, 9). 23 Gordon (1994); O’Connor (2001). 24 Gordon (1999). 25 Smith (2004); Tinker (1993). 26 Smith (2004).

Notes | 239

27 Smith (2004, 90). General Pratt was the first to use the term “racism” in recorded history. In an oft-­cited 1902 speech at the Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friend of the Indian, Pratt opposed racial segregation and supported assimilationism of American Indians. At the conference, he said, “Segregating any class or race of people apart from the rest of the people kills the progress of the segregated people or makes their growth very slow. Association of races and classes is necessary to destroy racism and classism” (Demby 2014). 28 Briggs (2020); Jacobs (2014); Strong (2001). 29 The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (2020). 30 Woodard (2018). 31 Jacobs (2014); Strong (2001). 32 Briggs (2013). Season 2 of This Land podcast, hosted by Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle, provides in-­depth analysis of the federal lawsuit Brackeen v. Haaland. This case began as an adoption dispute in Texas yet became “a well-­funded, systemic, far-­right operation that is using Native children to attack ICWA, threaten American Indian tribes and advance a conservative agenda” (Native News Online 2021). 33 Marre and Briggs (2009); Oh (2015); Pate (2014). 34 Joyce (2013, 49). 35 Oh (2012; 2015). 36 Oh (2012; 2015). 37 Eng (2003). White saviorism is one of a related set of discourses that critical scholars of adoption have examined. Historian Laura Briggs (2003) examines discourses of “rescue” in the context of transnational adoption iconography and argues that they construct certain groups as oppressed; framing specific contexts or conditions as risky; and promoting courses of action in order to provide relief or meet alleged needs. Anthropologist Ann Anagnost (2000) traces discourses of “salvage” in the historical shaping of adoption as a humanitarian effort. 38 Much of US adoption remains based on the social and legal myth that original family ties are completely severable. Producing orphans in law and practice creates the semblance of what anthropologist Barbara Yngvesson calls “clean breaks” by presuming the alienability of children from their families of origin and finality of adoption transactions (Yngvesson 2002; see also Briggs 2012; Dorow 2006; Dubinsky 2010; Oh 2012). US adoption law specifically strives to make a child completely and irreversibly freestanding from its family of origin through legal erasures that “cancel” (Yngvesson 2002) their pre-­adoptive histories and relational ties. The creation of new birth certificates for adoptees that supplant the adoptive parents as the biological parents exemplifies this process of erasing birth families from the legal record. Such myths reveal the role of “commodity thinking” in adoption by attempting to sever ties between children and families in ways that alienate children, like commodities, from their progenitors (Briggs 2012; Dorow 2006; Dubinsky 2010; Oh 2012; Yngvesson 2002). 39 Roberts (2002; 2022). 40 Solinger (2000).

240 | Notes

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Ortiz and Briggs (2003). Ticktin (2017). Harding (2000, 194). Lugg (1996, 341). Diamond (1998, 2). Ginsburg (1998, 227). Mason (1999). Mason (2002) provides an extended analysis in her book on the linked histories between white supremacy and antiabortion activism. Sisson et al. (2017). Simon and Roorda (2000) and Trenka et al. (2006) foreground the experiences and perspectives of birth parents and adult adoptees. Adams (2016); Bowker and Star (1999); Hacking (1986); Nelson (2015); Stone (1988); Verran (2001). Briggs (2012; 2020); Eng (2003); Mariner (2019); Oh (2012; 2015); Pate (2014); Yngvesson (2010). Joyce (2013, 62). UNICEF, UNAIDS, and USAID (2004). UNICEF gathered data on an intentionally broad group of children—­those defined as orphaned by having lost one or both parents as well as vulnerable—­in 93 low-­ and middle-­income counties. Vulnerable children counted in this report refer to “those children whose survival, well-­being, or development is threatened by HIV/ AIDS.” UNICEF develops reports like this to motivate countries to fund aid agencies serving vulnerable children in their home communities. The report notes that efforts to define and count orphans are complicated by the scores of children in orphanages placed by families temporarily, the numerous street children beyond the care of their living parents, the hundreds of millions of children worldwide under the age of five without birth certificates, and the countless children displaced with their families by war and political violence. Nowhere does the report recommend international adoption for how best to support the world’s vulnerable children, but argues instead for supporting parents and communities to raise their own children. Graff (2009). Marlene likely retrieved the number from estimates reported by Lori Andrews (1999) in the Washington Post. Marlene based her calculation on a conservative thaw rate of 50% and pregnancy rate for IVF clinics between 13.4% and 37.2%. Hoffman et al. (2003); Lyerly et al. (2010). Lyerly et al. (2006); Lyerly and Faden (2007). Pflum (2019). Other embryo adoption supporters have inaccurately calculated for advocacy purposes how many embryos were available for donation and could potentially be born. An online brochure published by the Family Research Council (FRC) in 2006 entitled “Embryo Adoption: In the Words of Their Parents” provides such an example. Founded in 1983, the FRC is a right-­wing evangelical nonprofit “dedicated to articulating and advancing a family-­centered philosophy of life . . . from

Notes | 241

a biblical worldview,” according to its website. The FRC was co-­founded by Dr. James Dobson, leader of the influential evangelical advocacy organization Focus on the Family, of which the FRC became a division in 1988. Based on a 2003 study estimating 400,000 embryos in US frozen storage (Hoffman et al., 2003), the FRC claimed how many of the frozen embryo “lives could be saved” through embryo adoption. The brochure states that there are “some 28,000 children [embryos] whose fate remains undecided.” Using a live birth rate per frozen embryo transfer of 36.9%, which was drawn from an unidentified source, the authors calculate that “10,332 lives could be saved,” or born, through embryo adoption. This number tells a misleading story. In the original source referenced, 2.3%, totaling only 9,225 embryos, were reported in storage awaiting donation for procreation. How did the FRC come up with three times that amount—­28,000—­ said to represent the “children [embryos] whose fate remains undecided”? The FRC increased the tally to 28,000 embryos by including in their calculations the embryos being stored for “other” reasons. The “other” reasons reported in the study included “lost contact with the patient; abandoned; patient deaths; waiting 7 years to discard; waiting for shipment out; undecided about transfer to another state; waiting for a disposition decision; donate to research or to another couple; embryology training; wishes not specified on permit/no permit; divorce case—­ awaiting final decision; and awaiting transfer to long-­term storage” (Hoffman et al. 2003, 1067). Many of these reasons exclude embryos from eligibility for procreative donation in the United States. If we were to use the 36.9% live birth rate per frozen embryo transfer that the FRC used in their calculation with only the 9,225 embryos designated in the RAND report for reproductive donation, a more accurate calculation would be 3,404—­a sizeable difference from the “10,322 lives [that] could be saved” claimed in the FRC brochure. It’s safe to say that the FRC padded their estimate of “lives [that] could be saved” by nearly a factor of three. An effect of this statistical sleight of hand amplifies urgency around the perceived “frozen orphan crisis” while undermining relational claims fertility patients maintain with and through their frozen embryos. 61 For a few years, the 600,000 number was featured in all of Blossom’s literature as well as on the Office of Population Affairs website of the US Department of Health and Human Services website—­one of their funders. 62 Lomax and Trounson (2013). 63 Framing the rising numbers of frozen embryos in US fertility clinics as a moral hazard is a distinct political strategy of embryo adoption advocates, but they are not alone in perceiving it as a problem. Since the Rioses’ death and subsequent frozen embryo saga, which is discussed in the interlude “Coming to Terms,” made international news in the 1980s, commentators in medicine, law, bioethics, politics, and journalism have variously described the US frozen embryo supply in troubling terms: as a stockpile (Krieger 1989), a glut (Weiss 2003, 2), a dilemma (Ostling 2005). It has been said that the unabating increase in frozen embryos

242 | Notes

64 65 66 67

68 69 70 71

72 73 74

creates legal and moral problems (Krieger 1989), ignites debate with no easy answers (Weiss 2003), and foments battles called embryo “crusades” (Belluck 2005) and “wars” (Caplan and Patrizio 2009; Crockin 2005a). Soon after cryopreservation became standard practice in fertility clinics, clinicians like Dr. Ryszard Chetkowski, director of the Alta Bates Hospital fertility program in Berkeley, California, described freezing embryos as “a real problem . . . The technology creates a lot of new problems that we didn’t have to deal with in the past” (Krieger 1989). The 2003 RAND-­SART report estimating the number frozen embryos in US fertility clinics “reignited debate,” according to the Washington Post, about “what should be done with the nation’s prodigious stores of nascent human life,” concluding “there are no easy answers to the embryo glut” (Weiss 2003). Edelman (2004). Morgan (2009, 34–­35). Monica’s idea was not farfetched due to the area’s high concentration of biotech facilities and fertility clinics. “Rescues” are one of four main kinds of pro-­life protest characterized in Ziad Munson’s (2009) research, which include (1) public outreach through educational campaigns to alter public opinion, (2) political-­legal advocacy to influence the legal status of abortion, (3) individual outreach efforts to persuade pregnant people, such as through Crisis Pregnancy Centers, and (4) direct action against abortion seekers and providers. Rescues are direct action strategies developed by the extremist antiabortion group Operation Rescue to oppose abortion through targeted violence to abortion providers and clinic property, service disruption (e.g., sit-­ins, blockades), and sidewalk protest and “counseling.” Smolin (2011, 70). Burke (2006). Joyce (2013, 59). Nathan’s and Tim’s efforts to frame embryo adoption as morally equivalent to conventional adoption echoes discourses of humanitarianism, a tradition with Christian roots that believes in a universal humanity and imperative to relieve victims of suffering without an ulterior motive. Humanitarianism first emerged in the early nineteenth century as a form of Christian charity that espouses an ethic of dignity and equality among all humans (Calhoun 2008; Fassin 2011; Redfield 2013; Redfield and Bornstein 2011; Ticktin 2011). Bernstein (2011); Levander (2006). Briggs (2017). Cole (2012).

Interlude. American Seed

1 2 3 4

Strege (2018). Strege (2018). Strege, Strege, and Strege (2020). Strege (2020, 17).

Notes | 243

5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Strege (2020, 40–­41). Strege (2018). Strege (2020, 48). McDowell and Rae (2020). Focus on the Family (1999). Halper (2008, 105–­16) provides a detailed history about Dr. James Dobson, who co-­founded the the Family Research Council evangelical ministry, counseled Republican presidents, identified as a powerful voice in Christian media, and was named by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in 2005. Strege (2020, 79). Strege (2020, 80). McDowell and Rae (2020). McDowell and Rae (2020). Burke (2015). While children are often the subject of pro-­life politics, few have considered their role in activism. Holland (2020a) is an exception. Strege (2020, 14). Strege (2020, 13). McDowell and Rae (2020). Strege (2020, 15). McDowell and Rae (2020).

