Houston man sues Whataburger for up to $1 million after putting onions on his burger
A Houston man is suing fast food chain Whataburger, claiming he suffered an allergic reaction to onions on a burger – despite ordering the meal with no onions.
Demery Ardell Wilson says he had such a bad allergic reaction to the onions while dining at one of the restaurant's chains on June 24 that he had to seek medical attention.
Wilson claims he took one bite of his meal and immediately tasted onion – which was enough to cause an allergic reaction, Moneywise reported.
He filed a lawsuit against Whataburger on April 25, seeking 'monetary relief over $250,000 but less than $1,000,000,' after asking for a meal with no onions, the court filing states.
In the petition, Wilson says he suffered 'serious personal injuries' as a result of the incident and was forced to 'seek the care of medical professionals.'
Wilson also claims the restaurant was negligent in serving him in the suit. It was not immediately clear which branch of the chain he had visited, or what he ordered.
Meanwhile, Whataburger is pushing back against Wilson's allegations, requesting 'strict proof' of his claims in a separate court document filed on May 16.
The Independent has reached out to Whataburger for comment.
Wilson has previously sued a fast food chain over being served onions against his request.
He filed a lawsuit against Sonic Drive-in last year, claiming a meal he ordered without onions also triggered an allergic reaction.
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Embryo ‘adoption' answered these families' prayers. The Christian right is using them to attack IVF
As soon as they arrived home, Tyler, seven, and Jayden, three, rushed to a small green tent perched on the living room table and pressed their faces against its mesh windows. Inside, several gray cocoons hung immobile as the boys' eyes eagerly scanned them for the slightest sign of movement. 'We're waiting for butterflies to emerge,' explained their mother, Alana Lisano. 'It's our little biology experiment.' Within seconds, the boys were off to play with their cars, having no patience for such waiting. But Tyler and Jayden, Alana told me, were like those butterflies not so long ago, suspended in a different kind of stasis for two decades. Technically, they existed long before Alana met her husband, Steven Lisano, in veterinary school. Before they got married, tried to get pregnant and learned that Alana's eggs were of such poor quality that even in vitro fertilization likely wouldn't help. And before they attended an event at their Fort Collins, Colorado, church in 2014, where a representative of Nightlight Christian Adoptions described to them how countless embryos were waiting for a chance to be born, like little frozen orphans, in fertility clinics and storage facilities all over the country. By then, the embryos that would become Tyler and Jayden had been in cryopreserved storage for nearly 18 years. Alana and Steven had never truly considered the implications of freezing embryos when you believe that life starts at conception. As veterinarians, they were familiar with the science. After all, embryo freezing was developed to breed livestock before being applied to early human IVF practices in the 1980s. They knew eggs were fertilized with sperm in a petri dish, left to develop into embryos over several days, and frozen in liquid nitrogen to potentially be transferred to a uterus at a later date. What they didn't know was that Christian programs in the US allowed them to 'adopt' frozen embryos, and possibly, if they were lucky, have them grow into babies that Alana would give birth to. It all sounded like something out of a science fiction novel. But the more they thought and prayed about it, the more it started to make sense. Few Americans contemplate the fate of excess embryos until they start the IVF process themselves. Only then do they have to decide whether to freeze any remaining fertilized eggs for future use, as most patients do, before discarding them or donating them to science. Some might even opt to donate them to other patients. Whatever they choose, the decision is usually a deeply personal one. But if the anti-abortion movement has its way, they might not have a choice at all. In February 2024, the Alabama supreme court cited biblical passages to argue that embryos should be legally recognized, not as personal property, but as 'extrauterine children' with rights equal to those of children. The ruling upended the local IVF industry, as clinicians handling embryos feared being sued under Alabama's Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. Several Republican leaders including Ted Cruz and Donald Trump quickly vowed to preserve IVF access, and Alabama lawmakers passed emergency legislation to protect medical staff from lawsuits. At