Last month, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a final ruling in favor of the right to access in vitro fertilization (IVF) in Costa Rica. This is a win for women and Catholics and a blow to the bishops and conservatives who want to deny individuals the right to decide whether and when to have children.
Paul Ryan’s relatively small family and Mitt Romney’s quite large one reveal the reproductive minefields for Republican candidates who presumably are expected to show obedience, in their personal lives, to the party’s extremist platform.
At a Vatican conference on infertility last week, Pope Benedict XVI railed against reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization. This attack on reproductive technologies is yet another display of the Vatican’s lack of empathy and understanding and a vain attempt to hold back scientific development as well as impede access to reproductive technologies for couples around the world.
The Illinois House is using the conservative Agriculture Committee to pass anti-choice bills, North Dakota is looking at a personhood bill, and Sen. Lautenberg and Rep. Lee introduce a bill banning federal funding of ineffective abstinence programs.
Physicians and families spoke out yesterday against Amendment 62, the “Personhood Amendment” up for a vote in Colorado, warning that, if passed, it would ban in-vitro fertilization for couples seeking to have children.
Federal law and financial incentives lead to incredibly costly and potentially dangerous multiple births through assisted reproducitve technology (ART). The law should be reworked to create incentives for having only one baby at a time through ART, which is more cost effective and safer for mothers and babies.
Sure, it’s safer to implant the embryos one by one, but that quickly drives up the cost. However, implanting multiple embryos can lead to risky pregnancies—including "infant mortality, low birth rates, long-term disabilities and thousands of dollars’ worth of medical care," says the Times.
Nadya Suleman, now a mother of fourteen children, recently gave birth to octuplets in California. She and her own mother, Angela Suleman, were interviewed on the morning shows today.
Miraculous biblical stories of birth fit more closely with our notions of reproductive technologies than with the Vatican’s re-assertion that the only authentic context for human life is an act of reciprocal love between a man and woman in marriage.
Will the Catholic Church’s recent document opposing in vitro fertilization affect a Polish bioethics law addressing the method?
