An Australian fertility clinic is under fire after families say it destroyed their embryos and is now refusing to give them any answers. The situation underscores the rampant disregard for human lives created via IVF, as well as the widespread lack of regulation in this for-profit industry.
Amelia Hawkshaw and her husband Zach Longe were one of the couples affected by the tragedy; the couple told ABC News all 17 of their embryos were destroyed after they visited Genea, one of the country’s largest fertility clinics.
“We got a call … to say that the embryos had been contaminated with bacteria and so those 17 had to be destroyed, just all of them,” Amelia said. “Those 17 embryos, I think they were all like potential children that we could have had.”
Another couple, Vikki Muller and Chris Homer, had a similar situation happen and both of their embryos were destroyed.
“How on earth does that get infected? Just delve a little bit more into that to me, please. Was someone not wearing gloves [when] handling it? I mean what happened?” Chris said. “It just became a source of anger, frustration, sadness, heartbreak.”
READ: Embattled Australian fertility company accused of using wrong sperm to impregnate patients
Though these couples are fighting to find out how the contamination happened and to hold the clinic responsible, they are being stonewalled.
“It’s clear that human error was involved in the incident and human error does happen, but for us, what’s really caused the trauma and affected us long-term has been how we’ve been treated since the incident occurred,” Amelia said.
Last month, one of the couples enlisted parliament to help put pressure on Genea to be transparent on what went wrong with the embryos, only for that investigation to be blocked because Genea raised “significant concerns” about the release of information with NSW Health.
The situation underscores one of the biggest problems with the IVF industry, in that it is almost completely unregulated. The first couple affected by the tragedy had 17 embryos. It is highly unlikely they had planned to give birth to all 17 of these children, which means that they would have had ‘extras’ to worry about — a classic example of a situation that has led to more that 1.7 million embryos being “thrown away.”
Furthermore, though the clinic was responsible for the deaths of preborn children, it appears as though it will not be required to answer for the lives that have been lost. The situation seems very similar to the recent Alabama case, LePage v. Mobile Infirmary Clinic, Inc., in which the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that human embryos created via IVF are to be considered children under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. Though that case ruled in favor of parents like these whose embryos were destroyed, it set off a firestorm around the United States with politicians on all sides rushing to ensure that IVF remains protected, despite the fact that it destroys embryos at a higher rate than abortion.
