Nearly four years after their interracial marriage ended in bitter divorce, a Texas couple is still fighting for control of three frozen embryos.
Augusta Roman, 46, was awarded the embryos by a judge who concluded in 2004 that she had a right to the embryos created in a lab with her ex-husband Randy's sperm.
Two years later, an appellate court reversed the decision, noting that Augusta and Randy both signed a contract agreeing to have the fertility clinic “discard” the embryos in the event of their divorce.
“First of all, that was consent between Randy and I as a couple, and a clinic, to give them directives of what to do if we get divorced,” Augusta Roman said. “But the embryos were going to be implanted. There were not going to be any embryos left after being implanted to be frozen, if Randy hadn't stopped the procedure.”
Randy Roman concedes that he put a halt to the procedure. He changed his mind just hours before the clinic was scheduled to implant Augusta's fertilized eggs in her uterus in April 2002.
After sixteen months of counseling, the couple still had "issues". So Randy left, insisting that he would never agree to let Augusta go ahead with her plan to become pregnant, even when Augusta agreed to release him from any financial obligation for children produced by his sperm.
“A lot of fathers in our society have children and turn their backs on them,” Randy's attorney, Gregory Enos, stated. “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.”
Rebecca Reitz, Augusta's attorney, said the issue that the Texas high court is being asked to address is whether women have a legal right to their own eggs, particularly women who cannot become pregnant in the traditional way.
In this instance, for us the answer is easy. No!
Life's hard enough. Why bring kids into drama when the parents have all this drama going on even before their born. Sorry sister, but either find someone else, or adopt and move on.
MSNBC