I don't want to turn my back on the children I want dead

This morning the Today Show featured this story about a divorced couple in Texas fighting a court battle over the fate of their 3 embryonic children. The story goes the husband changed his mind at the last minute, the wife really wanted the children, the couple gets divorced, the ex-husband doesn't want the human embryos implanted while the ex-wife does.

Randy Roman does not dispute that he put a halt to the procedure. He declined to appear on the broadcast with his ex-wife, but acknowledged in court that he changed his mind about going through with the procedure just hours before the clinic was scheduled to implant Augusta's fertilized eggs in her uterus in April 2002.

Ignoring the ignorant "fertilized egg" language, if IVF clinics weren't so focused on having high rates of success (and therefore creating more embryos than couples ever intend to implant), you'd think it'd be smart for them to create contracts where the parents consent to implanting the embryos before the embryos are created.

I smirked while watching the show at this quote from the father's attorney.

"A lot of fathers in our society have children and turn their backs on them," Randy's attorney, Gregory Enos, told TODAY host Meredith Vieira. "My client is an ethical, religious and moral person. And if he's going to create a child, he's going to insist on being a father, but he doesn't want to bring a child into a relationship that is already divorced and so acrimonious."

Well, the problem is he's already helped create some children, hasn't he? That's what this dispute is about - whether he will allow those embryonic children a chance to continue their lives or if he will turn his back on and force them to be destroyed.

Tags: frozen embryos, IVF