the same time, prominent Christian right leaders and conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation and Students for Life of America, celebrated the ruling. Some called to extend the legal rights of embryos and expressed their fervent desire to restrict IVF nationwide, arguing that the regular testing, freezing and discarding of embryos makes IVF incompatible with Christian values regarding the sanctity of 'unborn children'. The problem with this position is that IVF is immensely popular in the US, and is widely supported by Christians. Some consider it manifestly 'pro-life' – after all, children are born from it. For those struggling to conceive, losing IVF as an option would be devastating, especially as domestic and international adoption of infants and toddlers has become increasingly difficult. This may be why Christian right leaders who oppose IVF have also begun to direct their followers towards a seemingly heaven-sent alternative: the relatively niche practice of embryo 'adoption'. Embryo 'adoption' programs actively promote the view of embryos as 'preborn' children, all equally deserving of a chance at life, and match mainly white Christian families who have excess embryos from their own IVF journeys to others looking to conceive. In casting the process of embryo donation as adoption, the practice takes a distinctly evangelical view of freezing and storing embryos, said anthropologist Dr Risa Cromer. 'Cryopreservation disturbs what evangelical supporters of embryo adoption call 'God's plan' for each embryo,' Cromer wrote in her 2023 book Conceiving Christian America: Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics. What concerns them is the testing, discarding and indefinite storage of embryos; they don't tend to view cryopreservation itself as especially problematic, as long as God's divine plan for each embryo is allowed to manifest. In order for that to happen, all embryos in storage should be thawed and transferred 'from cold freezers into warm wombs'. The more Christians partake in this mission, evangelicals believe, the more frozen embryos can be 'saved'. Dr Jeffrey Keenan, president and medical director of the non-profit National Embryo Donation Center (NEDC) in Knoxville, Tennessee, claims he has seen over 1,000 babies born through its embryo adoption program since 2003. His hope is that 'loving homes' are found for the estimated 1.5 million embryos currently cryopreserved in the US and that fewer end up in storage in the first place. 'Ultimately, our dream is to put ourselves out of business,' he said. These are lofty goals, argues Cromer. To achieve them, the common IVF practice of creating multiple embryos would need to be restricted and the number of families partaking in embryo adoption would have to increase significantly – despite millions of taxpayer dollars spent to raise 'embryo adoption awareness' since the early 2000s, few Christians are actually aware of it. More likely is that the Christian right will try to use embryo adoption to usher in a reproductive landscape in which no one wins – not fertility specialists, not future parents and not even the frozen embryos they are so eager to save. When Californian couple Kathy and Doug Anderson wanted to grow their family in 1997, they looked to God for answers. (The family requested to use a pseudonym due to privacy concerns.) Kathy, a special-ed teacher with a son from a previous marriage, and Doug, a lawyer and Presbyterian pastor, married in November 1996. Kathy was 42, Doug, 44, and both struggled with infertility. After an attempt to adopt a child through a Christian agency failed, their fertility doctor suggested IVF. They would fertilize donated eggs with Doug's sperm to create embryos, which might be carried to term by Kathy. While not biologically related to her, she could give birth to the children herself. Unsure if IVF aligned with their religious values, Doug asked a friend and theologian for advice. The Vatican had warned Catholics against the practice when the first 'test-tube baby' was born in England in 1978, stating that 'the gift of human life must be actualized in marriage through the specific and exclusive acts of husband and wife.' Protestants were not given such clear direction. So when the theologian came back with a complicated answer concluding with 'go for it,' Kathy and Doug felt God had made his plans for their family clear. Using eggs from donor No 75, 12 embryos were created and five transferred to Kathy's uterus. Two survived, and in July 1998, Kathy gave birth to boy and girl twins who looked exactly like Doug. With that, the Andersons became part of a growing number of Christian Americans turning to IVF to have children. Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists zealously opposed the technology, pressing the US government not to fund or become actively involved with it. In the resulting regulatory vacuum, a competitive multi-billion-dollar industry emerged. Today, IVF treatments are rarely covered by health insurance and cost anywhere between $15,000 to $30,000, while the chance of a live birth ranges between 8% to 50% depending on the recipient's age and other factors. Creating more embryos per treatment means better odds at lower costs, with fewer invasive egg retrievals for patients. It also means that, as the science and success rates improve, more excess embryos end up in cryostorage. As she watched her twins grow up, Kathy grew increasingly concerned about the remaining seven embryos. To her, these were children, left in her care by God. But she didn't want to be pregnant again. 'I was 43 at the time, we were done,' she said. A self-described procrastinator, Doug put off making a decision while habitually paying the clinic's annual storage fee. Kathy named each embryo and started wearing a ring to honor her children: three red rubies for those born, one diamond for a miscarriage, and three diamonds for the embryos that did not survive the transfer. She later added a ring with seven diamonds for their frozen embryos. In 1997, a couple hours down the California coast from the Andersons, Lutheran couple John and Marlene Strege also contemplated using an egg donor and IVF to have children. Unlike the Andersons, the Streges decided it went against their religious beliefs: aside from their concerns about excess embryos, they believed using another woman's egg equated to creating life outside the marriage bond. When Marlene asked her doctor about other options to experience pregnancy, he suggested embryo donation. Some patients donated their remaining embryos to the clinic for other families to use. It was proven to work, but the Streges objected. Donation is what you did with money or clothes, they argued, not children. Also, at the time, they couldn't learn much more about the biological parents than hair and eye color. 'This is how you choose a car,' Marlene decided. 'This is not how we are going to start a family.' What the Streges wanted was to adopt embryos. They asked their friend Ron Stoddart, a lawyer and then president of the international and domestic adoption agency Nightlight Christian Adoptions, if this was possible. According to Stoddard, it wasn't – yet. Courts in the US have legally defined IVF embryos as neither 'persons nor property', instead funneling them into a third category that deserves 'special respect' due to their potential for human life. They are not subject to adoption laws, so they can be fairly easily exchanged between people, with parental rights only coming into play when someone gives birth to a child following a successful embryo transfer. But Stoddart liked the idea of adopting embryos. Soon enough, a program was created within Nightlight that applied adoption language and practices such as home studies and background checks to the donation process. They named it Snowflakes Embryo Adoption – inspired by a line from a performance of An American Christmas the Streges and Stoddarts saw in 1997: 'In the intricate design of each flake of snow, we find the Creator reflecting the individual human heart.' In early 1998, the Christian, rightwing organization Focus on the Family, which became closely involved in the effort, connected the Streges to a donor family willing to partake in the experiment. That spring, 20 frozen embryos were sent to a Californian fertility clinic where the Streges were patients. 'Have visions of a guardian angel on FedEx plane with arms around Snowflakes in liquid nitrogen,' Marlene wrote in a diary entry later published in John's 2020 memoir. After multiple thaws and transfers, one embryo survived. On New Year's Eve 1998, Marlene gave birth to the very first 'Snowflake baby'. They named her Hannah, after a barren biblical figure who has a child with the intervention of God. She would become a valuable asset for the American anti-choice lobby. Kathy and Doug Anderson, now parents to two preteens, hardly knew anyone who had used IVF or dealt with the questions they faced. Questions like, what should they do with their cryopreserved embryos? And, should they tell their children they were created in a laboratory using another woman's eggs? Their daughter Brianna wishes they had told her sooner. In seventh grade, she was filling out Punnett squares on a worksheet to predict eye color when she spotted an issue. She asked her teacher if parents with blue and brown eyes could have green-eyed children. 