A new form of human trafficking--the buying and selling of frozen embryos.

Going the Distance for Children

by Alana S. Newman

Adults are bending time and space to satisfy their desire

 for children by adopting long-frozen embryos.

Experts estimate there are over 400,000 frozen embryos waiting for their summons in cryo-banks across the country. Many people rightly hold these embryos in high regard, recognizing them as more than tissue--they are human beings in early development, complete with unique DNA sequences, and the active potential, if given a suitable environment, to develop to adulthood. So when these embryos are "adopted," taken out of storage, implanted into a womb somewhere and allowed to become fully grown people, should we celebrate?

To kidnap is to transport a person, against his will, and confine or falsely imprison him. A remarkable number of child kidnappings are motivated by custody disputes. Divorces and separations inspire some adults to take children across state lines, or often enough overseas, to avoid interference from and interaction with the other parent or guardian.

Using distance as a tool and taking a child elsewhere is helpful when your objective is to prevent kin from coming and finding the child you've taken, or if you'd rather not have your grown child go looking for their kin.

These adults try to increase the feeling of impossibility, to make the child and other parent or guardian feel like the chances of finding each other are slim to none. The more daunting the task, the more likely the kidnapped child will accept their circumstances and the more likely the other parent will stop looking or become defeated.

Distance often works to break the connection, but we still hear stories from those who speak up and declare that they've been robbed of family and identity.

Jane Jeong Trenka, author of Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee's Return to Korea and The Language of Blood, was recently featured in the New York Times for her bold return to Korea. At 23, she put her trip "home" on a credit card and communicated with her mother through a translator. Five years after her birth mother's death, she moved to Korea for good, divorcing her American husband and leaving her job and American family behind. She's not the only one. The majority of Korean adoptees return to the land of the birth, at least to visit.

Trenka's reconnection was successful only because she didn't face the usual obstacles. Her birth mother had provided letters and gifts. Most international adoptees' origins are shrouded in anonymity. In order to succeed at finding a birth parent, they must enlist the help of a private investigator, a translator, and an international travel agent. Then, once they arrive, the language and cultural barriers are steep--intimacy is blocked until they have learned each other's language. And by then the parent(s) may be elderly or dead.

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