As someone who went through the IVF process to conceive our son, the easiest “solution” to me is for the clinics to only fertilize the number of eggs they plan to implant if successfully fertilized. The hard part for us involved the drugs my wife had to take to stimulate the ovaries to overproduce eggs…my part in the sterile cup was easy and could be done any day of the week. Why not just freeze unfertilized eggs and thaw an appropriate amount to fertilize each time?
The fact that we were creating life in a Petri dish (and I fully believed that) weighed heavily on my soul during the whole process. We were fortunate that one embryo of four successfully developed into our son on the first try. But my mind was always on the remaining embryos as life suspended in a cryogenic state. When we went back in to to try again with the remaining 8 or 9 embryos, some didn’t survive the thawing process and, sadly, none of the remaining viable embryos took. While disappointed, I knew that God was back in control of which infants survived and didn’t…the loss of an IVF embryo being no different than a very early stage miscarriage in terms of faith (obviously not medically).
I just don’t understand the need to overproduce embryos.
From my admittedly limited understanding of IVF protocols, the overproduction of embryos I believe arises from the reality that many embryos simply do not implant in the womb and proceed to gestate naturally. As your own experience seems to indicate, only one in four embryos used in a single IVF procedure successfully gestates, and if this is the rough ratio of successful implantations, then IVF would necessarily require creating more embryos than are technically needed.
Many naturally conceived embryos fail to implant in the uterus, and a fair number also result in early term miscarriage. This is part and parcel of the natural reproductive cycle, and so embryos which fail to gestate successfully do not pose any significant ethical dilemmas that I can see.
The issue is--and the Alabama legislative "fix" does not address this at all--that it is uncertain what should, if anything, be done with the "excess" embryos? Can they be used to facilitate pregnancy and childbirth with another woman? Should they be used in that fashion?
All the "fix" does is indemnify and hold harmless IVF clinics when there is an accidental or wrongful but deliberate destruction of embryos. As Alabama's constitution affirmatively declares that life begins at conception, this "fix" is tantamount to giving IVF clinics a free pass for homicide.
In time, there will be another IVF clinic which accidentally destroys an embryo, killing a nascent human life. The would-be parents of that destroyed human life will challenge the legitimacy of this "fix", and they may prevail, because even without the sanctity of life language in Alabama's constitution, there will come a point whereby allowing IVF clinics to escape consequence for all duties of care (which this law arguably allows) is simply not sustainable as an operation of law. Whether that results in simple repeal of the "fix" or the crafting of a "new and improved Fix" is impossible to say.
But again go back to my original point, if you can successfully freeze eggs then my (male) part that takes place in a quiet room with a ‘90s Playboy Girls of the Big 10 magazine can be done repeatedly at any time. There is an aspect of “just in time production” from the business world that we could seemingly adopt here.
On the surface at least, a "just in time" approach to IVF would be plausible, and perhaps would result in even fewer embryos needing to be stored.
Are there specific medical and scientific reasons for the extra embryos? That I do not know.
I do know that this is yet one more reason why there needs to be a fairly comprehensive debate on the topic, and not just within the halls of Congress.
SB159 is a specific law applying to clinics dealing with IVF. Peter, can you think of any situations where this could serve as a legal precedent for other types of clinics? For example, a gender-change clinic could argue in court that they didn’t ‘intend’ any harm when they changed sexual aspects of a patient, so the patient can’t come back years later to sue them. It seems to me that SB159 is specific enough to NOT be used as a legal precedent, but your grasp of legal thinking is more comprehensive than mine....
With respect to reproductive rights and the rights of the unborn, I believe this legislation is a first of its kind. That makes it a precedent by definition.
The real question is how viable is the statute as written. Congress could pass a law immunizing a certain subset of the citizenry from charges of homicide, but that would never pass Constitutional muster. While it is uncertain if there will be any challenges to this law, it is equally uncertain if this law passes constitutional muster in Alabama. Remember, Alabama has language written into its Constitution asserting the sanctity of the unborn. One could make the case this law fails to measure up to that standard.
But in one sense I am somewhat optimistic about the legislation: for better or worse, the Alabama State Legislature took the bull by the horns and sought to equalize the law without explicitly rejecting the personhood of the unborn. That aspect of the LePage ruling is left very much intact by this legislation (and is one reason it might not be constitutional within Alabama). Is this THE way to resolve such issues? Probably not. But it's a better first step than what the Democrats were proposing, which was to legislate away the personhood of embryos stored in cryogenic nurseries at IVF clinics.
