The Nation - News from Aug. 11, 1989

Seven frozen embryos at issue in an unprecedented divorce trial should be in their mother’s womb, “not in the fridge,” a doctor testified. Jerome Lejeune, director of research at the French National Center of Scientific Research, testified in the divorce trial of Junior Lewis Davis and Mary Sue Davis in Maryville, Tenn. The trial concluded after three days, with Judge W. Dale Young saying he would rule within 30 days. Junior Davis raised an issue without legal precedent in the United States when he asked the court to prevent any use of the fertilized eggs without his consent. But Lejeune testified that storing the embryos at 180 degrees below zero Centigrade is “putting tiny human beings in a very cold space, deprived of liberty, deprived even of time; they are suspended as it were in a concentration camp.”