Chapter 3. Generation

1 Bromwich et al. (2017); Glenn et al. (1993); Ladd-­Taylor and Umansky (1998). 2 To break the contract and retrieve embryos, donors are required to send a letter to ECA stating their request to renege the contract with a $500 check and storage agreement form for shipping the embryos from the recipient client’s clinic to a new cryo-­storage facility. For recipients to break the agreement, they have to send a letter requesting to terminate. Recipients must continue to pay storage for the embryos to remain in their fertility clinic until the embryos are re-­matched with another recipient and shipped to the new clinic. It is far more common for recipients to break the agreement because some receive numerous embryos in the initial match and are unable to transfer all of them before their family-­building process feels complete. Recipients do not have to use all embryos they receive, but because they have exclusive rights to use them in the Blossom contract, they must be relinquished before they can be re-­matched with another recipient, who would receive the entire remaining set for exclusive use. The effects of this program policy are examined in the next chapter. 3 The ministry’s name comes from 1 Samuel 1:10–­16, in which Hannah weeps in anguish and despair for the Lord to give her a son. According to the website, “We offer Christian support to help meet the emotional and spiritual needs of married women experiencing fertility-­related difficulties through prayer, understanding, friendship, shared information, and Biblical counsel.”

244 | Notes

4 Like most participants, the Bakers and Channings shared the experience of infertility as well as similar socioeconomic status. The similarities between the two couples characterizes one major distinction between embryo adoption participants and parties in domestic and international adoption and surrogacy, where power differentials are often very stark. An exception to this is seen in foster care, where Wozniak (2001) discusses how relations between mothers in foster care are often more socioeconomically level. 5 Layne (1999b); Modell (1999). 6 Relatedly, feminist anthropologists have examined a range of gifting dynamics in transnational surrogacy, from surrogates who embraced gifting to resist the commodification of their labor (Pande 2014) to commissioning parents who resisted the reciprocity implied by gift-­giving (Deomampo 2016). 7 Gifts are a common trope in traditional adoption, pregnancy loss, and surrogacy (Layne 1999b; Modell 1999; Ragone 1999; Yngvesson 2002) and a topic of long-­ standing anthropological interest (Douglas 1990; Mauss 1954; Strathern 1988). 8 Bialecki (2008) discusses how sacrifice plays a different role among evangelicals than stewardship. 9 In earlier versions of the contract, the agency required donors to renew their agreement annually, otherwise embryo ownership would default back to them. After this case, the program removed the annual renewal clause from the contract. 10 Mariner (2019); Thompson (2005). 11 I encountered the term “welcoming womb” in a program brochure entitled “Embryo Donation & Adoption: Sharing the Hope for Building a Family,” which describes the “adoption” process as “offering a welcoming womb to embryos that were waiting.” Chapter 5 examines how discourses of “waiting,” temperature, and uterine politics propel embryo adoption’s political goals. 12 The treatment of children as patriarchal property only recently shifted toward ideas about children as “priceless” a little over a century ago (Zelizer 1985). 13 Mason (1996). 14 Coontz (1992). 15 In the words of evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell, “The family is the fundamental building block and the basic unit of our society, and its continued health is a prerequisite for a healthy and prosperous nation. No nation has ever been stronger than the families within her” (1980, 104). 16 Noel referenced the 1990s legal battle over “Baby Jessica,” who courts decided to return to her birth parents after years of battling with the couple who adopted her. Noel referenced this case as an example of insecure parentage for adopters, who she believed had the strongest claim on the child the adoptive family called Jessica. 17 Briggs (2020); Roberts (1997; 2002; 2022). 18 Briggs (2020). 19 For queer and other marginalized groups using embryo donation to forge families, this security could be beneficial.

Notes | 245

20 As an astute anonymous reviewer noted, the perceived “sins” of IVF created conditions for embryo saviors to fulfill such roles. Chapter 5 delves further into advocates’ theological views on time with respect to God’s plan for their lives and frozen embryos’ “interrupted fates.” 21 Stewardship has become a common topic among Christians around global climate disruption, Christian denialism, and theological reasons for environmental justice (Bialecki 2008). 22 Zaloom (2016, 327). 23 Christian debates about divine law, natural law, and civic law are elemental to conservative Christian religious ideologies and related political movements propelling them, such as dominionism, Christian nationalism, and antiabortion politics (Clarkson 2016; Covington, McGraw, and Watson 2012). I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for drawing this debate to my attention. Becker (2011) provides an illustrative example of how embryo personhood proponents invoke divine law to support their absolutist views. 24 This theological belief informed settler Christian justifications for the theft of Indigenous lands based on Western legal constructs of terra nullius and divinely sanctioned notions of white possession (Moreton-­Robinson 2015). 25 The Ulmans applied in 2003 before the Blossom program required donations of embryos made with donor eggs to include the egg donor contract with language giving explicit permission for the progenitors to donate remaining embryos for procreative purposes. If the language does not exist in the contract, the program asked applicants to provide an addendum after conferring with the egg donor. This is a logistically challenging process and barrier for some interested donors.

Interlude. Waiting

1 Pss. 27:14 New International Version and 27:11 NIV, respectively. 2 For example, Lam. 3:25 NIV: “The Lord is good to those whose hope is in Him, to the one who seeks Him.”

Chapter 4. Unselection

1 Feminist sociologist Monica Casper (1998) develops a related argument in her analysis of fetal surgery. 2 Gammeltoft and Wahlberg (2014); Wahlberg and Gammeltoft (2018). 3 Cromer (2020). 4 Omi and Winant (2014) define racialization and Garland-­Thomson (2011) defines the social production of disability. 5 Annamma, Connor, and Ferri (2013); Bailey and Mobley (2019); Ben-­Moshe (2020); Schalk and Kim (2020), with gratitude to Rebecca-­Eli Long for drawing these literatures to my attention. 6 Modell and Dambacher (1997). 7 Sufian (2022, 3). 8 Briggs (2012); Herman (2008); Kim (2010); Modell (2002); Oh (2015); Sufian (2022).

246 | Notes

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Modell and Dambacher (1997). Herman (2008). Gailey (2009). Gailey (2009, 88). Gailey (2009, 104). Dorow (2006); Yngvesson (2010). Russell (2018, 35). Fox (2009); Harrison (2013). Becker, Butler, and Nachtigall (2005); Harrison (2013); Speier (2016); Thompson (2009). Fox (2009). Ariza (2015, 6–­7). Deomampo (2016); Homanen (2018); Thompson (2009). Fox (2009); Sufian (2022). Duster (1990); Taussig, Heath, and Rapp (2003). Gammeltoft and Wahlberg (2014, 205). Asch and Wasserman (2014); Baruch, Kaufman, and Hudson (2008); Kafer (2011); Scully (2022); Taussig, Heath, and Rapp (2003). Valentine (2021). McGuire (2016). Racializing embryos has a long history in embryological sciences too (Gilbert 2021; Morgan 2003). Thompson (2009, 141). Roberts (2012, 228). Russell (2018); Szkupinksi Quiroga (2007). According to one embryo adoption program coordinator: “The majority of our donors are Caucasian but we do have minority embryos. We try to reserve minority embryos because they are harder to come by, especially African American embryos . . . We have higher demand for them. It’s the big difference between traditional and embryo adoption.” Elsewhere I discuss in depth the racialization of embryos in embryo adoption (Cromer 2019a; 2020). Cromer (2020). Halbert (2016). Halbert (2016). Halbert (2016). Marti and Emerson (2014). Merida and Morton (2011), cited in Joyce (2013, 71). Marti and Emerson (2014). Emerson and Smith (2001); Marti and Emerson (2014). Halbert (2016). Halbert (2016). Halbert (2016). National Embryo Donation Center (2019).

Notes | 247

44 Halbert (2016). “Minority embryos” and “African American embryos” illustrate the “too easy elisions” (Thompson 2009) we see in the Blossom program, discussed earlier. The Halberts and NEDC both collapse distinctions between the donors’ racial identities into their embryos and project racial imaginaries onto potential children. 45 National Embryo Donation Center (2016). 46 At the turn of the twenty-­first century, some evangelical Christians began challenging colorblindness discourse common in congregations throughout the previous century with a new “theology of diversity” (Thompson 2017). “Jesus is not colorblind,” declared one Baptist pastor in an essay featured on the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention website about the perils of colorblindness (Prince 2014). Tolerating, rather than celebrating, racial and ethnic diversity prevents Christians from doing God’s work of encouraging love and inclusion. Racial differences, Aaron writes, are not “insignificant.” Rather, “the human family’s varying physical characteristics [are] awesome reminders of God’s creative brilliance.” Instead of seeking colorblindness, the Halberts claim to “embrace” race (Halbert 2016). 47 Halbert (2016). 48 Halbert (2016). 49 Religious studies scholar Gerardo Marti (2012) describes “conspicuous color” as a strategy common within twenty-­first-­century, white-­majority Christian congregations that embrace a theology of racial diversity. The California congregations in his study use racialized ritual inclusion to make sure that racial diversity is visibly on display within worship rituals, such as centering singers of color in gospel choirs and other public liturgies. Similarly, the Halberts make racialized differences conspicuous in their family’s “portrait” through exotifying, detailed descriptions of their and their children’s bodies. 50 21-­hydroxylase deficiency is one of the group of disorders known as congenital adrenal hyperplasias (CAH). Diagnoses of CAH in in vitro embryos is possible with preimplantation genetic diagnosis for a single gene disorder. 51 Cartwright (2003). 52 Disability is a topic of growing attention within anthropology and recent scholarship in this field (Ginsburg and Rapp, 2013; 2020; Hartblay 2020) has inspired my thinking here too. 53 Garland-­Thomson (2011, 596). 54 Garland-­Thomson (2011, 596). 55 Garland-­Thomson (2011, 593). 56 Berne et al. (2018). Discourse in this ad describing “each fertilized egg” as “deserv[ing] its chance to live, however long or short that life may be” exemplifies the fraught intersection of pro-­life politics and disability rights (Herzog 2018) in which they have become “strange bedfellows” (Giric 2016) and “paradoxes” (Jesudason and Epstein 2011). According to Jesudason and Epstein, “Anti-­choice advocates tend to idealize disability while opposing the entitlement programs and government funding of social services, such as state developmental disability

248 | Notes

programs, funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and the access mandates of the Americans with Disabilities Act that would make raising a child with a disability more possible” (2011, 542). 57 Cartwright (2003); Fox (2009); Harrison (2013).

