Although she passed away three years later, these fertilized eggs sustained her joy in life and hope for the future through the treatments she endured. Alabama courts would have rejected hers.
The February 27th news analysis, “Alabama IVF ruling exposes Republican remorse for “people,”” highlighted the contradiction between the “personhood” of embryos and support for IVF. The article reported on Republicans, including some members of Congress, who support the continued use of IVF, even though not all embryos produced through IVF result in pregnancy.
I was a program director in reproductive medicine at the National Institutes of Health from 1987 to 2000. The funding plan I wrote related to in vitro fertilization research was required to include the restrictive language of the 1977 Federal Human Subjects Protection Policy. This language prohibited the use of federal funds for in vitro fertilization research without Ethics Advisory Board approval. No such bulletin board existed. As a result, research into in vitro fertilization was conducted “in the margins” without federal oversight or using less sophisticated techniques such as intrauterine insemination. The 1996 Dickey-Wicker Amendment explicitly prohibited federal funding for the creation or destruction of human embryos.
If members of Congress truly want to support IVF and research to improve its practices and outcomes, they should lift these restrictions.
In other words, Alabama has settled the chicken-and-egg problem.
thomas mcburnie, Columbia
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek letter arguing that now is the time to build on that foundation and extend it to the rights of unlikely people. Noting the Biblical command, “Thou shalt not spill thy seed on the ground,” this applies to all forms of contraception, including women’s menstruation, that prevent the union of sperm and egg, or destroy them before conception. It will apply to everything. And male masturbation.
In light of efforts among Republican governors, legislators, and judges to extend the “right to life” to embryos produced through IVF and threaten to ban contraceptives, the letter is no longer relevant. I don’t think it’s anything out of the ordinary.
larry powers, springfield