Fought-for Embryos Up for Adoption : Custody battle: Ex-wife says she no longer wants them, seeks to give them to fertility clinic.

A woman who won a bitter custody battle for seven frozen embryos says she no longer wants them and will donate them to her fertility clinic in the hope that someone else can use them.

Mary Sue Stowe described her decision in papers filed with the Tennessee Court of Appeals. Her ex-husband, Junior Lewis Davis, has appealed a ruling in the couple’s divorce case last September that granted her temporary custody over the embryos.

Blount County Circuit Judge Dale Young had ruled that “life begins at conception” and the embryos deserve the same legal status as children would have in custody disputes between their parents.

Young’s ruling prevented Stowe from using the embryos until the appeals were settled.

“She does not wish us to discuss her decision,” the woman’s lawyer, Kurt Erlenbach, said Thursday. “It’s a very private matter and a very hard decision. She made it within the last few weeks.”

Stowe, who remarried in December, had testified that the embryos represented her best chance to have a child. Davis said he did not want the embryos used without his consent.

Stowe needs the court’s consent and the consent of her ex-husband to donate the embryos, Erlenbach said, adding he believes Davis opposes donation.

Oral arguments on Davis’ appeal are still scheduled for June 6.

The embryos were produced through in vitro fertilization in December, 1988, after the couple’s continued efforts to have children resulted in Stowe having five tubal pregnancies.

After two of nine fertilized eggs were unsuccessfully implanted, the others were frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at the Knoxville clinic. They will have been frozen two years in December.