Interlude. A Warm Body

1 Keenan et al. (2008). 2 Anthropological considerations of reproductive loss (Craven 2019; Layne 2003) have a lot to teach us when considering experiences of loss in IVF where pregnancies may or may not occur. De Lacey (2017) examines tropes of death in IVF embryo disposition decisions, and Czarnecki (2022) discusses the gendered moralities that shape experiences of reproductive loss among evangelical women users of IVF. 3 A chemical pregnancy is an early miscarriage often occurring a few weeks after one’s last period. A blood or urine test may show the presence of human chorionic gonadotropin hormone indicative of the body’s hormonal preparation for pregnancy, though the fertilized egg(s) do not successfully attach to the uterine wall.

Chapter 5. Making America Uterine Again

1 Stormer (2000). 2 Turner and Harris (1995). Gratitude to the anonymous reviewer who drew my attention to the deeper ethnographic history on this topic. 3 Briggs (2017); Chavez (2017); Davis (1983); Ginsburg and Rapp (1995); Goodwin (2020); Murphy (2012; 2017); Roberts (1997); Theobald (2019); Valdez (2021); Weinbaum (2019). 4 Stormer (2000, 111). 5 Stormer (2000, 118). 6 The term “saving space” is inspired by rhetoric scholar Nathan Stormer’s notion of “prenatal space,” which he defines as a “layered set of practices and symbols that create a space that is at once physical and imagined” (2000, 136). 7 Franklin and Ginsburg (2019). 8 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1987). 9 Landecker (2005; 2007); Radin (2017); Radin and Kowal (2017). 10 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2008). 11 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2008, italics in original). 12 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2008). 13 Brakman and Weaver (2007); Roberts (2007; 2012). 14 Dobson (1993, 58–­59). 15 Traina et al. (2008, 20). 16 Strege (2020, 13). 17 Traina et al. (2008, 19). 18 Anecdotally, I heard some of my non-­Christian friends describe their experiences with fertility medicine as “cold,” suggesting that thermal metaphors are not unique to evangelical patients but feature in secular accounts about infertility

Notes | 249

19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37

and IVF too. What makes the thermal metaphors observed in embryo adoption distinct, though, is how they contribute to Blossom’s practical and political goals. Lethen (2001); Burstein (2012). Marx and Engels (2004, 64). Alinsky (1989, 19). Weber (2001) and Weber (1998, 347), respectively. Beregow (2019) develops a more robust conceptualization of “thermal politics.” Teman (2010) noticed similar metaphors of uterine warmth among Israeli surrogates: “An oven, an incubator, and a hothouse are all necessarily warm environments, in contrast to the cold, distant connotations of the ‘mother machine’” (Teman 2010, 37). According to Teman, the warmth they provide is a “human warmth that emanates from the surrogates’ heart, rather than something ‘artificial’” (2010, 38). As Tamar, one surrogate, told Teman, “It isn’t a womb for rent . . . It is a warm place, both in the belly and in the heart” (38), an act described as “saving” infertile couples from childlessness (66). Gratitude to the anonymous reviewer who drew my attention to these parallels. Laqueur (1990); Schiebinger (1989); Stormer (2003). Casper (1998); Duden (1993); Morgan and Michaels (1999). Bell (2014); Ginsburg (1989); Griffith (1997); Ingersoll (2003); McGirr (2001); McRae (2018); Roberts (1997). Teman (2010). Conceiving god’s children has resonances in other religious traditions. Taragin-­ Zeller (2019; 2023) examines how Orthodox Jews in Israel make family planning decisions in consultation with rabbinic interpretations. Lappé, Jeffries Hein, and Landecker (2019); Valdez (2021). Petchesky (1987). Czarnecki (2022). This argument is informed by Lynn M. Morgan and Elizabeth Roberts’ (2012) discussion about the moralizing forces within expressions of reproductive governance. Layne (1999b, 196). These are the scripture passages she quoted in the blog post: Jeremiah 29:11–­13, Lamentations 3:22–­23, Mark 9:24, Isaiah 55:8–­9, Psalm 147:3, Psalm 30:5, Psalm 34:18, Psalm 56:8, Romans 5:8, Job 1:21, Psalm 139:13–­16, 1 Corinthians 13:12–­13, Isaiah 53:5, and 1 Peter 5:10–­11. Franklin and Ginsburg (2019). Morgan and Roberts (2012).

Interlude. Supreme Appeal

1 2 3 4

Gratitude to Becca Howes-­Michel for drawing this filing to my attention. Strege et al. (2021, 10). Cohen and Joffe (2020). Since 2018, coinciding with the retirement of Justice Kennedy, antiabortion lawmakers passed unprecedent levels of severely restrictive statutes that surpassed

250 | Notes

5



6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Mississippi’s 15-­week ban. Senate Bill 8 in Texas, for instance, restricted abortion after 6 weeks and, unlike elsewhere, was allowed by the Supreme Court to go into effect while the law was challenged in federal court. Judge Carlton Reeves’s ruling voiced severe disapproval of Mississippi’s legal game: “The state chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-­long campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. This court follows the commands of the Supreme Court and the dictates of the United States Constitution, rather than the disingenuous calculations of the Mississippi Legislature” (Liptak 2021). US Supreme Court (1973, 163). Liptak (2021). US Supreme Court (2020). Supporting briefs took a variety of argument angles concerning legal precedent, states’ rights to govern abortion, theories of constitutional interpretation, women’s health and rights, medical ethics, and definitions of viability and personhood (Erskine 2021). Justice Foundation (n.d.). Prager (2021). Strege et al. (2021). Strege et al. (2021, 21) and (2021, 20). Strege et al. (2021, 2). Strege et al. (2021, 2). US Congress (1973). Strege et al. (2021, 21).

Conclusion

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11

US Supreme Court (2022, 5). Nash and Cross (2021). “Abortion Policy in the Absence of Roe” (2022). Cohen and Joffe (2020). Buss and Herman (2003); Graff, Kapur, and Walters (2019). Strege (2020, 145). Senator Mitch McConnell told USA Today about Senate Republicans’ intentions to pass a federal abortion ban (Jackson and Bailey 2022), which abortion foes have been planning for decades (Goldberg 2021). In a letter to members of the US Congress, Kristin Hawkins, president of Students for Life Action, which is one of the largest antiabortion activist groups in the United States, emphasized that overturning Roe is part of a more ambitious political project: “At this pivotal moment in which almost anything is possible, it’s crucial to establish the difference between a previous tactic (such as limiting abortion at 15 weeks) and our goals or current strategies” (Kitchener 2022). Goldberg (2021). US Supreme Court (2022, 1). Kindig (2022). Davis (1998).

Notes | 251

12 13 14 15

16 17

18 19

20

21

22

Gorski and Perry (2022); Whitehead and Perry (2020). Franklin and Ginsburg (2019); Whitehead and Perry (2020). Buss and Herman (2003). Grzebalska and Pető (2018). For analyses of the influence of the Christian Right in transnational right-­wing movements, see Erel (2018), Gevisser (2020), Gokariksel, Neubert, and Smith (2019), Graff, Kapur, and Walters (2019), Maskovsky and Bjork-­James (2020), and Mason (2019). Tharoor (2022). Gratitude to members of the Reproductive Righteousness Project, especially Lea Taragin-­Zeller and Sarah Franklin, for co-­thinking with me about these global patterns. Strege (2021, 15–­16). Elsewhere I examine the racist politics of embryo personhood through activist strategies and claims such as these (Cromer 2019b). “Attorney Allan Parker” (2021). Parker asked the Supreme Court, in a special filing, to give Hannah five minutes during oral argument, which he described as an “extraordinary and unusual request” based on her “unique perspective to represent the importance of protecting human life from the moment of fertilization.” This request was not granted. Fr. Pavone has held various roles as the national director of Priests for Life, president of the National Pro-­Life Religious Council and the 2020 Trump Catholic Advisory Council, and co-­chair of Pro-­Life Voices for Trump. Pavone (2021). Lord, we ask your blessing upon John and Marlene [Strege]. We ask your blessing upon Hannah and upon all the Snowflake children and families across this nation that have given the beautiful witness of what adoption can be even when done so early in the child’s life. Thank you, Lord for this witness. Thank you for these people. Thank you for people like those at Nightlight [Christian Adoptions] who advanced Christian adoption and who help and serve so many families and save so many lives. Bless our brothers and sisters at Nightlight and let that effort continue to grow. Bless our friends like Allan Parker. Bless our colleagues in ministry like Dr. James Dobson. Bless our political leaders who have the courage to stand up for life, like President George W. Bush has done and President Donald Trump and all those Lord, who have made it clear that they are servants, not masters, of human life. Bless all of us as we move forward in serving your kingdom, which is a kingdom of truth of life and of love. And thank you Lord God, thank you Father, for adopting us all as your sons and daughters. We pray in the mighty name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Franklin and Ginsburg (2019).

252 | Notes

23 Cole (2012). 24 Ticktin (2017, 584). 25 Gratitude to the anonymous reviewer who helpfully described these efforts as a form of religious imperialism. 26 Ticktin (2017, 586). 27 My thinking about proxies has been immeasurably enriched by conversations with Emily Yates-­Doerr, Sarah Franklin, Jessica Hardin, and Zoe Nyssa. 28 Martin (2014). 29 National Conference of State Legislatures (2018). 30 Paltrow and Flavin (2013). 31 Ross (2011). 32 Casper (1998); Davis (2019); Oaks (2015). 33 Briggs (2017). 34 Gratitude to Sarah Franklin for drawing my attention to Gevisser’s (2020) research showing how the “gender wars” are operating as a proxy for the saviorist goals of global missionaries. 35 Bialecki (2017); Bielo (2009; 2011; 2018); Bjork-­James (2021); Elisha (2011); Harding (2000); Luhrmann (2012). 36 Strege (2020, 80). 37 Harding (1991, 393). 38 Harding (1991, 393). 39 Harding (1991, 393). 40 Kolbert (2021). 41 Abu-­Lughod (2013, 47). 42 Abu-­Lughod (2013, 32) and Abu-­Lughod (2013, 47). See Farrell and McDermott (2005) on strategic shifts in US feminism from domestic to global issues, including the rights of Afghan women. See also Spivak’s (1988) and Mahmood’s (2004) critiques of Western liberal feminism. 43 Abu-­Lughod (2013, 47). 44 Cromer, Hardin, and Nyssa (2020). 45 Abu-­Lughod (2013, 34). 46 Abu-­Lughod (2013, 49). 47 Abu-­Lughod (2013, 49). 48 Haraway (2016, 3). 49 Ticktin (2017, 578). 50 Ticktin (2017, 578).

