From LifeSite.com:

A couple who adopted their two-year-old daughter as a frozen embryo left stored in a fertility clinic freezer, are now using their story to fight against legislation that would permit research using human embryos, the Dialog reported April 16.

Tim and Dawn Smith adopted their daughter Erin 11 years after she was conceived in a petri dish during in vitro fertilization proceedings. Unused by her biological parents, the child remained frozen in storage and faced likely destruction by eventual discarding.

Hearing of efforts to combat proposed legislation that would permit couples to donate leftover embryos for stem-cell research, the Smith’s offered their participation as a couple able to personalize the issue for the public. Tim Smith has appeared in radio commercials funded by A Rose and a Prayer, a group opposed to human embryonic research, speaking about his daughter as a “typical 2-year-old.”

“Some would call Erin medical waste,” he says in the commercial. “I call her my daughter.”

How lucky Erin is to have been adopted by a loving couple. However, the reality is that there are hundreds of thousands of these frozen embryos and most of them (probably 99%) will never be adopted. Eventually, they will be thrown out.

And what if Erin should develop a disease for which there is no cure, or injure her spine causing paralysis, or suffer a traumatic brain injury? I have no doubt that her parents would pray like crazy for a cure for their child. Well, there are thousands (if not millions) of parents out there praying right now. And some of the miracles they're praying for might be found in embryonic stem cell research. The last thing I want to do is deny them their chance for a miracle.

Read the complete article here.

Labels: beginning of human life, embryonic stem cell, in vitro, stem cell research