The highest court in Massachusetts is dealing with a case of frozen embryos that could become a landmark ruling with implications for the rest of the country. The questions: Who legally controls the frozen vial containing four embryonic cells? The 44 year old ex-wife, known in the court papers as B.Z., who wants to try one last time to become pregnant with them? Or the father, A.Z., her ex-husband, who does not want to have more children with his ex-wife? The wife has seven consent forms signed by her ex-husband, saying in part that if the couple separated, the embryos belonged to her. The present legal consensus emerging within the courts of the United States is that the woman's constitutional right to have children is greater than her ex-husband's constitutional right not to be forced to beget them. If the court rules in favor of the wife, it will be the first time a state's highest court has sided with the parent who wanted the embryos implanted over the other parent's objections. How do we think about a case like this?

• There are over 150,000 or more frozen embryos in the United States. As couples' circumstances change and a divorce results and there is a battle over the embryos, there is no real legal precedent or direction on settling an issue like this. Reproductive technologies are simply way out ahead of legal issues and ethical ones. In the absence of laws governing this form of conception, and in the near-absence of lawmakers willing to write ones, early court rulings had tended to flip-flop from one court to the next. In the rulings, judges have often drawn different conclusions, for example, about whether embryos are property or people, or whether a woman should have more control over an embryo than a man.
  
  
• The emerging legal consensus is that embryos are neither children nor property but rather a "special entity" with the potential for life. The other legal consensus is that if an agreement between the man and woman has been signed, it should be regarded as a legal contract. A third item of consensus that is emerging is that the special rights that abortion law gives a woman over the embryo growing in her body do not apply when the embryo has been frozen. So, the father and mother should have equal rights over what is done with the embryo. State courts have ruled that those equal rights shift, if the embryos seemed to be a potential parent's only chance to have biological children.
  
  
• Bills pending in the New York and New Jersey legislatures would require clients at in vitro fertilization clinics to sign explicit forms about what they want done with their frozen embryos in case of their divorce or death.
  
  
• Frankly, we need revelation to decide this issue. Is the embryo of infinite value? Yes. God makes it very clear that life begins at conception (Psalm 139:16). Therefore, we must give that embryo protection in law. It is not property; it not "potential life;" it is life. What we see is reproductive technologies far ahead of ethical and legal concerns. The law must reflect that the embryo is life and can be adopted by other parents if the "birth" parents do not want them. Laws must be made requiring parents to decide what to do with the embryos if they do not want them due to divorce or if they die. Whatever the law and court decisions, there must be maximum legal and ethical respect given to the embryos. In God's eyes, this is life, not "potential" life!!

See New York Times, 5 November 1999, p. A19.

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THE CHANGING VIEW OF CHILDREN

Once it was assumed that adults and especially parents has at least some of the answers and a serious role to play in the molding of a child into an adult. Today, the conventional wisdom is that the child has all the answers and that adults are, at best, a facilitator but often an impediment on the road to self-discovery for the child. Adults now are now to nourish the child's self- esteem. Children no longer leaner from our example; we learn from them as they reveal the truths about themselves and the world to parents.

So what are we hearing from children? -- many express themselves by self-mutilation, who communicate in subliterate fashion, for whom love is alien and sex is commonplace, who attempt suicide at a rate that is 95% higher than it was 20 years ago and who when things really get bad take up their guns and slaughter people. Has something gone wrong?

The answer from Kay S. Hymovitz in her new book, Ready or Not?, is yes! The book's subtitle is "Why Treating Children as Small Adults Endangers Their Future and Ours." What are some of her conclusions?

• The prevailing belief that children "already own the materials out of which to build their individuality and autonomy, and that adults, or 'society,' must beware of disturbing them" has roots that go back to at least Rousseau and John Dewey. Thus in law we have Hilary Clinton arguing that "the legal status of infancy, minority, should be abolished and the presumption of incompetency reversed." Further, Lawrence Tribe asserts that childhood is "a semi-suspect classification." Another writes, "Rules are very useful in keeping a small child safe, but they don't really play much part in teaching him how to behave." In this age, self-expression is more important than slavish adherence to rules. Result: One-third of the students at the nation's colleges require remedial instruction in reading, writing, or math.
  
  
• Children do, however, get first-rate sex education and they're able learners. It is unthinkable in this culture to tell them not to have sex!
  
  
• In the end, society gets the children it deserves. An American society that decides to let kids raise themselves gets an MTV and Gap generation. If it is an adolescent's right to wear a NAZI symbol to class, we might get Columbine. The solution many cry is gun control but only a few years ago, boys could bring their hunting rifles to class and go hunting after school. The guns have not changed; the kids have!!
  
  
• The bottom line of all of this is that culture has bought the lie that children are basically good and society is evil. But the Bible will have none of this. All humans are sinners and need salvation from that sin. The children's rights movement runs totally counter to God's revealed Word and we should therefore not be surprised of the disgusting nature of so much of our culture. When you rebel against God, consequences follow.

See John Leo, US News and World Report, (1 November 1999), p. 26.

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RON BROWN AND FREEDOM

Recently coach Ron Brown of the UNL Huskers football team was criticized for his comments about homosexuality that it was a sin and that Jesus Christ offers hope. I will not review the criticisms he received. They are what we have come to expect, but I want to make two major comments about this issue:

• Once again we see that it is impossible to raise any question about the moral or ethical dimension of this lifestyle. This is tragic for the evaluation stems not from human sources but from God's revelation. There should be a healthy debate about the ethics of this lifestyle. But it presumably can no longer occur in this culture.
  
  
• In the Sunday, 7 November issue of the Omaha World Herald, an article sited the biblical passages in dispute on the homosexual issue and interpretations from both sides were offered. I have one observation: Neither the article nor any of those interviewed focused on God's creation ordinance in Genesis 2:19-25. The reason homosexuality is an aberration is that it violates God's creation ordinance on marriage and sexuality in this passage. The other passages from Genesis 19, Leviticus 18 and 20, Romans 1:18 ff and 1 Corinthians 6 need a reference point and this is that point. Furthermore, Genesis 2 establishes the transcultural principle on sexuality. Tragically, none of this was or is ever discussed when human sexuality comes up.

The Ron Brown situation once again demonstrates how closed-minded, how one-dimensional the culture is on this matter of human sexuality. Is it any wonder we keep getting it wrong.

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