DescentBB

By now I suspect most of you have heard of the couple that was artificially inseminated with the wrong embryo. Thankfully there will be no contentious argument as to who keeps the child when born as the mother has graciously said she will give the soon to be born child to the biological parents. All's well that ends well.

Let s take a different stance tho. Since abortion is legal, what if the woman carrying the embryo said, \"To heck with carrying some other persons spawn to term and decided to abort. How would the laws handle this decision? while the law says it is legal to abort \"Your\" embryo, does that include someone elses? Could the biologic parents charge the embryo carrying woman with murdering their child? And lastly how about the child itself, does he or she have any rights being in a womb other than it's biological mothers?

With the ever expanding techno fertilization capabilities, I'm wondering how the courts will be viewing potential cases like I've posted.

I would say...\"pro-choice\" say it's still the descision, and the parents can still abort. Meanwhile \"pro-life\" people make an issue about it, bring it to the courts, and lose. Just my prediction. I can clearly see both sides of the abortion issue....so I have no set opinion.

Possession is 9/10 of the law.

This is actually a very good question, because only the DNA (and some small amount of source material) belongs to the other couple, all the material/time needed to develop the child, will be provided by the surrogate.

Has it even been established that we own our DNA? (not even sure that’s relevant here)

My gut tells me, the child belongs to the surrogate, unless other legal arrangements have been made.

As far as rights in the womb: The child has no constitutional rights until born. Basic human rights are another story, and can be determined by the mother. (by default)

If the surrogate decides to take the child to term, I believe compensation is also in order. (if she gives it up)

As far as suing for the mistake…wow don’t get me started…

IMHO

I think in a criminal case any judgement that found the surrogate guilty of murder, if it was upheld in the appeals process, would destroy the foundation of 'the right to privacy = abortion rights' and that could lead to abortion becoming illegal.

In the civil law side of things it probably simply comes down to the contract they had.