'No,' answered the teacher, explaining that green is recessive: 'Children would have to have a different biological parent for that to happen.' Confronted by their confused daughter, Kathy and Doug convinced Brianna she had hazel eyes and that her teacher didn't grasp the complexities of genetics. They waited until the twins' 16th birthday to tell them the truth. Their son, John, shrugged and said Kathy was his mother anyway. But Brianna felt betrayed. Her whole life, she had felt different from the rest of her family without knowing why. Now, she had learned she was only biologically related to her father and brother – and to seven frozen embryos. God granted her the opportunity to be born, Brianna thought. Didn't these embryos, her full siblings, deserve the same? With Brianna's interest in the embryos now apparent, Kathy recalled that the agency they had once tried to adopt through now had a program to match embryos with Christian recipients. It seemed like the perfect solution. The Andersons finalized their application to become Snowflakes donors in 2014. Since Snowflakes' founding, several other embryo adoption programs have emerged, including NEDC, that match participants and work out the logistics with fertility clinics and storage facilities on their behalf. Although exact numbers are difficult to come by, more than 3,000 children are estimated to have been born through these programs and are enthusiastically leveraged to champion the idea that embryos should have legal rights and protections. Snowflakes' contract, for example, describes embryos as 'pre-born children who are endowed by God with unique characteristics and are entitled to the rights and protections accorded to all children, legally and morally' – language that is contested by mainstream fertility practices. According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, while embryos 'have the potential to become persons' and should be treated with special care, 'they should not be afforded the same legal status as a person'. It also warns against using the term ''adoption'' to describe the exchange of embryos, calling it 'inaccurate and misleading'. Initially, Snowflakes staff explained their view of embryo personhood with what they labeled the 'cryo-nursery', an empty metal cryotank covered with cartoon animal stickers intended to tug at the heartstrings of passersby at adoption events. It did not always work, a staff member told me, 'but it was a good conversation starter'. Now the cryo-nursery gathers dust at Snowflakes' California office; pictures of healthy children born through their program, captioned 'frozen 27 years' or 'blastocysts slow frozen in 2006' and posted on Snowflakes' website, are much more effective advertisements. To the participants these programs cater to, such imagery and language affirms their beliefs, especially compared to what many view as a 'cold' approach common in fertility clinics: testing embryos to select the most viable, while freezing or discarding the rest. Brianna liked that Snowflakes was committed to providing each of the Anderson embryos a chance to be born. She also wanted them to go to the right family, one that would allow her to build a relationship with any future siblings and raise them knowing God. When she helped fill out the application at age 16, she hoped the talents and accomplishments of her and her brother, John – she played the harp, he acted as a child, both got good grades – could compensate for factors that might discourage a family from picking the embryos. 'They were old, there wasn't a clear genetic history, they weren't frozen at the best capacity,' said Brianna, now 27. 'I knew we weren't an ideal match.' About 20% of embryos donated through Snowflakes are considered harder to place, with some frozen for years, even decades, using outdated methods. Such embryos are less likely to survive the thawing process and take in the uterus, but recipient families are encouraged to give them a shot anyway. In 2021, Snowflakes launched an Open Hearts program to specifically recruit 'families who feel a calling to rescue an embryo from frozen storage', regardless of the embryo's medical history, age, quality or level of communication with the donor family. NEDC offers a 50% discount on fees for adopting 'special consideration' embryos with known potential for diseases or genetic abnormalities. At some point, embryo adoptions' evangelical mission starts to chafe against the motivations of hopeful recipients. Some may apply out of a sense of religious obligation, but most arrive at embryo adoption following long and painful infertility journeys, intensely desiring a child. While embryo adoption is presented as less expensive and easier than adopting an infant, it is still costly and time-consuming – a side effect of treating embryos like people, not property. Embryo adoption program fees cost up to $10,000, not including a home study with background checks that can total $3,500 and thousands in clinical costs for embryo transfers. Depending on the program, recipients also compile extensive family profiles and medically