This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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You could say I’m pro-life thanks to both of my mothers. My biological mother underwent in vitro fertilization, and she and my biological father had five children. Yet 20 embryos remained frozen. Rather than letting these embryos languish indefinitely or, worse, allowing them to expire, she sought a pro-life solution.
My birth and adoptive mother, meanwhile, having experienced premature ovarian failure, longed to experience pregnancy and have a child. In consultation with Christian leaders, including Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, who would become my godfather, she asked two important questions: Could she adopt frozen embryos, and would her faith allow it?
The answers to both questions came back “yes,” that if the family who created the embryos is unable to parent more children, the embryos need to be adopted.
After putting together an adoption agreement via Nightlight Christian Adoptions, my parents, Marlene and John Strege, adopted these 20 embryos. Alas, 19 of them did not survive the freeze, thaw, and implantation. I was the lone survivor, and I was born on Dec. 31, 1998.
I was the first adopted frozen embryo.
My father told our story in the book “A Snowflake Named Hannah: Ethics, Faith, and the First Adoption of a Frozen Embryo.” After my adoption, Nightlight Christian Adoptions founded the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program to help place other embryos with willing families. Pro-lifers are becoming more aware of the frozen embryo crisis, but the fight to protect the most vulnerable among us is harder than ever.
The IVF industry needs to be reined in. It is highly likely that the number of embryos remaining in frozen canisters now exceeds 1.5 million in the United States alone. My heart aches for couples struggling with infertility. Their suffering is real. But compassion for adults longing for children should never come at the expense of the children being created. Each of those embryos deserves the same opportunity I was given. We legally shield bald eagle eggs and sea turtle eggs and nests because we recognize developing life as worthy of protection.
However, human embryos, children like I once was, can be bought, sold, frozen indefinitely, discarded, or destroyed. Another troubling aspect of the IVF industry is that freezing and thawing often result in embryonic loss. In my case, 14 of my 19 siblings did not survive the freeze and thaw. (The other five failed to implant.)
I applaud the Department of Health and Human Services’ recent decision to support embryo adoption. The threat to embryos doesn’t end with years suspended on ice, though. The movement to conduct embryonic stem cell research on frozen embryos also fails to treat them as human beings, discarding them in favor of “the greater good.”
My mother, Marlene Strege, testified in Congress on behalf of the frozen embryos and against embryonic stem cell research in 2001. It was my introduction to pro-life advocacy, though I was asleep in my father’s arms throughout most of the hearing.
The Democratic Party, meanwhile, continued to push for federal funding of the research. But our advocacy to the White House succeeded. In 2006, my mother and I watched in the East Room as President George W. Bush vetoed federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. “As science brings us ever closer to unlocking the secrets of human biology,” he said, “it also offers temptations to manipulate human life and violate human dignity. Our conscience and history as a nation demand that we resist this temptation.”
My mother’s activism on behalf of the unborn, and especially frozen embryos, has inspired me to follow her lead. I received my sociology degree from Biola University and a master’s in social work from Baylor University. Today, I am a licensed social worker, providing therapy to people of all ages.
When the Supreme Court was considering its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, my parents and I filed an amicus brief in support of Mississippi’s pro-life law. My Christian upbringing and faith established a standard by which I choose to live my life, specifically from Luke 12:48: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded.”
Recently, I was invited to testify to a Missouri state Senate subcommittee hearing on a Personhood Amendment. This is how I opened: “Before I had a heartbeat in a womb … before I had a birth certificate … before I had a name … I had an inventory number. For two years, nine months, I existed in a frozen canister of liquid nitrogen. My legal status was not ‘child.’ It was ‘property.’”
I founded Wonderfully Made Adoption Services, International, to support individuals conceived through IVF, assist families pursuing embryo adoption or considering placing their remaining embryos for adoption, advocate for frozen embryos, and educate IVF clinics, adoption agencies, and the public about the ethical and human realities surrounding assisted reproduction.
One area of my counseling work involves adults conceived through IVF and created through donor egg and/or donor sperm. Many of these individuals struggle with questions surrounding identity, biological family connections, and even future relationships because anonymous donations are often used repeatedly across multiple families. Some do not know how many biological siblings they may have or who they could unknowingly encounter in dating relationships.
Another controversial practice within the IVF industry is intracytoplasmic sperm injection, or ICSI. In cases where fertilization does not occur naturally in the lab, a technician selects a single sperm cell, removes its tail, and injects it directly into the egg in an attempt to force fertilization. While this technology is often presented as routine medical advancement, it also raises profound ethical questions about the extent to which human life is being engineered and controlled.
The IVF industry also operates within a system that often grades and ranks embryos according to perceived quality. Embryos considered “lower grade” may be discarded, indefinitely frozen, or left behind. Yet many of those embryos grow up to become children and adults with lives, voices, and stories of their own. Some of my closest friends from the Snowflakes embryo adoption community were once embryos deemed less desirable by industry standards.
As someone who was once a frozen embryo myself, these issues are not theoretical to me. They are deeply personal.
Before I had a birth certificate, a name, or even a heartbeat in the womb, I had an inventory number. Today, millions of embryonic human beings remain frozen in storage across the United States. I was once one of them. My life is proof that these children are not disposable property or laboratory material. They are human beings with futures, identities, voices, and inherent dignity. The question facing our nation is whether we are willing to recognize humanity before more lives are lost in silence.
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Hannah Strege is a licensed social worker in Colorado and a graduate of Biola University and Baylor University, where she earned her master’s degree in social work. Strege is widely recognized as the first adopted frozen embryo in the world.
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