meaning Louisiana wasn't the right place to hear the case. The embryos were in Los Angeles, California. Neither Loeb nor Vergara lived in Louisiana. But given Louisiana's definition of embryos as people, it would have been fascinating, and concerning, if the court had been able to rule on the case. Of course, these were celebrities. So we got to read about their case in the news. But it could happen to anyone who's gone through IVF. By contrast to the idea that embryos are people, other laws and judges treat embryos as property. In Texas, a probate judge was forced to determine the legal properties of 11 embryos when a couple was murdered, leaving behind their embryos and their two-year-old son. The judge determined that embryos have value and therefore were property and should go to the couple's heir, the two-year-old, to determine what to do with them when he turned 18. That's a heavy responsibility for an 18-year-old. Does he transfer them to a surrogate and raise his genetic siblings? Does he donate them to others? Does he forget about them entirely? Not likely that his parents were thinking about these questions when they formed those embryos. Aside from struggling for the definitions of eggs, sperm, embryos and who can use them, the law especially struggles when there are mix-ups in the lab. In 2018, a woman in New York, pregnant with twins, was surprised at her ultrasound appointment when her obstetrician congratulated her on having two boys. You see, she had gone through IVF in California and there, her embryos had been tested and shown to be two female embryos. She called the clinic, but they said, "Don't worry about it, ultrasounds are frequently inaccurate. You're having two girls." But she gave birth to two boys. And they didn't look like her or her husband. They did genetic testing. She was not genetically related, nor was her husband. In fact, the twins weren't even related to each other. (Audience gasps and laughs) Across the country, a woman in California got a call from her fertility clinic. It had been about nine months since she'd gone through a failed embryo transfer. She thought she was being asked to come in for routine testing, but was met with a roomful of doctors, lawyers, mental health professionals that told her there'd been a mistake. Her embryo had been transferred to another patient, and her genetic son had been born in New York. One of the twins. A judge in New York determined that the birth parents were not the legal parents to the children. Instead, the woman in California and her husband were legal parents to one of the twins, and another couple entirely were legal parents to the other twin because they were the genetic parents. But a similar thing happened in Italy with the exact opposite result. There, two embryos were transferred to the wrong patient and a judge determined that the birth parents were the legal parents to the children and the genetic parents had no legal rights at all to their own genetic children. It's time for the law to change. Here in Colorado, our lone egg and sperm donation statute has the language "a wife with her husband's consent." (Laughter) It's a little offensive to us liberated women, but also doesn't include single parents by choice or LGBTQ parents. It also doesn't include those who donate their embryos or those who receive embryos to have a child. What can we do besides advocating for better laws? We can think carefully about our own reproductive material. Every adult knows that they should have a will, even if they haven't done it yet. A will lets those we leave behind know what to do with our assets and our possessions. But most wills don't include an invaluable asset, our reproductive material. And that leaves loved ones confused and facing inconsistent laws. For instance, in 2019, a West Point cadet named Peter Zhu was in a tragic ski accident. His family begged the hospital and then a judge to let them retrieve his sperm. They explained to the judge that their son had always wanted to have children, and moreover, it was of vital cultural importance to them to continue their family line. The judge was persuaded. He issued the order to allow the son's sperm to be retrieved and later used for conception purposes. But here in Colorado, the law is not the same. In the last few years, at least twice it's happened where a man was taken to the hospital before his death and the request by a spouse to have his sperm retrieved was denied because he didn't have a consent on file with the hospital. But in another case where a man died suddenly and was taken to the coroner, his spouse's request to have his sperm retrieved was granted because the coroner is not subject to the same policies and procedures as a hospital. So if you think you might allow someone to have a child with your DNA after your death, or you don't want them to, tell them. Write it down, grab a napkin, put it on a napkin, send a text. No matter how strange that text may look. (Laughter) It happens more often than you think. We think more carefully about organ donation, but this is just as important. I bet you didn't think you need to include this in your will. The world has changed. The technology is here, and it will only keep advancing. And this isn't the only area where technology is outpacing the law. We need to challenge ourselves to think carefully about what these innovations mean to ourselves, to our families, to our children and to future children, whether they're genetically related to us or not. Thank you. (Applause)