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Index

Page numbers in italics indicate Photos. abortion: antiabortion movement, 2, 12, 18, 108, 201, 227n40, 230n63; Califano opposition to, 46, 47; Christian nationalism and opposition to, 21–­22; Christian Right opposition to, 23–­24, 37, 72; federal ban on, 205, 250n7; Gestational Age Act of Mississippi on, 199–­200, 249n4, 250n5; impact of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on access to, 203–­7, 227n43; IVF intersection with politics of, 16–­17; omnipresence in embryo adoption, 18–­21; politicization of, xiii, 24, 45; post-­Roe access to, 203–­7; social impact from weakened rights of, 205; white evangelicals opposition to legal, 9. See also antiabortion movement; pro-­life; reproductive rights abortion rights, 203; embryo adoption attack on, 18–­19, 229n59; Strege, J., and Strege, M., challenge to, 201–­2. See also law Abu-­Lughod, Lila, 25–­26, 208, 217–­18, 252n42 adoption: Christian, x, 3, 54, 56, 63, 66, 70–­72, 78, 191, 238n20; for Christianity family values advancement, 64, 238n5; Christian Right promotion of, 72; connections to Christian child-­saving, 54, 63–­68, 70–­71, 238n5; discourse in embryo adoption, 3–­4, 7, 25, 34–­35, 54, 63, 73–­86, 98, 99–­107, 123, 126, 129, 135–­38, 144–­60, 169, 181–­94; domestic, 10, 54, 58, 132; gift discourse in, 244nn6–­7; history of US, 63–­73, 131–­32; individual states governing of, 238n3; international, 8, 58, 70–­71, 83, 132; Joyce on white evangelicals support for, 67; matching practices, 131–­32; race matching in, 131–­33; racism in US, 65–­66, 68–­71, 131–­32; stratified demographics in, 17, 65, 114, 131–­32; tax

credit and, 57–­62; in US genocide, 68–­70, 114; in US militarism, 70–­71; white saviorism in, 63–­66. See also embryo adoption adoption tax credit (ATC), embryo adoption and, 62; court adoption finalization order for, 59–­60; explanation of, 57; Jacob, D., and Jacob, E., on legitimization for, 60–­61; online community forums for, 59; “Option of Adoption Act” in Georgia, 60, 237n5 American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), xvi, 42; ethical guidelines of, 48; Ethics Committee of, 32, 45, 53; on infertility treatment, 54 anthropology: ethnographic methods, xiv–­ xv, xxii, 4, 50, 53, 212, 235n49; feminist, xiii, 1–­3, 12, 17–­18, 25–­27, 48–­49, 171, 217, 244nn6–­7; on personhood, 12; of reproduction, xiii, 2–­3, 197, 248n2; of US Christianity, 213–­14 antiabortion movement, 227n40, 230n63; ART intersection with politics of, 16–­21; ARTs unchallenged by, 17; embryo adoption as proxy in, 29, 212; embryo adoption link to goals of, 108; for embryo and fetal personhood, 12, 18; federal embryo regulations impacted by advocacy of, 45–­50; feminists on political utility of IVF embryos for, 12, 17–­18; hESC research opposition by, 14–­15; IVF and human embryo research hostility, 47; laws and Roe v. Wade, 16, 199; McCorvey as figurehead for, 201; Munson on activists, 229nn61–­62; National Right to Life Committee, 14, 24; person legal definition and, 13–­16; Petchesky on use of visual technologies in, 13; proponents, 15; saviorism of, 71; 281

282 | Index antiabortion movement (cont.) strategic arm of Christian Right, 23–­24, 37, 72, 205; Strege, H., advocacy for, 201; Students for Life Action, 250n7; white evangelicals and, 16, 71, 228n51; white supremacy and, 240n47. See also pro-­life antiabortion policy: in embryo adoption program, 19–­20, 229n60; embryo and fetal personhood, 12–­14, 18, 210–­11, 227n43; Gestational Age Act of Mississippi on, 199–­200, 249n4, 250n5. See also Supreme Court ARTs. See assisted reproductive technologies ASRM. See American Society for Reproductive Medicine assisted reproduction, 5, 165, 197, 204; Catholic Church opposition to, 17; CDC on, 53; in fertility industry, xiv; options, 54; process of, 25; UK on ethics of, 33 assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs): antiabortion movements unsustained challenge of, 17; cryopreservation and, 16; definition, 1; deregulatory environment and IVF embryos amassment, 37; embryo donation and, 16; embryo-­making in laboratory, 1, 38–­39; ethnography and, 50; familiar grammar of Christian nationalism in, 25; genetic testing in, 38, 41, 134; intersections with antiabortion politics, 16–­21, 37; IVF and, 16, 38–­39; pro-­life discourses interface with, 16–­21; Protestant religious leaders endorsement of, 17; role in third-­party reproduction, 16, 18, 114, 132–­34, 143, 153; with US fertility industry, 17; white evangelicalism political advantage from, 17 ATC. See adoption tax credit Atwood, Thomas, 32 The Baby Business (Spar), 179 Baldwin, James, 231n91 Barrett, Amy Coney, 16, 200 Bernstein, Robin, 27, 231n92 Bethany Christian Services, 31, 67 the Bible: Christian adoption mandate, 3, 81–­86; discourse of principles from, 112, 123, 134–­35, 173, 191–­92; divine law of, 116;

passages and scriptural support of, 92, 93, 117, 169, 173–­74, 189, 249n35; stewardship and evangelicalism in, 115, 117, 244n8, 245n21 bioethical controversies, about embryo, 172, 241n63 bioethics, on embryo wars, 15, 172, 241n63 Blossom embryo adoption agency: completed adoption files, 139; contract, 20, 50, 55, 57, 59, 72, 102, 103–­7, 108–­10, 115–­16, 118–­21, 136; definition of, xiv; economic advantages for, 11–­12; Embryo Adoption Agreement of, 136; embryo adoption promotional videos of, 76; heterosexually married couples criteria of, 9; recipient application packet on waiting embryos, 123; relinquishment clause of, 103, 107; saving embryos mission of, 5; staff perspectives on God’s timing, 173–­74; theological foundation of, 81–­82; uterine health requirement for, 183 Brace, Charles Loring, 68 Brackeen v. Haaland (2022), 239n32 Briggs, Laura, 21; on white saviorism, 65–­66, 239n37 Brown, Louise, 39, 46 Bush, George W., 9, 89, 212; Abu-­Lughod on saviorism and, 25–­26, 217–­18; Decision Points memoir of, 14; Embryo Donation and/or Adoption Awareness program support by, 55; embryo wars justification, 25–­26; hESC funding opposition from, x, xi, 94; as most pro-­life president, xiii; National Right to Life introduction of Snowflakes Embryo Adoption to, 14, 24; personhood national platform of, 15; saviorism rhetoric of, 25–­26; Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program national support, x, xi–­xii, xxi, 15, 93; war on women of, xii, 223n11 Califano, Joseph, 46, 47 California: Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative in, 228n45; West Fertility clinic at, xiv, 37–­38, 40, 42, 44–­45, 51–­53, 233n10, 236n65 Casey, Samuel, 32, 93

Index | 283 Catholic Church: assisted reproduction opposition, 17; embryo adoption opposition, 35; IVF and cryopreservation opposition, 34–­35, 171–­73 Catholicism: on abortion, 24, 46, 71; ARTs and, 229n55; Christian child saving and, 68; Christian Right politics and, 205, 251nn20–­21; in embryo adoption, 10, 22, 113–­14, 140, 148–­50, 189, 229n53; US demographics, 225n16, 225n18 Centers for Disease Control (CDC): on assisted reproduction, 53; federal policy on outcome data reporting and SART, 48, 51 charity: Christian discourses of, 28, 63–­65, 131, 143; marketing, 153, 154; saviorism and, 28, 65, 66, 86, 143, 161, 209; white saviorism and, 28, 63 CHASK. See Christian Homes and Special Kids child figure, 86; construct of embryo as pre-­ born, 13, 72, 108–­10; innocence of, 67, 71, 72; racialization of, 27 Christian adoption: discourse in embryo adoption, x, 56, 63, 78; embryo adoption services agencies for, 54; international, 70–­7 1, 191; orphan crisis and, 3, 66; saviorism in, 70–­7 1, 72; theology of adoption mandate in, 3, 81–­86 Christian Alliance for Orphans, 67 Christian child-­saving movement: adoption connections to, 54, 63–­68, 70–­7 1, 238n5; Brace orphan trains for adoption and, 68; embryo saviorism and, 66; international adoption efforts, 70–­7 1; Native American children and, 68–­70, 239n27; Roe v. Wade response and, 71–­72 Christian Coalition, IVF denouncement by, 46–­47 Christian Homes and Special Kids (CHASK), 157–­59 Christianity, 245n23; charity discourses of, 28, 63–­65, 131, 143; family values of, xxi, 23, 48, 64, 181, 204, 205–­6, 230n77; fertilization understanding in, 46, 54, 201, 202, 204, 215, 251n19; international adoption child-­saving efforts, 70–­7 1; orphan approaches by, 3, 81–­86; personhood and

legacy of, 13; personhood and white supremacy legacies of, 13; Protestant, 13, 17, 64, 67–­68, 180, 195, 225n16, 225n18; racism in white, 24, 71; saviorism and salvation, 64–­65; social order and values of, 4; theology of adoption in, 81–­82; Williams on politics and identity in, 23. See also Catholicism; religion; white evangelicalism Christian Legal Society, 24 Christian nationalism, 245n23; abortion opposition and, 21–­22; ARTs and familiar grammar of, 25; of Christian Right, 10, 23–­24, 204; embryo adoption advancement of, 213; history of US, 23–­24; reproductive politics and activist strategies of, 21–­22, 63, 206; saviorism ideals of, 21, 25, 121, 206; social order and, 206; white saviorism and, 208. See also white evangelicalism Christian orphan care movement, embryo adoption and, 74 Christian Right, 212; abortion opposition by, 23–­24, 37, 72; adoption promotion by, 72; on Dobbs decision, 205; Dobson as leader in, 172; embryo adoption advancement of political goals of, x, xx–­xxi, 24, 37, 56, 121, 209; embryo saviorism and reproductive politics of, 28–­29, 170–­7 1, 204, 208; on family values protection, xxi, 23, 48, 181, 204, 205–­6, 230n77; on federal abortion ban, 205; Franklin and Ginsburg, F., on, 23, 171; idealized social order, 208; IVF deregulation contribution from, 50; nationalism of, 10, 23–­24, 204; orphan movement of, 238n5; transnational reach of, 206–­7, 230n72, 251n15; white saviorism and, 65. See also Religious Right Clinton, Bill: Dickey-­Wicker amendment and, 47, 223n7; on hESC potential, xi CMV. See cytomegalovirus cold metaphors, 178–­81, 194. See also temperature Cole, Teju, 27–­28, 87, 208 compassionate transfer, 51, 103 composite narratives, Willis on, xv, 224n17 Constitution, US, Fourteenth and Human Life Amendment of, 14, 16, 205

