Sarah-Marie Hoduski, Kansas City, Mo.
There are those that will be brought into existence 55 years after their parents have passed. They will be born to inherit the earth alongside the grandchildren of their own generation.
Cryogenics. Once a myth of the future is a wide spread reality, today. In the United States there are 600,000 cryogenically frozen people according to the Health and Human Services Department (HHS). Disconcertingly, they were frozen without their consent, without their knowledge.
However, among the lucky few, there are those that have been awakened.
The strange fate of the frozen sleeper has been realized: the youngest Millennial alive came to be in 1990, but today, he is only seven years old. He was frozen for 19 years before he was adopted according to the Telegraph.
There are many more Millennials lives yet to be realized. They call them frozen orphanages, those houses that keep the Cold Sleep Generation. They are all children waiting for adoption.
The Cold Sleep Generation, in the embryonic stage, are cryogenically frozen children, and are alternately called Cold Sleepers, Frozen Orphans, and Snowflake Children. The HHS has funds specifically allocated for embryo adoption, but these funds were cut 75 percent during the Obama Administration.
The HHS describes the process as:
“In the course of treatments for infertility, couples usually produce more embryos than they can use. These supernumerary embryos are generally frozen while the couple who created them decides about their ultimate disposition. This freezing process is known as cryo-preservation.”
The HHS remarks that only about 60,000: one tenth of frozen children may be adopted. Individuals can remain intact indefinitely in cryo-state. The fate of hundreds of thousands of American children is undetermined.
Incredibly, the real danger for this generation of Cold Sleepers is the Melt.
Some parents of Cold Sleepers allow their children to be surrendered for adoption, some have them melted, and others give them to science for experimentation. One of the darkest fates that Cold Sleeping children face is when parents choose to have their child embryos made into jewelry. The Baby Bee Hummingbirds company will do it cheaply.
This is a terrific loss of life in a nation where out of 36 couples only one couple achieves adopting a baby.
The legal personhood of Frozen Orphans has been resoundingly established. They have been the subjects of custody battles and inheritance suits. Isabella and Emma, while in a Cold Sleep, according to the New York Daily News, have even famously sued their mother for their trust fund.
Despite their recognized humanity, the abhorrent disregard for life, the disregard of parents for their own children has created an appalling reality.
In the yearning for the gift of parenthood, parents must have consideration for their children. Melting, indefinite freezing, scientific experimentation, and jewelry are not the alternatives for adults attempting the most unselfish occupation known to man. Let the humanity, the love, and protective instincts that are the extensions of the definition of parenthood guide the regulations and objections against the strange fates of so many children.