confirm their ability to carry a pregnancy to term. Once matched, recipients agree to not discard any embryos that survive the thawing process. Most donated embryos were created before genetic testing became standard practice and have not been genetically screened. Snowflakes recipients sign an agreement to not test them before transfer; so do the clinics that transfer them. Neither Snowflakes or NEDC allows abortion unless medically necessary – though recipients tend to be anti-abortion and would not consider terminating a pregnancy. Embryo transfers and pregnancies are not without risks, especially for recipients with gynecological issues that prevent them from conceiving unassisted. While most embryo adoption programs require women to be 45 or younger, a typical recipient is in their late 30s or early 40s – and those conceiving at age 35 and older have increased risk of outcomes such as preeclampsia, gestational diabetes and miscarriage. Snowflakes' and NEDC's contracts do not guarantee that embryos will survive after thawing, that a child will be born or that children are born without health issues. According to Cromer, the anthropologist, most recipients are willing to take such risks, with some taking pride in their ability to serve as 'God's vessel'. Other prospective recipients who have struggled to have children might be heartened by claims that embryo adoption is 'the fastest method for bringing an adopted infant into your family – and YOU give birth'! This might be true for some, but not everyone who tries to have children through embryo adoption does, and loss is baked into the process. The Andersons waited over a year for a match. When Snowflakes staff finally found a family, Brianna was ecstatic. But Kathy vetoed them. The recipients were a military family. Having taught at a military base, Kathy knew that was not the life she wanted for children born from these embryos. Brianna understood, but quietly began to panic. What if this was their only chance? Snowflakes staff said they could not guarantee another match. 'I can't carry them myself,' Brianna remembers thinking of the embryos that could become her siblings. 'That would just be too weird.' In the summer of 2016, a few months after completing their recipient application to Snowflakes, Alana and Steven Lisano received a donor family profile while on a family vacation in Alaska. They snuck away to read it together. 'These seem like very genuine, sweet people who love the Lord,' Alana thought. But their embryos had been frozen for nearly two decades. Alana and Steven had spent about $30,000 on failed IVF treatments before applying to Snowflakes, and had taken out credit cards and borrowed money from family to try embryo adoption. They yearned for children, preferably several from the same donors. 'Then they'd at least have a genetic bond to each other,' Alana reasoned. It was one of the things they appreciated about Snowflakes; 'sibling batches' of embryos were usually kept together. But the chances of having a child with these embryos, let alone more than one, were pretty low. After a long hike in the Alaskan mountains, the Lisanos decided that none of their concerns were a legitimate reason to say no. Eager to transfer their 'adopted' embryos as soon as possible, the Lisanos quickly ran into an unexpected hurdle. 'No Colorado fertility clinic would transfer them,' said Alana. This is a known issue in embryo adoption. Clinics are often hesitant to accept embryos created at other clinics if they were made or frozen using outdated methods, or if their medical history is unknown. Snowflakes has a list of about 40 US fertility clinics open to working with embryos matched through their program, with 10 to 15 of those willing to accept older or 'special circumstance' embryos. For the Lisanos, the answer came from the California clinic where the embryos were stored. The fertility doctor who had created them still worked there and was curious to see what would happen if they were transferred now. The plan was to thaw all the embryos at once and allow them to develop into five-day blastocysts. Back home in Colorado, Alana began taking hormones, praying at least a few embryos would survive. One day in, four were left. Two days later, just two. Disheartened but hopeful, Alana flew out to California for a day to have her uterine lining checked. She returned to the west coast a week later with Steven to transfer one embryo. The other was refrozen. 'This is the oldest one I've ever transferred,' the doctor told them. Alana spotted blood for several months. The embryo was developing very slowly – but she was pregnant. After six weeks, she shared the good news with the Andersons. Brianna and Kathy Anderson flew out from California to Colorado to meet Tyler Lisano in the summer of 2017, when he was just three weeks old. Alana and Steven were waiting for them at a restaurant with Tyler in a car seat, covered with a blanket. 