The Department of Health and Human Services has revised language in a federal grant program for embryo adoption to classify frozen embryos as “children,” according to reporting by Guardian US columnist Moira Donegan. The change to the Embryo Adoption Awareness and Services program — a roughly $2 million grant initiative created under the George W. Bush administration — replaces the word “embryos” in several sections with “child,” “children,” and “children who already exist and are in need of a family,” Donegan reported.
The program, which has existed since 2002, provides funding to organizations that facilitate the adoption and implantation of surplus embryos created during in vitro fertilization procedures. The updated guidance calls for screening standards for frozen embryo recipients to be raised to those applied to parents seeking to adopt living children, and reorients the program’s priorities toward “the best interests of the child,” as applied to embryos, according to the column.
Donegan described the language as “strange and conspicuous in context” and said the move represents a “dramatic escalation” of the administration’s pursuit of fetal personhood — the legal doctrine that fertilized eggs possess constitutional rights as persons. Such a doctrine, if adopted by courts, would ban nearly all abortion and many forms of birth control and miscarriage management, and would reclassify many fertility treatments as murder.
“The language lends ammunition to anti-choice groups that have sought recognition of fetal and embryonic personhood in the courts, and who can now claim that embryos are already persons under the law as evidenced by the fact that they are treated as such in federal policy,” Donegan wrote.
The designation of embryos as “children” at the federal level goes further than previous administrations’ language, according to the column. While President George W. Bush once said of stem cell research that “each of these human embryos is a unique human life,” the current policy constitutes a more direct integration of embryonic personhood language into federal operations, Donegan reported.
The column drew comparisons to a 2024 Alabama Supreme Court ruling that declared frozen embryos persons under state law, calling them “extrauterine children” and designating freezers as “cryogenic nurseries.” That ruling led fertility clinics across Alabama to halt IVF services, and the state legislature quickly acted to protect IVF practices amid public outcry.
Donegan reported that the new HHS language is unlikely to produce such immediate effects, but said the policy change signals that the administration “may accelerate its anti-choice efforts after the midterms.” She noted that the FDA has a new acting chief who has reportedly sought to reassure anti-abortion campaigners, and that a “safety review” of the abortion pill mifepristone — widely seen as a pretext for restricting the drug — is underway.
“Fetal personhood would be among the most expansive and consequential means of banning abortion nationwide,” Donegan wrote. “Implementing it in law might be a long shot — but that doesn’t mean that they won’t try.”