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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, a moral problem growing out of a popular treatment designed to help the country's more than 2 million infertile couples. The procedure is in vitro fertilization -- uniting egg and sperm in a laboratory, and then implanting the embryo in the mother. Over the past 20 years, the treatment has enabled many couples to become parents but it has also produced perhaps millions of so-called excess embryos that have been thrown away and 400,000 that are now frozen, in storage. Do these frozen embryos have the moral status of persons? What should be done with them? Betty Rollin reports.
BETTY ROLLIN: After the birth of their daughter Sara, Kurt and Robin Houk of Stow, Ohio, found themselves unable to have any more children. They turned to IVF (in vitro fertilization) and after their first attempt wound up with triplets plus seven remaining embryos, which were then frozen.
Couples like the Houks are faced with four choices: Discard the unused embryos, which is what most do; donate the embryos to another infertile couple; donate the embryos for research; or do nothing and continue to pay storage fees which can run as much as $1,500 a year. Religion was a major factor in the Houks decision to donate their embryos to another couple.
KURT HOUK: We feel life begins at conception so we didn't want to destroy the embryos. We felt that would be killing a baby. Second, we wanted to know what happened to a child that would be born. We wanted to make sure that a child born would be raised in the church.
ROLLIN: The Houks, who are Lutheran, turned to a California Christian adoption agency which has a special program called "Snowflakes" to handle what they call "embryo adoptions." The Houks chose to donate their embryos to Keith and Amy Fisher of Arizona -- now the parents of six-month-old Samantha.
Mr. HOUK: I did have concern that the baby would feel rejected by us and I am happy with the way the relationship has developed with the family in that we will have contact with the family and again will be known as Uncle Kurt and Aunt Robin.
ROBIN HOUK: I don't think it's been quite as hard for me until I went out to see the baby and you hold it and you are thinking, "Oh, this is mine!" I would say that was probably the hardest thing for me. She even looked like one of our children.
ROLLIN: The Snowflakes program is one of three recipients of a recent million dollar government grant to encourage embryo donations to infertile couples.
Infertility specialist Dr. Jamie Grifo is not opposed to this kind of embryo donation, but he sees a hidden agenda in the government's grant.
Dr. JAMIE GRIFO (Infertility Specialist, New York University Medical Center): The agenda is about abortion politics and by applying the term adoption to these embryos they are trying to state than an embryo is a human being which is not the same as a baby that has been born. It is not the same but they would like to see it that way so abortion could be outlawed.
ROLLIN: No state law recognizes embryo adoption, but couples like the Fishers do sign papers which they hope give them parental rights.
BETTY ROLLIN: After the birth of their daughter Sara, Kurt and Robin Houk of Stow, Ohio, found themselves unable to have any more children. They turned to IVF (in vitro fertilization) and after their first attempt wound up with triplets plus seven remaining embryos, which were then frozen.
Couples like the Houks are faced with four choices: Discard the unused embryos, which is what most do; donate the embryos to another infertile couple; donate the embryos for research; or do nothing and continue to pay storage fees which can run as much as $1,500 a year. Religion was a major factor in the Houks decision to donate their embryos to another couple.
KURT HOUK: We feel life begins at conception so we didn't want to destroy the embryos. We felt that would be killing a baby. Second, we wanted to know what happened to a child that would be born. We wanted to make sure that a child born would be raised in the church.ROLLIN: The Houks, who are Lutheran, turned to a California Christian adoption agency which has a special program called "Snowflakes" to handle what they call "embryo adoptions." The Houks chose to donate their embryos to Keith and Amy Fisher of Arizona -- now the parents of six-month-old Samantha.
Mr. HOUK: I did have concern that the baby would feel rejected by us and I am happy with the way the relationship has developed with the family in that we will have contact with the family and again will be known as Uncle Kurt and Aunt Robin.ROBIN HOUK: I don't think it's been quite as hard for me until I went out to see the baby and you hold it and you are thinking, "Oh, this is mine!" I would say that was probably the hardest thing for me. She even looked like one of our children.
ROLLIN: The Snowflakes program is one of three recipients of a recent million dollar government grant to encourage embryo donations to infertile couples.
Infertility specialist Dr. Jamie Grifo is not opposed to this kind of embryo donation, but he sees a hidden agenda in the government's grant.Dr. JAMIE GRIFO (Infertility Specialist, New York University Medical Center): The agenda is about abortion politics and by applying the term adoption to these embryos they are trying to state than an embryo is a human being which is not the same as a baby that has been born. It is not the same but they would like to see it that way so abortion could be outlawed.
ROLLIN: No state law recognizes embryo adoption, but couples like the Fishers do sign papers which they hope give them parental rights.
PAMELA MADSEN: That is because it would be giving up a full sibling to our children. And I won't have an answer to that child who may one day come back. And many children come back and say, why wasn't there room in your home for me? I don't have that answer.
Ms. MADSEN: To me they could be that third boy or that little girl in our family. They are that potential for that third child. But the debate has raged over 10 years of marriage. My desire for that third child is beginning to fade.
Ms. MADSEN: These embryos were not made casually. They were made with love, forethought, and caring, and a product of our marriage. They are not nothing. They are unique and something wonderful should be done with them. Not necessarily a baby, but something special like helping some other mother's child walk.
ROLLIN: Over the past 20 years the amazing technology of infertility treatments has resulted in 150,000 babies born in the U.S. and one million worldwide. For the families, along with joy has come the unforeseen issue of extra embryos and what to do with them. 
Find our more about BIOETHICS AND THE BOOK OF LIFE, a special R & E 
