When Karla Dunston learned there was a tumor growing behind her breastbone, the 38-year-old emergency room doctor from Illinois knew she had little time to act. Chemotherapy would have to begin immediately. Though it could save her life, it would also leave her infertile.
Dunston, who had never had children, reached out to her boyfriend of several months for help. A firefighter, nurse and paramedic who is 10 years Dunston’s junior, Jacob Szafranski agreed to help her create frozen embryos — or, more accurately, “pre-embryos,” an egg fertilized by a sperm but not yet implanted in a woman’s body.
The pre-embryos were created using Szafranski’s sperm in March 2010. Dunston underwent chemo a month later. By May, Szafranski had broken things off via text message. (Both parties would later say in testimony and through their attorneys that neither saw the other as a long-term prospect.) He didn’t want Dunston to use the pre-embryos they had created. Dunston said she would fight him on it.
The former couple is now embroiled in a lengthy court battle.
With advancements in assisted reproduction — procedures like in vitro fertilization, embryo freezing and egg donation — throughout the past 40 years, conception can increasingly be equal parts miracle and legal minefield. According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, the use of this technology has doubled in just the past decade. Yet despite the increase, fewer than a dozen states have weighed in on legal disputes that arise from the creation, destruction or use of frozen embryos.
In addition, there’s little precedence for a case like theirs. Unlike couples in previous pre-embryo custody disputes in Illinois, Dunston and Szafranski were never married.
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“In this case, [Dunston using the embryos] won’t affect his day-to-day life at all. For her, it will affect her immensely,” Moore told HuffPost. “He can always have children later. She can’t.”
Dunston did have a child in 2012 using a donor egg and sperm; the boy shares neither her nor Szafranski’s genetic material.
Schroeder told HuffPost that as long as the potential exists for Dunston to use the pre-embryos the pair created, the possibility of unwanted fatherhood — at least in the sense of having an offspring in the world — will be “looming over” Szafranski.
“It will color his life, how he feels about himself,” Schroeder. “Jacob wants to control when and how he becomes a father. He doesn’t want to become a father this way.”