Does this legislation set a precedent for other types of healthcare rights? I don't think so. The specificity of the language runs against that argument. This was a narrowly crafted law to address a specific set of legal circumstances. Could legislatures pass similar laws to indemnify and hold harmless gender change clinics? Yes, but that has always been within their ambit. This was not needed as a precedent for that.
(Ever since vaccine manufacturers were given legal immunity, I get a little nervous whenever Congress starts giving other medical people immunity from lawsuits.)
And as for people waking up to the NEED for a smaller, more limited government, boy, these past few years of Covid restrictions might bring it about! More information about the governmental lies, abuses and harms is reaching people every day. If it explodes into the nation’s awareness - maybe after the Election - there could be a true upwelling of demands from We the People!
Frankly I am dubious about the Constitutionality of the legal immunities given to vaccine manufacturers. At a minimum, I have to wonder how that squares with the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of the equal protection of the laws.
More broadly, I question also whether such grants of immunity are within the defined powers of Congress. Nowhere do I find within Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution the authority to prescribe arbitrary and especial modes of redress for specific grievances against specific entities. It's one thing to craft in law defined duties of care. It is quite another to unlaterally waive responsibility for such duties, which is what vaccine manufacturer immunity does. Not only do I see Fifth Amendment due process problems with that approach, but there is also a potential First Amendment issue abridging the right of the people to petition for redress of grievances.
As a country, we have come to believe that if Congress passes a law, then that is the law. We have forgotten what John Marshall wrote in Marbury v Madison, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the Constitution is void--meaning that such an act of the legislature never has any legal substance or meaning regardless of what the Supreme Court (or any court) rules.
No legislature has unlimited capacity to legislate in this country. Our Republic is one of limited government at every level. I hope people will wake up to that reality and demand that government return to its Constitutional confines.
Brilliant! Now if someone with deep pockets could mount a legal challenge and take this all the way to the Supreme Court we could ultimately, possibly, end up with the sort of Constitutional medical freedom amendment that Dr. Benjamin Rush originally proposed. I would love it if you could someday email what you have written here to lawyer Aaron Siri of the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN). They are raising millions and winning lawsuits for medical freedom. Siri’s legal staff might benefit from hearing your reasoning, Peter. You would have made an astoundingly good jurist!
As someone who went through the IVF process to conceive our son, the easiest “solution” to me is for the clinics to only fertilize the number of eggs they plan to implant if successfully fertilized. The hard part for us involved the drugs my wife had to take to stimulate the ovaries to overproduce eggs…my part in the sterile cup was easy and could be done any day of the week. Why not just freeze unfertilized eggs and thaw an appropriate amount to fertilize each time?
The fact that we were creating life in a Petri dish (and I fully believed that) weighed heavily on my soul during the whole process. We were fortunate that one embryo of four successfully developed into our son on the first try. But my mind was always on the remaining embryos as life suspended in a cryogenic state. When we went back in to to try again with the remaining 8 or 9 embryos, some didn’t survive the thawing process and, sadly, none of the remaining viable embryos took. While disappointed, I knew that God was back in control of which infants survived and didn’t…the loss of an IVF embryo being no different than a very early stage miscarriage in terms of faith (obviously not medically).
I just don’t understand the need to overproduce embryos.
From my admittedly limited understanding of IVF protocols, the overproduction of embryos I believe arises from the reality that many embryos simply do not implant in the womb and proceed to gestate naturally. As your own experience seems to indicate, only one in four embryos used in a single IVF procedure successfully gestates, and if this is the rough ratio of successful implantations, then IVF would necessarily require creating more embryos than are technically needed.
Many naturally conceived embryos fail to implant in the uterus, and a fair number also result in early term miscarriage. This is part and parcel of the natural reproductive cycle, and so embryos which fail to gestate successfully do not pose any significant ethical dilemmas that I can see.
The issue is--and the Alabama legislative "fix" does not address this at all--that it is uncertain what should, if anything, be done with the "excess" embryos? Can they be used to facilitate pregnancy and childbirth with another woman? Should they be used in that fashion?
All the "fix" does is indemnify and hold harmless IVF clinics when there is an accidental or wrongful but deliberate destruction of embryos. As Alabama's constitution affirmatively declares that life begins at conception, this "fix" is tantamount to giving IVF clinics a free pass for homicide.
In time, there will be another IVF clinic which accidentally destroys an embryo, killing a nascent human life. The would-be parents of that destroyed human life will challenge the legitimacy of this "fix", and they may prevail, because even without the sanctity of life language in Alabama's constitution, there will come a point whereby allowing IVF clinics to escape consequence for all duties of care (which this law arguably allows) is simply not sustainable as an operation of law. Whether that results in simple repeal of the "fix" or the crafting of a "new and improved Fix" is impossible to say.