284 | Index contract, in embyro adoption, 20, 50, 55, 57, 59, 72, 102, 103–­7, 108–­10, 115–­16, 118–­21, 136 Coontz, Stephanie, 112 Crockin, Susan, 32 cross-­cultural perspectives: on embryo, 3, 12, 38, 50, 170, 224n3; on IVF and cryopreservation, 49–­50 cryopreservation: ARTs and, 16; Catholic Church opposition to, 34–­35, 171–­73; cold metaphors, 178–­80, 194; connection to IVF, 1, 38–­40, 43–­45; cryo-­storage, 44–­45, 51–­52; cryotank, 44–­45, 76–­81, 79, 80; Davidson and Strege, M., on, 76; ethical obligation of, 39, 40, 233n9; federal deregulation of, 49; freezer failures, 236n56; international restrictions on, 49–­50; Landecker on, 39; Trounson on embryo numbers in, 75; UK five-­year limit on, 34, 49 cryo-­storage, 44–­45, 51–­52 cryotank, 44–­45; embryo adoption media presentation of, 78–­81, 79, 80; orphanage image comparison to, 76–­81 cytomegalovirus (CMV) test, 141, 226n25 Davidson, JoAnn, 3, 74, 76 Davis, Dána-­Ain, 27 Decision Points (Bush), 14 Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (DHEW), biomedical research oversight by, 46 deregulation: cryopreservation, 49; IVF, 47–­48, 50 DHEW. See Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Dickey-­Wicker amendment (1995), Clinton and, 47, 223n7 disability, 247n56; in ARTs, 133–­34; embryo adoption marking and marketing of, 153–­ 60; Garland-­Thomson on, 156; matching, 132–­34, 139–­40; US adoption and, 131–­32 discard, of embryo, 42, 51–­52, 54. See also embryo disposition discourse: charity in Christianity, 28, 63–­65, 131, 143; child-­centered in embryo adoption, 7, 54; Christian adoption in embryo

adoption, x, 56, 63, 78; embryo saviorism as generative, 121; Ethics Committee of ASRM on embryo adoption, 32; fitting in adoption, 131–­38; frozen orphan in embryo adoption, 3, 33–­34, 107–­8, 225n9; gift in embryo adoption, 103–­5, 244n6; home in embryo adoption, 25, 76–­81, 109–­10, 183, 194; innocence, 26; motherhood in embryo adoption, 28, 77, 100–­101, 104–­5, 107, 108, 110, 113, 130, 159, 164, 169, 176, 181, 182, 183–­94, 195–­96; multi-­ ethnicity in embryo adoption, 131, 139, 142–­43, 144–­53; orphan crisis in Christian adoption, 3, 73–­76, 151; parent in embryo adoption, 1, 6, 107–­14; pre-­born child in embryo adoption, 108; prenatal adoption in IVF, 33; pro-­life, x, xxii, 6, 19, 35, 54, 93, 98, 153, 160, 182, 202, 204; property in embryo adoption, 108, 111–­14; rescue in embryo adoption, 84, 96, 97–­107, 213–­14; responsibility in embryo adoption, 65–­66, 73, 80–­84, 86–­87, 106, 110–­11; steward discourse in embryo adoption, 105–­6, 114–­18; thermal in embryo adoption, 179–­81, 248n18; white saviorism, 64–­65, 86, 208–­9 disruption, in embryo adoption, 102–­7, 118–­ 21, 160, 243n2 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), ix, x, 14, 200; abortion bans and, 227n43; Christian Right on, 205; racist, sexist, anti-­LGBTQ and classist issues, 205; Strege, J., and Strege, M., filing in, 201, 205 Dobson, James, 24, 71–­72, 90, 112, 243n10; as Christian Right leader, 172; FRC founded by, 240n60; Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program endorsement by, 92–­93. See also Focus on the Family domestic adoption, 58; model for embryo adoption, 10; race matching in private, 132 ECA. See Evangelical Christian Adoptions Economic Recovery Tax (1981), 237n1 (chap. interlude) Edwards, Robert, 33; on cleavage-­stage morphology, 40; first baby of IVF by, 39, 46; IVF natural cycle of, 232n6

Index | 285 embryo: bioethical controversies about, 172, 241n63; construct as God’s property, 114–­ 18; construct as person, ix, 14–­16, 19, 54, 94, 195, 201, 211, 229n61, 231n96, 245n23; construct as pre-­born child, 107–­14; construct as property, xiii, 235n48; construct as rescuable, 102–­7, 213–­14; cross-­cultural perspectives on, 2, 3, 12, 38, 50, 170, 224n3; feminist approaches to the study of, 1, 2–­ 3, 224n3; multi-­ethnic description sample, 147; social recognition of, 2, 224n3. See also frozen embryos; in vitro fertilization; personhood; saviorism embryo adoption: abortion rights attack from, 18–­19, 229n59; antiabortion movement link to, 108; antiabortion policy in program of, 19–­20, 229n60; application for, 10–­11, 110, 226n21; Bush national spotlight for, x, xi–­xii, xxi, 15, 93; Catholic Church opposition to, 35; child-­centered discourse in, 7, 54; Christian adoption rhetoric in, x, 56, 63, 78; Christian nationalism advancement from, 213; Christian Right political goals advancement through, x, xx–­xxi, 24, 37, 56, 121, 209; cost of, 11, 54–­55, 58; discourse, 37, 56; disruption, 102–­7, 118–­21, 160; Dobson and, 24, 71–­72, 90, 92–­93, 112, 172, 240n60, 243n10; domestic adoption model for, 10; embryo saviorism as hindrance to, 98, 104, 107; ethnography on, xiv–­xx, 25; as family-­making process, ix, x, xx, 4, 21–­22, 63, 143, 204; FDA regulations for human tissue donations, 54, 235n48, 236n65; federal funding for, 5, 55, 237n68; Focus on the Family endorsement of, 24; gift discourse in, 103–­5, 244n6; history of, 54–­56, 89–­96; international media on, 33–­35; as legal transfer of property, 54, 91–­ 92; matching, 6–­7, 10–­11, 54, 124, 226n22; open adoption arrangements in, 11, 54, 119–­20; parent discourse in, 108, 109; participant demographics in, xviii–­xix, 9–­10; political uses of, x, xi–­xii, 199–­202; professionals in, xxiii; as pro-­life act, xx, 5, 6, 16, 18–­19, 54, 108, 204; promotion of, ix, 2, 35, 37, 54, 121, 173, 229n62, 237n68;

as proxy for antiabortion advocacy, 29, 212; religious imperatives for, 84; rescue discourse in, 84, 96, 97–­107; responsibility discourse in, 86–­87, 106, 110–­11; social movement of, 3, 93; Strege, J., and Strege, M., seed origin story, 93–­94; Strege, M., public advocacy for, 92–­93; tax credit application in, 57–­62; thermal metaphors in, 179–­81, 248n18; white evangelicalism and, 3, 10, 33, 56. See also saviorism Embryo Adoption Awareness Center: on embryo adoption tax credit, 59; grant and embryo adoption promotional videos, 76–­77; national frozen embryo estimate of, 75 embryo adoption conference, 2008, 31–­33 embryo adoption participants, xviii–­xix, 8, 9–­10; as-­if parenting and, 109–­10; contract expectations of, 109; disruptions with, 102–­7, 118–­21, 160, 243n2; parent discourse of, 6, 107–­14; pre-­born child discourse of, 108; property discourse of, 111–­14; rescue discourse of, 102–­7, 213–­14; responsibility discourse of, 65–­66, 73, 80–­ 84; steward discourse of, 105–­6, 114–­18 embryo disposition, 50, 74–­75; clinical studies on, 50–­51, 75–­76, 235n49; compassionate transfer for, 51, 103; for cryo-­storage, 51–­52; for discard, 42, 51–­52, 54; fertility clinic varied practices for, 51; fertility patient decisions on, 50; procreative embryo donation, 53, 54, 74, 236n65; for research, 52–­53, 54 embryo donation, x, xviii, 7, 245n25; affordability compared to IVF, 53; ARTs and, 16; embryo adoption compared to, x, 53, 54; procreative, 52–­53, 54, 74, 236n65; scientific research, x, xi, 52–­53, 93, 94 Embryo Donation and/or Adoption Awareness program, 31, 55–­56 embryo fundamentalism, 46; Christian Right IVF deregulation contribution, 50; IVF deregulation and, 47–­48, 50; political conservatism and, 48; Roe v. Wade and, 45–­46 embryologist, 37–­38, 40–­45, 51 embryo rights, 18, 21

