Adoption is a beautiful thing. There are many people who want to be parents but are not able to conceive a child without help. However, according to the Congressional Coalition On Adoption Institute, in the U.S. 397,122 children are living without permanent families in the foster care system. Reports show 101,666 of these children are eligible for adoption, but nearly 32 percent of these children will wait over three years in foster care before being adopted. Such a sad truth. But what if I told you there was a way for you and your hubby to adopt a child in utero?
There is a little-known process that allows doctors to help couples who can’t have their own babies still ‘grow’ a family. It’s calledembryo adoption. Nearly seven million women struggle with infertility here in the U.S. Many find their miracle with in-vitro fertilization or IVF. That’s when doctors create an embryo in a lab using a couple’s sperm and egg and then implants it back in the woman to grow it to full term. Going through IVF also means there are leftover embryos – in fact, there is an estimated 600,000 frozen embryos right now in the United States.
The Embryo Adoption Awareness Center says 70 percent of couples eventually come back and use their own embryos, 8 percent donate them to research, 14 percent abandon or discard them and another 8 percent donate them for struggling couples to adopt.
Nightlight Christian Adoptions is a child placement agency which pioneered the embryo adoption process 17 years ago. They call the embryos “snowflakes” and to date, there have been more than 360 “snowflake babies” born.
Source: Black America Web | Danielle Young
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