But again go back to my original point, if you can successfully freeze eggs then my (male) part that takes place in a quiet room with a ‘90s Playboy Girls of the Big 10 magazine can be done repeatedly at any time. There is an aspect of “just in time production” from the business world that we could seemingly adopt here.
On the surface at least, a "just in time" approach to IVF would be plausible, and perhaps would result in even fewer embryos needing to be stored.
Are there specific medical and scientific reasons for the extra embryos? That I do not know.
I do know that this is yet one more reason why there needs to be a fairly comprehensive debate on the topic, and not just within the halls of Congress.
SB159 is a specific law applying to clinics dealing with IVF. Peter, can you think of any situations where this could serve as a legal precedent for other types of clinics? For example, a gender-change clinic could argue in court that they didn’t ‘intend’ any harm when they changed sexual aspects of a patient, so the patient can’t come back years later to sue them. It seems to me that SB159 is specific enough to NOT be used as a legal precedent, but your grasp of legal thinking is more comprehensive than mine....
With respect to reproductive rights and the rights of the unborn, I believe this legislation is a first of its kind. That makes it a precedent by definition.
The real question is how viable is the statute as written. Congress could pass a law immunizing a certain subset of the citizenry from charges of homicide, but that would never pass Constitutional muster. While it is uncertain if there will be any challenges to this law, it is equally uncertain if this law passes constitutional muster in Alabama. Remember, Alabama has language written into its Constitution asserting the sanctity of the unborn. One could make the case this law fails to measure up to that standard.
But in one sense I am somewhat optimistic about the legislation: for better or worse, the Alabama State Legislature took the bull by the horns and sought to equalize the law without explicitly rejecting the personhood of the unborn. That aspect of the LePage ruling is left very much intact by this legislation (and is one reason it might not be constitutional within Alabama). Is this THE way to resolve such issues? Probably not. But it's a better first step than what the Democrats were proposing, which was to legislate away the personhood of embryos stored in cryogenic nurseries at IVF clinics.
Does this legislation set a precedent for other types of healthcare rights? I don't think so. The specificity of the language runs against that argument. This was a narrowly crafted law to address a specific set of legal circumstances. Could legislatures pass similar laws to indemnify and hold harmless gender change clinics? Yes, but that has always been within their ambit. This was not needed as a precedent for that.
You have such a great mind, Peter.
(Ever since vaccine manufacturers were given legal immunity, I get a little nervous whenever Congress starts giving other medical people immunity from lawsuits.)
https://roy.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-roy-fights-remove-federal-liability-protections-covid-19-vaccines
And as for people waking up to the NEED for a smaller, more limited government, boy, these past few years of Covid restrictions might bring it about! More information about the governmental lies, abuses and harms is reaching people every day. If it explodes into the nation’s awareness - maybe after the Election - there could be a true upwelling of demands from We the People!
Frankly I am dubious about the Constitutionality of the legal immunities given to vaccine manufacturers. At a minimum, I have to wonder how that squares with the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of the equal protection of the laws.
More broadly, I question also whether such grants of immunity are within the defined powers of Congress. Nowhere do I find within Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution the authority to prescribe arbitrary and especial modes of redress for specific grievances against specific entities. It's one thing to craft in law defined duties of care. It is quite another to unlaterally waive responsibility for such duties, which is what vaccine manufacturer immunity does. Not only do I see Fifth Amendment due process problems with that approach, but there is also a potential First Amendment issue abridging the right of the people to petition for redress of grievances.
As a country, we have come to believe that if Congress passes a law, then that is the law. We have forgotten what John Marshall wrote in Marbury v Madison, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the Constitution is void--meaning that such an act of the legislature never has any legal substance or meaning regardless of what the Supreme Court (or any court) rules.
No legislature has unlimited capacity to legislate in this country. Our Republic is one of limited government at every level. I hope people will wake up to that reality and demand that government return to its Constitutional confines.
Brilliant! Now if someone with deep pockets could mount a legal challenge and take this all the way to the Supreme Court we could ultimately, possibly, end up with the sort of Constitutional medical freedom amendment that Dr. Benjamin Rush originally proposed. I would love it if you could someday email what you have written here to lawyer Aaron Siri of the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN). They are raising millions and winning lawsuits for medical freedom. Siri’s legal staff might benefit from hearing your reasoning, Peter. You would have made an astoundingly good jurist!