286 | Index embryo saviorism, x, 3–­4; Christian child-­ saving campaigns in, 66; Christian Right’s reproductive politics and, 28–­29, 170–­7 1, 204, 208; embryo adoption hindrances from, 98, 104, 107; generative discourse of, 121; in human embryonic stem cell research, 236n61; marking and marketing strategies, 161; parent and steward role in, 98–­99, 114–­18; political ambitions and, xviii, 98; Stohl on, 213–­14; of Strege, J., and Strege, M., 97; thermal metaphors in, 178–­ 94, 248n18; transracial adoptions and, 150. See also embryo adoption; saviorism; white saviorism embryo sorting: embryologists subjective process of, 40–­41; matching and, 131–­38, 137, 161; noninvasive embryo selection techniques, 42; PGS method for, 41; predictive technologies in, 42; pregnancy maximization through, 50; Roberts and Steptoe on cleavage-­stage morphology for, 40; transferable, freezable, discardable classifications in, 42, 51–­52, 54; West Fertility informed consent on, 40, 233n10 embryo wars, xi, xvi, 4; bioethics on, 15, 172, 241n63; Bush justification of, 25–­26; embryo personhood and, 14; on social status of embryos, 2 Ethics Committee, of ASRM: on compassionate transfer, 51; on embryo adoption discourse, 32; on embryo disposal, 45; on embryo donation, 53 ethnography, 22; ARTs and, xv, 50; on embryo adoption, 25; methods, xiv–­xv, xxii, 4, 50, 53, 212, 235n49; participant observation, xv, xviii–­xix, xx; on power, 26; qualitative interviews, xv, xix, xxii; textual analysis, xv, xx eugenics, 133 Evangelical Christian Adoptions (ECA), 5; economic benefits to adoption agencies by, 11–­12; on embryo as orphan, 81; on embryo numbers, 76; federal grant monies for, 12; pre-­born child discourse of, 108; program rules of, 134; pro-­life and Christian ministry of, 98

evangelicalism: Biblical stewardship in, 115, 117, 244n8, 245n21; charity discourse of, 28, 63–­ 64; Christian nationalism and, 10, 21–­25, 63, 121, 206, 208, 245n23; intersection with white supremacy, 13, 206; religious right family values, xxi, 23, 48, 64, 181, 204, 205–­ 6, 230n77. See also white evangelicalism evangelicals: adoption support by, 67; on divine time, 173–­77; on embryo interrupted fate, 171–­73; scholarship on, 6; US demographics of, 8–­9. See also white evangelicals Falwell, Jerry, 23, 112, 244n15 Family Research Council (FRC), 71–­72, 243n10; on embryo adoption, 240n60 family values, xxi, 112; adoption for advancement of, 64; Christian Right on protection of, xxi, 23, 48, 64, 181, 204, 205–­6, 230n77 FDA. See Food and Drug Administration federal abortion ban: Christian Right on, 205; McConnell on, 250n7 federal funding: of ECA grant monies, 12; for embryo adoption, 5, 55, 237n68; for Embryo Donation and/or Adoption Awareness program, 31, 55–­56; for hESC research, x, xi, 93, 94; human embryos research ban for, x–­xi, 46–­47, 55; IVF research ban and, 46 feminist anthropology, 48–­49; on embryo and fetal subjects, 1, 2–­3; on political utility of IVF embryos for antiabortion advocacy, 12, 17–­18; reproductive politics and, xiii, 21, 23, 25, 171; saviorism critiques, 26–­27, 64; saviorism wariness in, 25, 171, 217; of Strathern, xiii; on surrogacy and gifting, 244n6 fertility clinics. See West Fertility clinic fertility industry: assisted reproduction in, xiv; cold metaphors and, 180; highly lucrative, 1; IVF and embryos amassment by, 38–­39, 43, 45; loose regulation of, 1, 47–­48; oversight and federal spending absence, 48 fertilization: Christian understanding of, 46, 54, 201, 202, 204, 215, 251n19; pro-­life

Index | 287 discourse of human life beginning at, 54; Western medical description of, 1. See also in vitro fertilization FET. See frozen embryo transfer fetus, 1, 71–­72; laws conferring personhood status to, 14, 210–­11, 227n43; Roe v. Wade on viability of, 199; social, legal, medical status of, 13, 18 fit. See matching Focus on the Family, 71–­72, 240n60; embryo adoption endorsement by, 24; Strege, M., calls to, 90. See also Dobson, James Food and Drug Administration (FDA): embryo adoption and human tissue donation regulations, 54, 235n48, 236n65; fertility services aspects annual inspection by, 47; human tissues handling oversight by, 10, 74, 226n21; procreative embryo donation partly regulated by, 53 foster care, 6, 69, 71, 83, 132, 215, 216, 237n1, 244n4 Fourteenth Amendment, of US Constitution: personhood and, 14, 16, 205 Franklin, Sarah, 23, 171 FRC. See Family Research Council freeze all methods, in IVF, 43 Frist, Bill, 15 frozen embryos: ASRM Ethics Committee on disposal of, 45; buying time through cryopreservation of, 52, 234n16; embryo sorting classification of, 42; ethical obligation for, 39, 40, 233n9; first birth from, 34, 39, 232n6; frozen orphan discourse, 3, 33–­34, 107–­8, 225n9; genetic testing support from, 43; international media on, 33–­34, 241n63; Keenan on agelessness of, 44; legal and logistical challenges of unclaimed, 45; numbers of, 38, 74, 224n1, 240n60; politics on, xi; pre-­born child discourse for, 108; pro-­life discourse on, 6, 210; responsibility discourse on, 65–­66, 73, 80–­84; security protocols for, 43–­44; social instability of, 44–­45; at West Fertility clinic, 38, 44–­45 frozen embryo transfer (FET), 109; birth success rate, 12; failure of, 192–­94; thawing in, 164, 165, 169, 178–­81, 240n56

gamete selection: racial matching in, 133; Thompson on too-­easy elisions and, 144, 146, 247n44. See also third-­party reproduction Gammeltoft, Tine, 133–­34 Garland-­Thomson, Rosemarie, 156 gender. See motherhood; patriarchal authority genetic testing: in ARTs, 133–­34; from frozen embryos, 43 Georgia, Option of Adoption Act in, 60, 237n5 Gestational Age Act, Mississippi, 199–­200, 249n4, 250n5 gift: in adoption, pregnancy loss and surrogacy, 244nn6–­7; embryo adoption discourse of, 103–­5, 244n6 Ginsburg, Faye, 23, 171 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 200 Gordon, Linda, 68 Gorsuch, Neil, 16, 200 government: cryopreservation deregulation by, 49; IVF deregulatory approach by, xiv, 47–­4 8; IVF regulations and antiabortion advocacy, 45 Graham, Billy, 23; abortion support by, 67 Gula, Sharbat, 26 Hannah’s Prayer, 103, 243n3 Haraway, Donna, xxiii, 218 Harding, Susan, 216–­17 Hartouni, Valerie, 12 Hatch, Orrin, 15 hESC. See human embryonic stem cell heterosexuality: Blossom embryo adoption agency criteria for, 9, 35, 134–­35; Christian Right valuations of, xxi, 21, 28, 77–­78, 86, 87, 97, 161, 171, 210, 230n77; stratified reproduction and, 17, 114, 132 HFEA. See Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority Holt International Children Services, 70 home. See uterus Huckabee, Mike, 15 Hughey, Matthew, 64, 237n1 (chap. 2), 238n7

288 | Index human embryonic stem cell (hESC), 195; antiabortion group opposition to research on, 14–­15; California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative on, 228n45; Clinton on potential of, xi; from donated IVF embryos, x, 1; federal funding for, x, xi, 93; legislation on, xi, 15; life-­saving potential of, xi; scientific research on, x–­xi, 14–­15, 46–­47, 55, 228n45; Thomson on, x; Varmus on, xi Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), UK, 34, 49 Human Life Advocates, Inc., 93 Human Life Amendment, to US Constitution, 14, 16, 205 ICSI. See intracytoplasmic sperm injection ICWA. See Indian Child Welfare Act Indian Adoption Project of the Child Welfare League of America, 69 Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA): Brackeen v. Haaland and, 239n32; Maldonado child placement adoption and, 69–­70; for Native American children removal prevention, 69 infertility, 8, 49, 104, 118, 129, 143, 164; ASRM on treatment for, 54; Hannah’s Prayer online forum for, 103; RESOLVE infertility advocacy organization, xvi; of Strege, M., 89–­90 Inhorn, Marcia, xv innocence: Baldwin on, 231n91; child figures of, 67, 71, 72; discourse of, 26; embryo saviorism and white, 86, 204, 209; politics, 26, 66, 72, 86, 209; racialized constructs of, 27; refugee crisis and, 27; saviorism as feature of politics of, 26, 66, 72, 86 international adoption, 8, 58, 70–­7 1, 83, 132, 191 international media, on frozen embryos, 33–­34, 241n63 international policies, on IVF and cryopreservation, 49–­50 intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), 38 in vitro fertilization (IVF), 1, 38–­39; antiabortion advocacy and federal regulations for, 45; ARTs and, 16, 38–­39; ARTs de-

regulatory environment and amassment of embryos from, 37; Catholic Church opposition to, 34–­35; cryopreservation connection to, 1, 38–­40, 43–­45; failure, 103, 163–­67, 181, 191, 248n2; federal funding research ban for, 46; federal policy on SART outcomes data report, 48; first babies born through, 232n6; freeze all methods and embryo amassment in, 43; government deregulatory approach to, xiv, 47–­48; hESC from donated embryos from, x, 1; international restrictions on, 49–­50; intersection with abortion politics, 16–­17, 46–­47; multiple births and, 41, 43; Muslim-­majority countries response to, 49; ovarian stimulation in, 39, 232n6; pregnancy loss, 41, 61, 165–­66, 173, 224nn6–­7; prenatal adoption discourse in, 33; selective reduction and, 19; social elites accessibility to, 17; Steptoe and Edwards first baby from, 39, 46, 232n6; Steptoe and Edwards natural cycle for, 232n6; time-­lapse imaging technology for, 41; West Fertility high volume of, 37–­38. See also assisted reproductive technologies; embryo donation Joyce, Kathryn, 67, 73 June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo (2020), 200 Kavanaugh, Brett, 16, 200 Keenan, Jeffrey, 31; on frozen embryos age, 44; as NEDC director, 44 Kolbert, Kitty, 217 Kumar, Anand, 232n6 Kurdi, Alan, 27 Lancaster, Maria, 43 Landecker, Hannah, 39 language. See discourse law: adoption, 57–­60, 70, 132, 239n38; antiabortion movement and, 16, 199, 203, 216, 229n61, 249n4; case law, xiii–­xiv, 44, 234n34; Christian debates about divine natural and civic, 245n23; on embryo adoption, 53; Gestational Age Act, in

Index | 289 Mississippi, 199; history of child in US, 112; human embryonic stem cell research funding, 10, 15, 228n45; ICWA, 69–­70, 239n32; international policies on IVF and cryopreservation, 49–­50; Option of Adoption Act, in Georgia, 60, 237n5; on personhood of embryo and fetus, 14, 18, 201, 205, 207, 210–­11, 227n40, 227n43, 228n46, 234n34; presumption of parenting principle in US, 113–­14; property, 74, 113–­14, 235n48; Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative in, 228n45. See also deregulation; legislation; Supreme Court, US legislation: antiabortion, 16, 199; on biomedical research on human subjects, 46; on hESC, xi, 15; for personhood rights of unborn, 210–­11 LGBTQ rights, 216; embryo adoption program rules and, 134–­35; white evangelicals opposition to rights of, 9. See also heterosexuality Life Amendment Political Action Committee, 47 “Making Dreams Come True” (video), 77–­78 marketing: of charity, 153, 154; for unselected embryos, 131, 143 marking. See disability; racialization matching, 123–­24, 236n65; client preferences factors for, 134, 135, 136; disability and, 133–­34; embryo adoption practices of, 6–­7, 10–­11, 54, 131, 137, 138, 161, 226n22; embryo donors and, 226n22; embryo shopping in, 129–­62; God factor in, 134, 135; program rules as factor for, 134; race and, 131–­33; Sufian on stratified worth, 132. See also adoption; embryo adoption McConnell, Mitch, 250n7 McCorvey, Norma, 201 Mills, Charles, 13 Mississippi, Gestational Age Act of, 199–­ 200, 249n4, 250n5 Morgan, Lynn M., 230n65 motherhood: Christian conceptions of, 87, 172, 174, 196; discourses in embryo adoption, 28, 77, 100–­101, 104–­5, 107, 108, 110,