'I couldn't wait for her to pull the blanket back and see this baby that I'd thought about and prayed for for so long,' Brianna said. Holding him felt surreal, as if she was holding her twin brother, John. With Doug's big eyes and round face, Kathy thought he looked just like her twins when they were born. Because Tyler was delivered through an emergency C-section, Alana was advised to wait two years before the next embryo transfer if she wanted to deliver vaginally. But, as Alana put it, 'God had other plans.' She became pregnant with a biological daughter, Hannah, born in July 2019. They transferred the second embryo two years later, and Jayden was born in June 2021. When Brianna got married in San Clemente in the summer of 2022, Hannah, Tyler and Jayden walked down the aisle as her flower girl and ring bearers. The Andersons and Lisanos are part of a growing cohort of Snowflakes families eager to spread the gospel of embryo adoption. But changing attitudes toward IVF among Christian leadership puts them in an uneasy position. During its annual gathering in Indianapolis last summer, months after the Alabama supreme court's ruling on embryonic personhood, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) introduced a headline-making resolution about IVF: the 'continued freezing, stockpiling and ultimate destruction of human embryos' outside the 'embodied union of husband and wife' makes IVF treatment incompatible with core Christian values, it argued. Even amongst Southern Baptists, this was controversial. Several members whose own children or family members were born through IVF gave emotional testimonies, pleading with the more than 10,000 delegates present to vote against the resolution. It passed with a clear majority. 'It just puts unnecessary shame on families already going through way too much,' Mary Leah Miller from Alabama, pregnant with a second set of twins through embryo adoption, said several days after the vote. Mary Leah and her husband, Rodney Miller – both attorneys and board members of a Christian infertility support organization – have been vocal Snowflakes advocates since 2022. They were highly critical of the Alabama ruling and the consequences it created for IVF patients, such as forcing them to seek fertility care out of state. 'It looks good on paper, but in reality [it is] a classic case of 'you won the battle but lost the war,'' Rodney said. Though acknowledging that IVF presents people of faith with moral and ethical dilemmas that church leaders should help them navigate, he was 'not convinced a one-size-fits-all approach from a nationwide denomination or the government is the answer'. In a caveat that seems to have gone unnoticed by media and members alike, the SBC's resolution commended families like the Millers 'who have adopted frozen embryos', and encouraged infertile couples to 'consider adopting frozen embryos in order to rescue those who are eventually to be destroyed (Proverbs 24:11-12)'. This is not the first time embryo adoption has been used to push a controversial Christian right agenda on a national scale. In the late 1990s, scientists announced a breakthrough in embryonic stem cell research, promising effective future treatment, even permanent cures, for devastating diseases such as Parkinson's. Several years later, after a vigorous campaign, Hannah Strege, her parents and 20 other 'Snowflake baby' families stood behind President George W Bush as he announced his veto of federal funding for the research. Bush and his successors also allocated tens of millions in federal funds to promote embryo adoption, a chunk of which made it back to Snowflakes via regular grants. In 2021, the Streges filed an amicus brief in the Dobbs supreme court case that overturned Roe v Wade, claiming: 'Hannah's life proves life begins at fertilization [and] stands for the lives of all embryos in or out of the womb, especially those targeted for abortion.' The right to abortion was not the only thing overturned by Dobbs. So was Roe's holding that 'the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.' According to Mary Ziegler, legal historian and author of Personhood: The New Civil War over Reproduction, this blasted open the door for attempts to codify legal personhood for fetuses, which had been on anti-abortion activists' agenda since the 1960s. And for many activists, that fight naturally extended to embryos – both in and outside the uterus. Indeed, multiple conservative states have passed or tried to pass legislation that assigns personhood to embryos or when fertilization occurs. Such legislation can be used as proof that a precedent for personhood exists. And once a case is brought before the supreme court (Ziegler says it's only a matter of time before someone tries), it can also convince justices that the rights of embryos and fetuses should be included in the US constitution. 