-
sponsorship
I had been avoiding this paper
on collusion and price-fixing in the fertility industry because I
feared it would send me into a Joe-Wilsonesque fit of rage. But Robin
Marantz Henig’s solid DoubleX piece on state laws banning compensation for ova got me thinking about the issue, so I sallied forth and read the thing. At least it woke me up this morning. ... (Read more in DoubleX)
-
sponsorship
Holly's eloquent post is a testament to the difficulties that beset legislators and ordinary people when it comes to thinking through the ethics involved in making policy regarding human embryos, stem cells, IVF treatment, and reproductive freedom. Congrats on your twin boys, Holly, and I sympathize with the difficulty of figuring out what to do with those frozen embies. Studies have shown that disposition of embryos is difficult and even agonizing for IVF patients, who at the end of it all want to do the right thing by any leftover embryos, often feel quite attached to them and/or responsible for their welfare, aren't quite sure whether to think of them as tissue, future children, wards, or what, and up to now, at least, have found it often logistically hard to donate them for research, because so few labs could take them. That's why there are about 500,000 frozen IVF embryos in storage around the country. I love the Georgia bill's title, "ethical treatment of human embryos." Given the evolution of that bill, ethical here seems to be a concept that can accept editing.
The bill seems mostly to be part of a periodic conservative effort on the state level to pass some kind of law that will equate embryos with people. I think this particular bill must be the result of two tides washing together. One impetus of course is octo-mom Nadya Suleman, whose eight premature babies are the result of an IVF treatment in which six embryos were transferred. (That eight babies were born is a result of the curious fact that IVF embryos split in two more often than other embryos do.) The other was the Obama administration's loosening of rules on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. Talking to people who follow this closely, I gather that in Georgia the Senate tried to put significant restrictions on in vitro fertilization, with some of the limitations that alarmed Holly, most notably a directive that would have essentially done away with embryo freezing, all of which which seems to me a confused attempt at defeating both the Sulemans and stem-cell researchers of the world by forbidding the creation of excess embryos. Infertility patients protested; the bill was modified to direct that (as near as anybody can tell) embryos can only be created with the intent of growing them into children, not using them for research. Meanwhile the Georgia House passed a bill entitling human embryos to the same adoption status children have. The two bills are not identical, and it's not clear they will get resolved. Both endeavor to secure elevated, person-y status for an embryo. I think Holly is right to be confused, because when vague measures are passed equating embryos with children and permitting (but not, I think, compelling) embryo "adoption," it raises a host of questions about the pesky details. MUST embryos be adopted, if they are "children?" CAN embryos be frozen, if they are "children?" If Georgia does pass a law, those details might have to be resolved through litigation.
It should be noted that is yet another bill in Missouri, before the House. It would direct IVF doctors to adhere to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's guidelines on how many embryos may be transferred. This is a sane proposal. I think infertility patients should have the freedom to freeze embryos and decide what to do with the leftover ones—I also think they should be counseled in advance on how hard it might be—but I don't think they should have the freedom to choose how many are transferred during IVF. Or maybe they could choose within a very narrow range—like, one vs. two—but they shouldn't be able to treat the petri dish like some kind of all-you-can-use buffet.
Holly, your post raises an interesting question. You point out that Suleman is a single mom, but not infertile. This implies that people who aren't infertile but want to use reproductive technology may be in a different ethical category than people who are infertile. Should the non-infertile people be regulated differently? Suleman is a persuasive case if anybody is (though some articles have suggested that her many issues actually include infertility) but this is difficult ethical terrain. What about single women who sense that they are on the verge of infertility and use sperm donation, maybe combined with IVF, to conceive before it's too late? Are they not legitimate patients? Then again, 67-year-old IVF moms (or whatever the world's record is, now) are technically infertile. It's hard to draw the line, which is probably why we've found it so difficult to regulate this arena. Nontraditional patients, who include single women, gay men, and lesbians, sometimes are leery of any government involvement or laws or whatnot, for fear they could be excluded. They probably aren't wrong to worry.
-
sponsorship
A version of Senate Bill 169, the Ethical Treatment of Human Embryos Act, was passed by the Georgia Senate today. As an Atlanta resident who had IVF to become pregnant and is currently sitting on six frozen embryos, struggling with what to do next, this struck particularly close to home. From what I’ve been able to piece together (and the language of the bill is incredibly vague), it seems legislators in Georgia want to give embryos the same rights as you and me. What does this mean for my frozen embies? What about stem-cell research? Could they force me to have six more children? Could my embryos take me to court? It gets fuzzy.
I suspect that all of this is backlash to the octomom case, which makes me steaming mad. She was, after all, single—not infertile—and there is a difference. It scares me to think that this one case of an irresponsible doctor and an irresponsible mom could turn me into a criminal.
If the bill had passed in its original form, I simply wouldn’t have my precious twin boys. If this was law, because I’m just a squeak under 40, they would have only been able to attempt to fertilize two eggs. Odds are not in your favor there—just because you attempt to fertilize an egg does not mean it will fertilize. In my experience, we retrieved 19 eggs. Only 13 of those fertilized. I’m not good at math, but that’s certainly far from 100 percent success. And there are more obstacles, too. We implanted two of those 13. Of the remaining 11, only six made it to freeze. This gave me such great hope because if my first two had not taken, we would have had another chance. We could not have afforded to do a fresh IVF cycle again, but a frozen cycle is much less expensive. (It requires no surgery and far fewer drugs.) Also, if only one of our embryos had stuck, this gave us hope for a sibling later on down the line. Under this bill, freezing an embryo might be illegal. Hope would be gone for people like me.
-
sponsorship
At first, the media and medical establishment tsk-tsking over irresponsible fertility treatments seemed a bit, er, premature in the coverage of the California woman who delivered eight babies totaling over 16 pounds at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower, this week. None of the relatives had spoken to the press (despite the many TV bookers undoubtedly camped out in their Whittier cul-de-sac since the birth of the six boys and two girls was announced Monday) and the delivery team, who have not been as camera shy, would not comment on whether the mother had had prenatal medical intervention. Yesterday, an "acquaintance" told reporters the still unidentified new mother, who lives with her mother and father while her husband is stationed in Iraq, has six more children, including a set of twins, at home. The new arrivals, who were delivered from her distended uterus in about five minutes, brought the number of family members who will occupy a three-bedroom home to at least 17. It seemed unlikely to me that the overburdened woman would turn to assisted reproductive technologies to enlarge her family, especially given how expensive and only fractionally insurance-covered fertility treatments are. I thought perhaps the 32-year-old woman was just preternaturally fertile. Her generation has been environmentally exposed to so much chemical estrogen and other fertility-inducing substances, I reasoned, and litter-sized multiple births could be a harbinger of things to come. But we learned today from the Los Angeles Times, who coaxed the grandmother, Angela Suleman, to the phone that fertilized embryos had indeed been implanted in her daughter 30 weeks ago and to her surprise all of them "took." I am normally not one to question another woman's reproductive choices, but I can't help wondering, what was she thinking?
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?