NOTE from Fields and Dennis: In Massachusetts, a pre-divorce agreement that would award the embryos to one party upon separation or divorce is against public policy. The Supreme Judicial Court, in A.Z. v. B.Z., 431 Mass. 150,160 (2000), held that this public policy trumped contracts that would “compel one donor to become a parent against his or her will.”
In Arizona, as the article below notes, the law is different.
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Arizona has become the first state in the US to pass a law mandating what happens to frozen embryos after couples get divorced.
When there’s a dispute over whether to destroy the cells, the law says, the frozen embryos must go to the person who wants them “to develop to birth.”
The landmark legislation, supported by anti-abortion groups and signed into law by Gov. Doug Ducey last week, is at the vanguard of the nationwide abortion debate. While some conservatives are cheering the new law as further support for the notion of “personhood,” others argue that it is a dangerous overreach of government.
Read more here.