'This', said Ziegler, 'is the end goal'. Shortly after the Alabama ruling, 131 House Republicans signaled as much when they supported a controversial legislative proposal that would grant 14th amendment protections at the 'moment of fertilization', extending embryo rights nationwide without exceptions for IVF practices. The GOP has been proposing similar legislation since 1981. But to constitutionally enshrine personhood in a post-Roe legal landscape, which is considered a long-term project, the Christian right will only have to convince conservative judges. Voters' opinion is of little concern. 'They know IVF is immensely popular,' said Ziegler. 'They just don't care.' Where legal personhood succeeds, IVF as we know it cannot. In a 2023 article for the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, a reproductive endocrinologist and a legal and bioethics expert explicitly warned about the ways in which state laws enacted after Dobbs to give embryos rights could disrupt the fertility industry. The authors predicted IVF clinics closing over liability concerns, not unlike what happened in Alabama, as well as the introduction of complex and costly insurance coverage for transporting, exchanging and handling embryos. 'Calls to mandate the 'adoption' of patients' unused embryos' and courts' ability to appoint guardians 'to negotiate fair and equitable decisions on behalf of frozen embryos' would take away patients' agency, and doctors might be incentivized to put embryos' rights above their patients' health interests. Removing the option to freeze embryos would 'force women to undergo multiple [egg] retrieval procedures', and not allowing embryos to be discarded could force patients to carry unwanted or high-risk pregnancies. Paradoxically, giving embryos legal status would threaten not only IVF, but embryo adoption as well – the very option put forth by the Christian right as a suitable alternative to IVF. Despite using adoption language to facilitate embryo donation processes for decades, programs like Snowflakes 'have never actually applied adoption or family law', said Susan Crockin, a legal expert on assisted reproductive technologies including IVF. As such, the promoted benefits of embryo adoption compared to conventional adoption – the cost being lower, the government taking a less supervisory role, no complicated transfer of parental rights and no risk of custody battles – would all likely disappear once embryos are not just 'adopted' for form, but by law. Moreover, Crockin argues, family and adoption courts are not prepared for the difficult questions raised by embryonic personhood: when is an embryo adoption final, when recipients receive the cryotank or when a child is actually born? Up until which point can biological parents reclaim custody of an embryo or even a child? 'The legal framework just isn't there,' she said. Hesitant to predict exactly which problems would manifest, Crockin is certain about one thing: 'Extending legal personhood to embryos would ultimately make embryo donation in any form, including 'embryo adoption', more complex and difficult for everyone involved.' Among the anti-abortion movement, none of this seems to be causing great concern, said Ziegler. ''Personhood' is a catchall term most pro-life groups can get behind,' she explained, because it is shorthand for a wide range of goals that include far-reaching government control over reproductive rights and family building practices. The repercussions on IVF and embryo adoption may not be desired by all anti-abortion activists or Christian Americans, Ziegler said, but 'they'll cross that bridge once they get there.' Until the movement is forced to address this dissonance, it can use embryo adoption to pacify Christians. The Heritage Foundation, the group behind Project 2025 that has exercised major influence on conservative lawmakers, recently did just that. In March, it released a report warning against the many supposed wrongs of IVF while also celebrating embryo adoption as 'the only humane and compassionate' way to deal with existing frozen embryos. Then it went a step further, calling on lawmakers to make embryo adoption more accessible via adoption tax credits. They suggested the process even be mandatory, by advising that embryos be automatically put up for adoption if parents do not plan to use them within a certain time frame. Like the SBC, the Heritage Foundation did not explain how embryo adoption will be possible if the IVF industry shuts down in the wake of personhood legislation. Cromer argues these endorsements of embryo adoption also support a more fundamental mission of the Christian right: remaking America in a Christian image. She explains that programs like