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OHIO, USA: A baby boy born last week to an Ohio couple developed from an embryo that had been frozen for more than 30 years in what is believed to be the longest storage time before a birth.

In what’s known as embryo adoption, Linda and Tim Pierce used a handful of embryos donated in 1994 in pursuit of having a child after fighting infertility for years. Their son was born Saturday from an embryo that had been in storage for 11,148 days, which the Pierces’ doctor says sets a record.

It’s a concept that has been around since the 1990s but is gaining traction as some fertility clinics and advocates, often Christian-centered, oppose discarding leftover embryos because of their belief that life begins at or around conception and that all embryos deserve to be treated like children who need a home.

“I felt all along that these three little hopes, these little embryos, deserved to live just like my daughter did,” said Linda Archerd, 62, who donated her embryos to the Pierces.

Just about 2 percent of births in the US are the result of in vitro fertilization, and an even smaller fraction involve donated embryos.

However, medical experts estimate about 1.5 million frozen embryos are currently being stored throughout the country, with many of those in limbo as parents wrestle with what to do with their leftover embryos created in IVF labs.

Further complicating the topic is a 2024 Alabama Supreme Court decision that said that frozen embryos have the legal status of children. State leaders have since devised a temporary solution shielding clinics from liability stemming from that ruling, though questions linger about remaining embryos.

Archerd says she turned to IVF in 1994. Back then, the ability to freeze, thaw and transfer embryos was making key progress and opening the door for hopeful parents to create more embryos and increase their chances of a successful transfer.

She wound up with four embryos and initially hoped to use them all. But after the birth of her daughter, Archerd and her husband divorced, disrupting her timeline for having more children.

As the years turned into decades, Archerd said she was wracked with guilt about what to do with the embryos as storage fees continued to rise.

Eventually, she found Snowflakes, a division of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which offers open adoptions to donors that allows people like Archerd. She was also able to set preferences for what families would adopt her embryos.

“I wanted to be a part of this baby’s life,” she said. “And I wanted to know the adopting parents.”

The process was tricky, requiring Archerd to contact her initial fertility doctor in Oregon and dig through paper records to get the proper documentation for the donation. The embryos then had to be shipped from Oregon to the Pierces’ doctor in Tennessee. The clinic, Rejoice Fertility in Knoxville, refuses to discard frozen embryos and has become known for handling embryos stored in outdated and older containers.

Of the three donated embryos the Pierces received from Archerd, one didn’t make the thaw. Two were transferred to Lindsey Pierce’s womb, but just one successfully implanted.

According to Dr. John David Gordon, the transfer of the nearly 31-year-old embryo marks the longest-frozen embryo to result in a live birth. He would know, Gordon says his clinic assisted in the previous record, when Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway were born from embryos frozen for 30 years, or 10,905 days.

“I think that these stories catch the imagination,” Gordon said. “But I think they also provide a little bit of a cautionary tale to say: Why are these embryos sitting in storage? You know, why do we have this problem?”

In a statement, Lindsey and Tim Pierce said the clinic’s support was just what they needed.

“We didn’t go into this thinking about records — we just wanted to have a baby,” Lindsey Pierce said.

For Archerd, the donation process has been an emotional roller coaster. Relief that her embryos finally found a home, sadness it couldn’t be with her and a little anxiety about what the future holds next, with possibly meeting the Pierces and the baby in person.

“I’m hoping that they’re going to send pictures,” she said, noting that the parents have already sent several after the birth. “I’d love to meet them some day. That would be a dream come true to meet — meet them and the baby.”

HARARE, Zimbabwe: The killing of a collared lion involved in a research project in Zimbabwe by a trophy hunter has been condemned by wildlife groups, echoing the infamous case of a lion called Cecil whose death at the hands of an American tourist in the same country a decade ago was met with international outrage.

The latest lion, known as Blondie, was part of an Oxford University study and wore a research collar sponsored by Africa Geographic, a safari company. Africa Geographic said Blondie was killed by a hunter in June close to the country’s flagship Hwange National Park after being lured out of a protected area and into a nearby hunting zone with the use of bait.

After Blondie’s killing became a new rallying cry for those opposed to hunting, a spokesperson for Zimbabwe’s National Parks told The Associated Press on Thursday that the hunt was legal and the hunter had the necessary permits. Zimbabwe allows up to 100 lions to be hunted a year. Trophy hunters, who are usually foreign tourists, pay tens of thousands of dollars to kill a lion and take the head or skin as a trophy.

Africa Geographic CEO Simon Espley said Blondie’s killing made “a mockery of the ethics” trophy hunters claim to prescribe to because he wore a clearly visible research collar and was a breeding male in his prime. Hunters say they only target aging, non-breeding lions.

“That Blondie’s prominent collar did not prevent him from being offered to a hunting client confirms the stark reality that no lion is safe from trophy hunting guns,” Espley said.

Hunting lions is fiercely divisive, even among conservationists. Some say if it is well managed it raises money that can be put back into conservation. Others want killing wildlife for sport to be banned outright.

Some countries in Africa like Kenya have commercial hunting bans, others like Zimbabwe and South Africa allow it. Botswana lifted a ban on hunting six years ago.

Tinashe Farawo, the spokesperson for the Zimbabwe parks agency, said money from hunting is crucial to support the southern African nation’s underfunded conservation efforts. He defended the hunt and said they often happen at night, meaning the collar on Blondie may not have been visible.

He said he had no information on Blondie being lured out of the park with bait — which is usually a dead animal — but there “is nothing unethical or illegal about that for anyone who knows how lions are hunted. This is how people hunt.”

“Our rangers were present. All paperwork was in order. Collars are for research purposes, but they don’t make the animal immune to hunting,” Farawo said. He declined to name the hunter.

Cecil’s killing in 2015 unleashed furious anger against Walter Palmer, a Minnesota dentist and trophy hunter who lured the lion out of the same national park in Zimbabwe and shot him with a bow before tracking him for hours and finally killing him. Cecil, whose head and skin were cut off and taken for trophies, was also involved in a research project by Oxford University.

Zimbabwe authorities initially said they would seek to extradite Palmer over the hunt, although that didn’t happen, while a hunting guide who helped him was arrested, only for charges to be dropped.

Zimbabwe’s national parks agency says the country makes about $20 million a year from trophy hunting, with a single hunter spending an average of $100,000 per hunt — which includes accommodation and hiring vehicles and local trackers.

Zimbabwe is home to approximately 1,500 wild lions, with around one-third of them living in the vast Hwange National Park. Across Africa, the wild lion population is estimated at around 20,000. However, their numbers are decreasing due to habitat loss and human conflict. Lions, one of Africa’s most iconic species, are currently listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.