Embryo adoption makes Fresno couple's dream come true; ethical debate continues

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A Fresno family is planning the first birthday celebration of their twin girls, who were born from donated embryos. The husband and wife adopted the embryos after almost losing hope of having children.

Eleven-month-old Giana is quite chatty, but her identical twin sister, Kathryn, also has plenty to say. The identical twins were a surprise to their parents, Jim and Ashley Ave of Fresno, after an implanted embryo split. And now, the family stops people on the street.

"People are just gonna ask the very simple questions: 'Are they twins?' Yeah, they're twins. 'Are they double trouble? I bet you're busy,'" Ashley said.

But what's not obvious is that Giana and Kathryn were conceived with donated embryos. The Aves adopted several embryos from the same donor after their own fertility treatments failed, and a heartbreaking miscarriage.

"God's taken us through this entire journey not to just keep it to ourselves and to hopefully reach other people," Ashley said.

Ashley wanted the experience of childbirth and after much reflection through their faith, she and Jim chose embryo adoption.

"We believe life starts at conception and so the embryos in our opinion are already life; they just need an environment for life to start," Jim said.

That's the mission of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, a national agency that facilitates embryo adoption and helped the Aves with their family.

Nightlight says there are hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos, which are fertilized eggs, in the United States right now. Most of the frozen embryos are from women who've gone through in vitro fertilization and have remaining embryos they no longer want to use. The embryos can then be donated to science, discarded or offered for adoption.

Nightlight says it wants to help more couples see embryo adoption as a viable solution to fertility problems.

"The embryos take on new respect, a new value to them, and the idea of being able to choose who those embryos will be placed with is appealing," said Kimberly Tyson with Nightlight Christian Adoptions.

The Aves say the donor of the embryos accepted them as the recipient, so the adoption went through. They also say the process costs about the same as other fertility treatment options -- between $8,000 and $10,000.

Jim and Ashley say they plan to have more children, and they already have more donated embryos to have a true sibling for Kathryn and Giana.

Meantime, the ethical debate continues in a classroom at Fresno State.

Fresno State professor Dr. Andrew Fiala was so interested in the questions about embryo adoption that he posed those questions to his ethics class. The students talked about potential issues such as creating "designer babies" or passing up foster children who are waiting for families.

"These kinds of cases -- it's good that we talk about them because it reminds us that we need to be more careful about thinking about the ethics and the morality of all this," said Dr. Fiala.

Jim and Ashley say they followed their morals by adopting children who were simply "frozen in time," just waiting to warm their hearts with the love of a family.

"It's been the best experience for us, I think," Ashley said.

"It doesn't mean you're always going to have a twin either," Jim said.

"No, it doesn't! Please don't think you're guaranteed a twin!" Ashley laughed.

A child who is born from an adopted embryo is the mother's biological child because she gave birth, even though the mother is not the baby's genetic parent. But adoption experts say this virtually eliminates the risk of the embryo donor claiming any rights to the baby.

Experts also say there's an estimated 600,000 frozen embryos in the U.S.