An ad for the School of Philosophy once again stared at me as I sat on the train. My thoughts wandered to kindly, bearded sages dispensing the wisdom of the ages, pondering the philosophical issues of the day, and Mel Brooks.
My musings centered on an issue that ancient philosophers never had to deal with — frozen fertilized eggs — and what do we do with them?
Sure King Solomon suggested cutting the baby in half to figure out who the real mother was, and Plato envisioned a civilization governed by the pure wisdom of a philosopher, not courts. But what of fertilized eggs and who has control over their existence?
Advances in fertility treatments have provided incredible gifts to many couples who years ago would have remained childless. But what of the philosophical conundrums this technology has created?
What happens when the eggs are fertilized and the relationship goes sour, and you have these frozen beings-to-be and you can’t figure out who gets them?
That seems to be the case between actress Sophia Vergera and her ex Nick Loeb. A report in the Daily News on April 20 has the exes battling it out over what to do with their frozen embryos.
On the one hand, Nick wants to embrace fatherhood, thaw them out, pop ‘em into a surrogate, and raise the little ones as his own. On the other, Sophia, who already has an adult son of her own, doesn’t want any more children, and wants to keep the babes-to-be on ice indefinitely. To thaw or not to thaw? That is the question?
Cutting one in half just ain’t going to do the trick this time.
These embryos are, after all, little human beings — we can’t flush them down the toilet like dead gold fish, but how long can you realistically keep them on ice?
If the biological parents can’t decide, or if one parent refuses to allow the other parent to have the embryos brought to term, who decides? The courts? Religion? Dr. Phil?
Not for Nuthin,™ but this philosophy stuff gave me one heck of headache.
Where is Mel Brooks when you need him? I’d like to see him coalesce the vapors of this human experience into logical comprehension.
Follow me on Twitter @JDelBuono.