Snowflakes cast frozen embryos as 'savable orphans', and with little exception, white heterosexual Christians as the 'ideal saviors' to swoop in and rescue them. The NEDC only allows heterosexual couples married for a minimum of three years to apply. Snowflakes does accept recipient applications from married same-sex couples as well as single women 'not actively dating' – but such applicants are warned that donor families prefer to match their embryos with 'traditional, married couples'. This sort of white saviorism storytelling also informs how embryos made by people of color are handled by these programs. Financial and cultural barriers to IVF have created a surplus of embryos from white donors, while applicants of color are told that they might struggle to match with embryos from donors of their own race and ethnicity. However, programs like NEDC have matched white families with such embryos in special cases. Keenan, the NEDC president, has a favorite embryo adoption story: a white evangelical missionary couple who gave birth to Black triplets in 2016. They wanted to match with embryos from Black donors because they were already raising Black children through conventional adoption. 'We see the human family's varying physical characteristics as awesome reminders of God's creative brilliance,' father Aaron Halbert wrote in an opinion piece for the Washington Post, adding: 'We see [race], and we embrace it.' In a political landscape dominated by traditional verging on pronatalist views about parenthood, Cromer wrote in her book that embryo adoption amplifies a Christian nationalist mission to 'save' American society and 'conceive a future when white pro-life evangelical values may 'find a home' in the United States (again)'. Trump, self-appointed 'father of IVF', has embraced this mission: when he signed an executive order directing the development of policy recommendations to expand IVF access (though not ordering the expansion itself) in February – a move that unleashed a new and vocal wave of anti-IVF sentiment from Christian right and anti-abortion leadership – the language he used affirmed that he considers it a family-building tool for 'longing mothers and fathers' only. When Brianna Anderson and her husband decided to have kids, she was lucky to get pregnant unassisted. Tyler, Jayden and Hannah Lisano are still to meet her one-year-old son, Isaac, who is technically the boys' biological nephew. Brianna believes every embryo 'deserves the right to be implanted and given a chance at life'. She does not think that any development that would restrict IVF on behalf of embryo rights – and make donating embryos harder, intentionally or not – is fair to infertile couples. 'It's all a bit weird and hard to explain, but embryo adoption has given me everything I could have ever wished for,' she said. The mother of her biological brothers agrees: 'Anyone that is pursuing IVF desperately wants a baby, so I am in favor of bringing down the barriers to achieve that goal,' Alana Lisano said. In fact, most of the dozen or so embryo adoption families I interviewed for this story echoed this sentiment, having experienced the pain of infertility themselves. One Texan father of IVF twins, who donated embryos through Snowflakes to a couple who gave birth to a girl, described himself as 'more pro-life than anyone you'll meet'. Yet he wanted IVF to remain an option for his biological children, who could inherit the condition that caused his wife's infertility issues. 'If they ban IVF,' he explained, 'they might not be able to have children.' To the Millers, IVF is a confirmation of God's power, rather than an affront to it. 'My children would not have existed if it wasn't for IVF,' said Mary Leah. 'And I refuse to believe that they were not in God's plan.' The Alabama ruling on embryonic personhood is the closest any US state has come to implementing 'God's plan' for IVF embryos. Its impact was immediate. As IVF clinics suspended services, people suddenly feared losing access or control of their embryos in cryostorage. It caused a noticeable surge in applications to Snowflakes by donors eager to find families willing and able to take them on. 'People realized they didn't have a plan for their embryos,' one staff member said. 'They wanted to take action before it was too late.' It never got to that point: facing outrage from voters and fellow Republicans, Alabama lawmakers scrambled to re-open and shield the state's fertility clinics. But this won't be the last time Christian right ideals are put into practice, potentially hobbling the IVF industry and throwing the fate of frozen embryos into uncertainty. The question is whether that's a sacrifice the anti-abortion movement is willing to own up to. This publication was made possible with the support of the Dutch Fund for In-Depth Journalism (FBJP)
