When the hubby and I signed up for our first IUI, we had to fill out reams of legal consent forms saying that we understood the sperm freezing and thawing process, that we didn’t hold the clinic responsible if the treatment failed, and so on. There was also a part where we needed to stipulate what we wanted to do if hubby dropped off his sperm sample and then suddenly divorced me or died before the IUI was scheduled to happen — did we want to leave it up to me to decide what to do? Did we want it destroyed? Did we want to donate it to science? All I could think was, “The window of time between jerking off and separating the good spermies from the bad ones and getting that stuff up in my bizness is about three hours. What is the likelihood that my husband will run off with another woman or DIE in that time frame?!” Furthermore, the forms then asked us what we wanted to do if BOTH of us died and there was sperm leftover at the clinic. Seriously? WHAT KIND OF APOCALYPTIC SHIT IS TAKING PLACE IN THE 10-MINUTE DRIVE BETWEEN OUR HOUSE AND THE CLINIC??
Honestly, lawyers and their lawyering.
So of course, we got a stack of very similar forms for our upcoming IVF, which ask the same questions about what we’d like done with our embryos if we kick the bucket in between retrieval and transfer. What’s interesting is that this isn’t a fill-in-the-blank situation — if we both die, we only have two choices, and our final choice must be indicated with a checkmark. The first option is to destroy our embryos. The second is to donate them to science for research purposes.
Um, hello, where is the option called “Give our precious bundles of cells to infertiles looking for donor embryos or even, like, my sister, so at least our genes might get to survive in this cruel world that killed off two perfectly lovely people in the prime of their lives who would have made great fucking parents”??
Yeah, Science! 
I agree, give them to other lovely infertiles should be there. I hate all of the morbid form filling. It gives me the willies.
Yeah um that sucks. We had the option to give them to another couple of our own choice.
wow, those two options are…. horrible.
I know, right?? I wanted to write in “donate to other infertile couples”. Sucks that it isn’t an option at our clinic. Do you think it’s to discourage other patients from scouting out the IVFers and arranging for “accidents” so they can charge in and get their embryos??? No? Only me who thinks about offing people for their genetic material? OK then.
Wow. I can’t believe they don’t give you the option of donation. I haven’t had to answer any of these questions in any of my IVF paperwork. That has me a little concerned. I have never had any embryos to freeze but now I want to know what they do with them if I get hit by a bus on my way to transfer.
That stinks that they only give you the two choices. I wonder if it’s worth seeing if they’ll make an exception for couples that want to donate to other infertiles. Seems awfully mean of them.
I remember that paperwork. It left me feeling all kinds of ways. As if my emotions weren’t already all over the place. I agree that their should always be the option to give any available embryos to other infertiles. Yikes. Such a frightening set of circumstances to ponder.
Oh wow!! That is pretty crazy. I’m with everyone on donation!