The wife has seven consent forms signed by her ex-husband, saying in part that if the couple separated, the embryos belonged to her. The present legal consensus emerging within the courts of the United States is that the woman's constitutional right to have children is greater than her ex-husband's constitutional right not to be forced to beget them. If the court rules in favor of the wife, it will be the first time a state's highest court has sided with the parent who wanted the embryos implanted over the other parent's objections. There are over 150,000 or more frozen embryos in the United States. As couples' circumstances change and a divorce results and there is a battle over the embryos, there is no real legal precedent or direction on settling an issue like this.
Reproductive technologies are simply way out ahead of legal issues and ethical ones.
In the rulings, judges have often drawn different conclusions, for example, about whether embryos are property or people, or whether a woman should have more control over an embryo than a man. The other legal consensus is that if an agreement between the man and woman has been signed, it should be regarded as a legal contract. A third item of consensus that is emerging is that the special rights that abortion law gives a woman over the embryo growing in her body do not apply when the embryo has been frozen. So, the father and mother should have equal rights over what is done with the embryo. State courts have ruled that those equal rights shift, if the embryos seemed to be a potential parent's only chance to have biological children.