113, 130, 159, 164, 169, 176, 181, 182, 183–­94, 195–­96; legal status in embryo adoption, 60; politics of, 49, 64, 69, 71, 170, 203, 235n39, 244n4, 249n24. See also parent Mukerji, Subhas, 232n6 multi-­ethnic. See racialization Mundy, Liza, 18 Munson, Ziad, 229nn61–­62 National Advocates for Pregnant Women, 18, 211 National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC), 5, 226n20; as embryo adoption conference of 2008 host, 31; embryo adoption support by, 12; federal grant recipient of, 56; on implantation potential, 165; Keenan as director of, 44; race-­specific selection support by, 150, 151–­52 nationalism, of Christian Right, 10, 23–­24, 204 National Personhood Alliance, 228n46 National Right to Life, 14, 24 Native Americans: Christian child-­saving movement and, 68–­69, 239n27; genocide of adoption, 68–­70, 114. See also Indian Child Welfare Act NEDC. See National Embryo Donation Center New Right. See Christian Right New York Children’s Aid Society, 68 Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency, 93; embryo adoption promotion by, ix, 54, 90; involvement in US politics, 223n9; role in adoption challenging ICWA, 69. See also Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program Oh, Arissa, 70–­7 1 open contact arrangements, in embryo adoption, 11, 54, 119–­20 Operation Rescue, 72, 242n67 Option of Adoption Act, in Georgia, 60, 237n5 orphan: Christian approaches to, 3, 73, 81–­ 86; Christian Right movement of, 238n5; crisis discourse, 3, 73–­76, 151; cryotank orphanage image comparison, 76–­81;

290 | Index orphan (cont.) Davidson and Strege, M., testimony on frozen embryo as, 74; Davidson on embryo accrual tragedy for, 3; frozen orphan discourse, 3, 33–­34, 107–­8, 225n9; Joyce on crisis of, 73; New York Children’s Aid Society adoption of, 68; pro-­life constructs of embryo as, 35; responsibility discourse, 65–­66, 73, 80–­84; theology, 81–­86, 225n9 ovarian stimulation, in IVF, 39, 232n6 ownership, of embryo, 108, 111–­14. See also property Paltrow, Lynn, 18 parent: embryo adoption discourse of, 108, 109–­10; presumption of parenting principle, in US law, 113–­14; role in embryo adoption, 98–­99, 114–­18 parental security: adoption and, 244n16; property and, 113–­14 participant observation, xv, xviii–­xix, xx participant pickiness, in embryo unselection, 130–­31, 143 patriarchal authority: in Christian nationalism, 22, 206; in Christian Right, 23, 121, 230n77; in embryo saviorism, 121, 162, 208, 209; God’s, 183, 188, 192, 196; in US history, 182, 244n12 Pavone, Fr. Frank, 251nn20–­21 Pence, Mike, 94; as personhood proponent, 16 personhood, xiii; anthropology on, 12; antiabortion movement for embryo and fetal, 12, 18, 210–­11; antiabortion proponents of, 15–­16, 227n40, 228n46; Bush national platform for, 15; embryo rights and, 18, 21, 211; embryo wars and, 14; fetus and status of, 14, 210, 227n43; Fourteenth Amendment and, 14, 16, 205; Hartouni on, 12; introduction for constitutional amendments on, 15; legal definition of, 14–­15; Mills on, 13; Morgan on, 230n65; Nightlight Christian Adoptions agency on embryo, ix; racism and formation of, 13, 28; Roe v. Wade and advocacy for, 13–­14; in social justice movement, 226n28; US racist and religious constructs in

formation of, 13, 28; white supremacy and Christianity legacies of, 13 “Personhood: Policing Pregnant Women in America” documentary, 18 Personhood USA, 228n46 Petchesky, Rosalind, 13 PGS. See preimplantation genetic screening Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), 199–­ 200, 203, 205, 217 politicization, 52; of abortion, xiii, 24, 45; of embryo wars, xvi; of reproduction, 206–­7 politics: embryo adoption and Christian Right advancement of goals in, x, xx–­xxi, 24, 37, 56, 121, 209; innocence, 26, 66, 72, 86, 209; IVF intersection with abortion, 16–­17; moral action narratives in, 64; pro-­life, 6, 16–­21, 98, 121, 160, 170, 186, 195, 211, 243n16, 247n56; Reagan right-­wing religious, 48; thermal, 249n22; white evangelicalism and ARTs for advantage in, 17; white evangelicalism and ideology of, 10, 22; white saviorism and discourse of, 64; Williams on Christian identity through, 23. See also reproductive politics Pratt, Richard, 68, 239n27 pre-­born child: construct of embryo as, 107–­14; ECA discourse of, 108; figure of, 13, 72, 108–­10; legal transfer of property discourse and, 109, 112–­13 pregnancy loss, 41, 61, 165–­66, 173, 244nn6–­7 pregnant person, reproductive freedom erosion for, 18, 204 preimplantation genetic screening (PGS), 38, 49; for embryo sorting, 41 prenatal adoption discourse, 33 privacy protections, in Roe v. Wade, 20, 205 procreative embryo donation, 53, 54, 74, 236n65 pro-­life, xxii, 182; ARTs interface with, 16–­ 21; Bush as most pro-­life president, xiii; discourse, x, xxii, 6, 19, 35, 54, 93, 98, 153, 160, 182, 202, 204; embryo adoption as act of, xx, 5, 6, 16, 18–­19, 54, 108, 204; embryo research as, 15; on frozen embryos, 6, 210; human life beginning at fertilization value, 54; on orphan embryos, 35; politics, 6, 16–­21, 98, 121, 160, 170, 186, 195, 211,

Index | 291 243n16, 247n56; religious convictions for, 19, 151, 153; on Roe v. Wade reversal, ix; saving embryos and, x, 153 promotional videos, for embryo adoption: Embryo Adoption Awareness grant use for, 76–­77; “Making Dreams Come True” video, 77–­78; “Three Times the Blessing: The Halberts’ Story” video, 152 property: Christian conception of God’s, 98, 114–­18; embryo adoption and transfer of, 54, 91–­92; FDA and property law, 74; legal definition of, 112–­13, 235n48; owned embryo discourse and, 108, 111–­14; parental security and, 113–­14; pre-­born child terminology and legal transfer of, 109, 112–­13 Protestant: Christianity, 13, 17, 64, 67–­68, 180, 195, 225n16, 225n18. See also Christianity The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber), 180 proxies, 4, 252n27; reproductive, 210–­12; of uterus in embryo adoption for Christian nation, 25, 29, 170; waiting embryos and, 162; wariness of, 210–­12 Public Health Service Act (2002), Embryo Donation and/or Adoption Awareness program under, 55 qualitative interviews, xv, xix, xxii race: adoption placement and, 131–­32; embryo adoption and matching of, 131–­33; embryo unselection and marking of, 131, 143; NEDC selection support on, 150, 151–­ 52; social construction of, 64, 132–­33 racialization: Blossom embryo description sample, 147; Blossom embryo donor fact sheet, 145; of child figure, 27, 231n92; discourse of embryo multi-­ethnicity, 131, 139, 142–­43, 144–­53; of embryos, 144–­53, 246n31; innocence and process of, 27; marking and marketing embryos as, 149–­53; Thompson on gamete selection too-­easy elisions, 144, 146, 247n44; white evangelicals parenting desire and, 150–­53 racism: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization issues of, 205; Western

conception of personhood and, 13, 28; in white Christianity, 24, 71; in white evangelicalism, 230n70; white saviorism and paternalism in, 64, 65, 66. See also white supremacy regulations: antiabortion advocacy impact on federal, 45; embryo adoption and FDA human tissue donation, 54, 235n48, 236n65; US fertility industry loose, 1, 47–­ 48. See also deregulation religion: personhood formation and, 13; pro-­ life convictions of, 19, 151, 153; US diversity of, 8–­9, 225n16, 225n18. See also Catholicism; Christianity; white evangelicals religious politics. See Christian Right; white evangelicalism Religious Right, 50; history of, 21–­23, 56; leaders of, 23; proponents of, 16; reproductive politics of, xx–­xxi, 10, 21–­25, 206. See also Christian Right reproduction, 189, 204; anthropology of, 248n2; feminist approaches to politics of, xiii, 21, 23, 25, 171; politicization of, 206–­7; rights and justice activists, 19; stratified, 48, 235n39; third-­party, 16, 18, 114, 132–­34, 143, 153. See also assisted reproduction reproductive justice, xiii, 16, 19, 211, 223n13 reproductive politics, xiii; Briggs on, 21; Christian nationalism and activist strategies in, 21–­22, 63, 206; of embryo saviorism and Christian Right, 28–­29, 170–­71, 204, 208; feminist anthropology and, xiii, 23, 25, 171; of Religious Right, xx–­x xi, 10, 21–­25, 206; wariness as feminist approach to, 212; white Christianity racism and, 24; of white saviorism, 66, 86, 204, 206, 208 reproductive rights, xii–­xiv, 16, 19, 32, 203, 210–­11, 223n11, 223n13 Republican Party: on Human Life Amendment adoption, 205; leaders in, 15–­16, 24, 47, 55, 200, 205, 223n9, 250n7; personhood agenda of 2012, 15–­16; white evangelicals affiliation with, 9, 23 rescue discourse, in embryo adoption, 84, 96, 97–­107

