
So, imagine youāre a cool, gorgeous woman whose career has taken off at a startling pace in your late 30s, an age not typical for careers to take off in your industry. You start dating this guy, the founder and creator of āCrunchy Condiments Dot Com.ā
Heās cute and nice, loves familyāloves family a lot, actually, and has a particular thing about children ever since this one time in his 20s when a girlfriend had an abortion and, can you believe it, she didnāt let him stop her? And then his ex-wife couldnāt have kids, and then she left him, and long story short he really wants to have kids with you, and then he gets in this horrible car accident and is like, āWe need to have babies. Now.ā
So youāre like, āOkay, but weāre gonna have to use a surrogateāmy bodyās my work.ā He agrees. And you love him, enough to get engaged, even though there are a whole lot of cheating rumors going around, but whatever, you make two embryos; one doesnāt take, the surrogate miscarries the other. You make two more embryos, and youāre 40 now, and youāre like, āMan, I donāt even know.ā He gives you an ultimatumāyouāve got to become a mom, or the relationshipās over. Youāre like, āOkay. I love you, but goodbye.ā
And then heās like, āGive me the embryos, I will make babies from them and raise them.ā Youāre like, āPlease, do not do that.ā Luckily, both of you signed a contract saying that mutual consent would be required for the embryos to be brought to term, so your ex canāt just willy-nilly implant those embryos in a random surrogate anyway. Then, he sues you to keep you from destroying the embryos, something that you have explicitly said you have no plans to do. And then he wonāt shut up about it.
And then the fucking New York Times gives him an op-ed column entitled āSofia Vergaraās Ex-FiancĆ©: Our Frozen Embryos Have a Right to Live,ā in which he crusades after your frozen embryos, calling your ārefusal to be a motherā a matter of āsaving livesā and ābeing pro-parentā rather than what it isāa rational choice that should not be railed against with the pretension that itās a matter of vital, widespread cultural morality rather than an ex going fucking insane.
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Here are some excerpts.
I wanted to keep this private, but recently the story broke to the world.
One amazing way to act on a desire to keep things private is to not write op-eds for the New York Times.
It has gotten attention not only because of the people involvedāmy ex is SofĆa Vergara, who stars in the ABC series āModern Familyāābut also because embryonic custody disputes raise important questions about life, religion and parenthood.
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And weāre off: hereās Nick Loeb running his obsessive embryo hunger up a pro-life flagpole to see if anyone salutes. Naturally, they have! Lots and lots of pro-lifers are sharing this op-ed, accompanied on Twitter by things like #ProLifeAlert. This despite the fact that strict religious pro-lifers, the people Loeb is trying to appeal to, are generally dividedāif thatāon IVF, a procedure that positions humans rather than God as the maker of life, and, if weāre saying life begins at conception, inevitably ādestroysā many non-viable embryonic lives.
Asks Loeb:
When we create embryos for the purpose of life, should we not define them as life, rather than as property?
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Should we define collections of approximately 30-100 cells as life? Would that be a reasonable thing to do for all people, not just people named Nick Loeb who are specifically really trying to implant his exās embryos in a willing surrogate and then raise kids to adulthood against the wishes of their mother?
Does one personās desire to avoid biological parenthood (free of any legal obligations) outweigh anotherās religious beliefs in the sanctity of life and desire to be a parent?
Does one personās desire to have Sofia Vergaraās children outweigh the fact that he signed a contract explicitly forbidding him from doing that without her consent?
Many have asked me: Why not just move on and have a family of your own? I have every intention of doing so. But that doesnāt mean I should let the two lives I have already created be destroyed or sit in a freezer until the end of time.
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Well................ maybe it does mean that, though. This is a legally complicated grounds for dispute, but itās ultimately an issue of contract. And Loeb signed one, and what heās grandstanding for is not the Sanctity of Life but the right to violate mutual consent as codified under legal agreement. And the Times, for some āunknown reason,ā is giving him a big old legitimizing platform to pretend this is about Big Ideas, rather than Nick Loeb being petty as hell and obsessed with Vergaraās embryos to a degree that is legitimately terrifying. May we all pray that we never have an ex like this.
Image via AP
Contact the author at jia@jezebel.com.