Life Legal: "No one has the right to a dead baby"

Contact: Mary Riley, Life Legal Defense Foundation, 707-224-6675

LOS ANGELES, April 16, 2015 /Christian Newswire/ -- Actor and producer Nick Loeb is suing ex-fiancée Sofia Vergara to save the lives of two embryos the couple conceived artificially in November 2013, according to a story published on the In Touch Weekly web site. Vergara reportedly refuses to give assurances that the frozen embryos will not be thawed and left to die. Loeb is also suing the fertility center that holds the embryos.

"It's a tragedy that an industry that traffics in human beings has turned a domestic conflict between two celebrities into a matter of life and death," said Mary Riley, Administrative Director of the Life Legal Defense Foundation, based in Napa, California. "But even more tragic is that a mother would insist on the death of her offspring. No one has the right to a dead child."

Loeb and Vergara were a prominent Hollywood couple when a number of embryos were conceived using his sperm and her eggs. At that time, both parties deliberately chose to bring lives into the world. The embryos, conceived through IVF, were to be brought to term by a surrogate. According to the papers, embryos were actually implanted twice in a surrogate, but the pregnancies failed, resulting in the death of the embryos.

Unfortunately, neither Loeb's situation nor that of the embryos is unique. While the lack of regulation of the IVF industry leaves exact numbers unknown, the federal government estimates that over 600,000 frozen embryos are currently being stored in the United States. Many are caught between the conflicting desires of their parents. Others are donated for research that results in the destruction of the embryo; thousands of others are thawed and discarded every year. At the same time, thousands of newly-created embryos are frozen every year.

"Mr. Loeb is doing the right thing in trying to save his little girls," commented Riley. "It's sad what the abortion mentality has done to our society. Abortion advocates commonly say that a woman has a right over her own body. But these two surviving embryos – little girls, really, at a very early stage of development – are not parts of Ms. Vergara's body. They aren't even in Ms. Vergara's body. Mr. Loeb isn't suing over Ms. Vergara's body. He's suing to save the lives of his daughters. And those opposing him are insisting instead that his offspring be killed."