292 | Index research: DHEW oversight of biomedical, 46; embryo adoption methods of, xv, xviii–­xix, xx; of embryo as pro-­life, 15; embryo disposition for, 52–­53; federal funding ban for IVF, 46; hESC scientific, x–­xi, 14–­15, 46–­47, 55, 228n45; Inhorn on fertility clinics, xv; legislation for biomedical research on human subjects, 46 RESOLVE infertility advocacy organization, xvi responsibility discourse: in embryo adoption, 86–­87, 106, 110–­11; for orphan, 65–­66, 73, 80–­84 rhetoric. See discourse Robertson, Pat, 23; IVF denouncement of, 46–­47 Roe v. Wade (1973), 201, 202; abortion access post-­, 203; abortion political opposition from, 45; Alito on overrule of, 203; antiabortion laws and, 199; antiabortion movement reversal of, ix; Christian child-­saving movement and, 71–­72; embryo fundamentalism and, 45–­46; on fetus viability, 199; impact from takedown of, 205; IVF clinical success and, 45–­46; personhood advocacy and, 13–­14; privacy protections in, 20; Strege, J., and Strege, M., on abortion ban and, 20 Ross, Loretta, 211 Ryan, Paul, 16 SART. See Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies saving: Brace orphan trains for adoption and, 68; Davis on racial politics of, 27; embryos and pro-­life, x, 153; feminist critiques of, 26–­27, 64; through international adoption, 70–­7 1; through Native American children boarding schools, 68–­ 69, 239n27; of orphan embryos through adoption, 37, 54, 72–­73. See also saviorism saving space, uterus as, 25, 169, 171, 181–­94 saviorism, 63; Abu-­Lughod on Bush and, 25–­26, 217–­18; Bush rhetoric of, 25–­26; charity and, 28, 64, 65, 66, 86, 143, 161, 209; in Christian adoption, 70–­7 1, 72; Christian nationalism ideals of, 21, 25,

121, 206; Christian salvation and, 64–­65; Cole on white savior industrial complex, 27–­28, 87, 208; critiques of, 27–­29; feminist anthropology wariness of, 25, 171, 217; figure of savable subject, xviii, 25–­26, 71, 209–­10; figure of white savior, 3, 28, 64–­65, 70–­72, 74, 86; Haraway on, 218; orphan crisis, 73–­76; situating embryo, 66–­73; social order and, 22, 72, 86, 204, 208; Ticktin on, 26; wariness as method, 25–­29, 86–­87, 217 Scott, Chris, 223n6 selective reduction, IVF and, 19 selective reproductive technologies, 133–­34 A Snowflake Named Hannah (Strege, J.), 89 Snowflakes Embryo Adoption program, ix, 31; Bush national support of, x, xi–­xii, xxi, 15, 93; Dobson endorsement of, 92–­93; federal grant recipient of, 56; first birth of child in 1998, 1, 92; numbers for, 5; saving embryos from frozen orphanages by, 54; Stoddart as founder of, 32, 35, 67; Strege, J., memoir on, 89, 91, 204, 223n9 social movements: antiabortion movement, 2, 12, 18, 108, 201, 227n40, 230n63; Christian child-­saving, 54, 66–­72, 238n5, 239n27; embryo adoption, 3, 93. See also Christian Right; reproductive justice; reproductive rights social order: Christian nationalism and, 206; Christian values and, 4; saviorism and Christian ideals, 22, 72, 86, 204, 208; weakened abortion rights impact on, 205 Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies (SART), 241n63; ethical guidelines of, 48; federal policy on CDC outcome data reporting, 48, 51 Sommerfelt, Carole, 31 Spar, Deborah, 179 special circumstances: marking and marketing embryos as, 153–­60. See also disability Specter, Arlen, 55–­56 Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, California, 228n45 Steptoe, Patrick, 33; on cleavage-­stage morphology, 40; first baby from IVF by, 39, 46; IVF natural cycle of, 232n6

Index | 293 steward: embryo adoption discourse of, 105–­6; evangelicalism on Biblical, 115, 117, 244n8, 245n21; role in embryo saviorism, 98–­99, 114–­18 Stoddart, Ron, 32, 35, 67; on embryo legal transfer process, 90–­91; on orphan crisis, 73 Strathern, Marilyn, xiii stratified demographics, in US adoption, 17, 65, 114 stratified reproduction, 48, 235n39 Strege, Hannah, 251n19; antiabortion advocacy of, 201; on divine timing of God, 174; as embryo adoption advocate, 94–­95, 215; as face for frozen embryos, 211, 212; Pence letter from, 94; seed origin story and, 93–­ 94; as Snowflake baby, 92 Strege, John: on abortion ban, 20; Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization filing, 201, 205; on embryo adoption attack on abortion through media, 20, 204; embryo adoption public advocacy by, 97, 98; memoir of, 89, 91, 204, 223n9 Strege, Marlene, 74, 182; on abortion ban, 20; on cryopreservation tanks, 76; Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization filing, 201, 205; embryo adoption public advocacy by, 92–­93, 97, 98; infertility of, 89–­90 Students for Life Action, 250n7 Sufian, Sandra, 132 Supreme Court, US: Brackeen v. Haaland, 239n32; Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, ix, x, 14, 200–­201, 227n43; June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo, 200; Maldonado child adoption and ICWA ruling, 69–­70; nominees, 200; Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 199–­200, 203, 205, 217; Roe v. Wade, ix, 13–­14, 20, 45–­46, 71–­ 72, 199, 201–­3, 205 surrogacy, 163, 190; Blossom allowance for, 9, 11, 184; comparison to embryo adoption, 55, 113, 133, 185, 244n4, 249n24; gift in, 244nn6–­7; in US, 38, 49, 55 temperature: cold climate and frozen embryo thawing, 178–­81; cold metaphors, 178–­81, 194; embryo saviorism thermal metaphors, 179–­81, 248n18; FET and

thawing, 164, 165, 169, 178–­81, 240n56; uteruses and theology of, 169, 170, 194, 249n24; warm metaphors, 181–­94 Terry, Randall, 72 thermal metaphors, for embryo saviorism, 179–­81, 248n18 thermal politics, 180, 249n23 third-­party reproduction, 16, 18, 114, 132–­34, 143, 153 Thompson, Charis, 144, 146, 247n44 Thomson, James, x “Three Times the Blessing: The Halberts’ Story” video, 152 Thurmond, Strom, 15 Ticktin, Miriam, 26, 27, 209 time: Christian conceptions of, 172–­73; evangelicals on theology of divine, 173–­77, 195–­ 96; freezing for future, 43–­45; uteruses and theology of, 169, 194 time-­lapse imaging technology, for IVF, 41 transfer: compassionate in embryo disposition, 51, 103; embryo adoption property, 54, 91–­92; Stoddart on embryo legal process of, 90–­91. See also frozen embryo transfer transracial adoption: embryo saviorism and, 150; by white evangelicals, 150–­53 Trounson, Alan, 75, 233n9 Trump, Donald, 9, 94, 170, 200, 207, 230n76, 251n20, 251n21 United Kingdom (UK): assisted reproduction ethics, 33; cryopreservation five-­year limit of, 34, 49; frozen embryo first birth in, 34, 39; HFEA in, 34 United States (US): adoption history of, 63–­ 73, 131–­32; anthropology of Christianity in, 213–­14; Christian nationalism history in, 23–­24; Constitution Fourteenth and Human Life Amendment, 14, 16, 205; evangelicals demographics in, 8–­9; personhood racist and religious constructs in, 13, 28; presumption of parenting principle in law of, 113–­14; religion diversity in, 8–­9, 225n16, 225n18; white saviorism in adoption of, 63–­66. See also antiabortion movement; assisted reproductive technologies; Supreme Court, US

294 | Index unselection, of embryos: adoption fitting discourse, 131–­38, 137, 161; marketing for, 131, 143; marking of race and disability in, 131, 143; matching and, 129–­62; multi-­ ethnicity marking and marketing, 144–­53, 145, 147, 246n31, 247n44; participant pickiness, 130–­31, 143; proxies and, 162; shopping and, 139–­44, 209; special circumstances marking and marketing, 153–­60 US. See United States uterus, 244n11; as home, 25, 76–­81, 109–­10, 183, 194; as nurturing and protective environment, 184–­88, 196–­97; as prepared environment, 183–­84, 197; as proxy in embryo adoption for Christian nation, 25, 29, 170; as saving space, 25, 169, 171, 181–­94; symbolic womb conception of, 169–­70; temperature theology and, 169, 170, 194, 249n24; time theology and, 169, 194; as vessel of God and instrument of His will, 188–­94; as warm place, 181–­94 Varmus, Harold, xi vessel. See uterus Wahlberg, Ayo, 133–­34 waiting, 123–­27, 155. See also unselection, of embryos wariness, 207–­8; in feminist anthropology, 25, 171, 217; of proxies, 210–­12; of reductive othering of white evangelicals, 212–­17; of reproductive politics, 212; of saviorism, 25–­29, 86–­87, 171, 217; of white saviorism, 27–­28, 64, 208–­9, 237n1 (chap. 2), 238n7 warm metaphors, 163–­67, 181–­94. See also cold metaphors; temperature war on women, of Bush, xii, 223n11 Western medical description, of fertilization, 1 West Fertility clinic, xiv, 42, 53, 236n65; discard process at, 51–­52; embryo sorting and informed consent of, 40, 233n10; frozen embryos at, 38, 44–­45; as high-­ volume provider of IVF cycles, 37–­38; ICSI service at, 38; PGS at, 38

When God Doesn’t Make Sense (Dobson), 172 white evangelicalism, 169, 209, 210, 213, 225n18; adoption for religious family values, 64; ARTs for political advantage of, 17; Bush, Trump and, 9; defined, 10; embryo adoption and, 3, 10, 33, 56; on embryo adoption thermal metaphors, 179–­81, 248n18; political ideology of, 10, 22; racism in, 230n70; theology of racial diversity of, 247n46, 247n49; transracial adoption and racial reconciliation in, 151. See also Christian nationalism; Christian Right; Religious Right white evangelicals, 22, 130; adoption support by, 67; antiabortion activism of, 71; demographics of, 8–­9; on family values, 205; legal abortion and LGBTQ rights opposition from, 9; multi-­ethnic embryos and, 150; Republican Party affiliation by, 9, 23; transracial adoption by, 151; wariness of reductive othering of, 212–­17 white savior figure, 3, 28, 64–­65, 70–­72, 74, 86 white savior industrial complex, Cole on, 27–­28, 87, 208 white saviorism: Briggs on, 65–­66, 239n37; charity and, 28, 63; Christian nationalism and, 208; Cole wariness of, 27–­28, 208; discourse of, 64–­65, 208–­9; Hughey wariness of, 64, 237n1 (chap. 2), 238n7; as political discourse, 64, 86; racial paternalism and, 64, 65, 66; reproductive politics of, 66, 86, 204, 206, 208; in US adoption, 63–­ 66; wariness of, 208–­9; white supremacy and, 64, 208 white supremacy, 22, 171, 204, 230n68; antiabortion activism link to, 240n47; evangelicalism intersection with, 13, 206; as moral order, 65; personhood and legacy of, 13; white saviorism and, 64, 208 Williams, Daniel K., 23 Willis, Rebecca, 224n18 womb. See uterus Zaloom, Caitlin, 115–­16

About the Author

Risa Cromer is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University.

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