Tag Archives: Topic: IVF

C-FAM: Lawyers and doctors last week denounced the highest human rights court in the Americas for meddling with science and failing to protect human life. Last December, the Inter-American Court for Human Rights struck down a Costa Rican ban on in-vitro fertilization, known as IVF. In order to rule that way the court had to weigh in on the law and science of when human life begins. It decided the IVF ban infringed the right to privacy, personal autonomy and sexual and reproductive health.

AP: Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has fired his justice minister, who made comments alleging Germans may be experimenting on Polish embryos from in vitro fertilization procedures

Leon Kass at WSJ: Consider abortion. After years of calling for abortions that are “safe, legal and rare,” the Democratic Party in its 2012 platform dropped such language altogether in an attempt to appeal to its feminist base. But viewing childbearing solely as a matter of personal reproductive choice, Dr. Kass says, “means we no longer see a child as a gift but as a product of our will to be had by choice only. That makes human choice the basis of all value”—at the price of the child, for “he or she comes from the hands of nature.”

LifeNews: There’s gold in them thar hills! Ounce for ounce, human eggs are probably the most valuable commodity on the planet, with highly intelligent and beautiful university women offered $50,000 or more for their ova for use in eugenic IVF.

Robert P. George at WSJ: Sir Robert Edwards, the Nobel Prize-winning British “test tube baby” pioneer who died last week at age 87, devoted his career to developing in vitro fertilization as a technique to enable women afflicted with certain forms of infertility to conceive and bear children. As a result, there are millions of people in the world today—some now in their 30s—who otherwise would not have been born. According to Edwards’s admirers, their lives are his legacy.
Yet Edwards was, and remains, a controversial figure. His critics fall into three categories and are a most unlikely combination.

APB: Russell Moore, president-elect of the Southern Baptist Convention’s moral-concerns agency, says parents of test-tube babies are morally responsible for unused embryos that are left behind.

Montreal Gazette: Specialists at Akdeniz University Hospital placed an embryo into Sert’s womb earlier this week in hopes she will become the first woman with a uterus transplant to give birth.

Ruth Institute: You may consider the following headline from a leading US newspaper blog last week to be rather extreme: “The British Embryo Authority and the Chamber of Eugenics”. But when it is followed a week later by a news report in a British newspaper saying: “Lord Robert Winston warning over child ‘eugenics’”, should we then take more notice?

Christian Post: All of this comes to mind after reading about a proposal coming out of a scientific conference in Madrid. There, researchers from Israel and the Netherlands announced a potential new source for human eggs to be used in in-vitro-fertilization treatments: aborted female fetuses.

Live Action News: Two Australian ethicists created a firestorm of controversy last year when they argued for after-birth abortions. Another Australian ethicist has taken up their torch, gleefully celebrating the idea of designer humans and in vitro eugenics.

Wesley J. Smith at National Review: Leave it to my state of California to head off in radical and expensive directions. Legislation has been filed that would require group insurance to cover gay and lesbian infertility treatments just as they do heterosexual. But, as I note elsewhere, AB 460 . . .

LifeSiteNews: A proposal by fertility researchers to “harvest” female gametes, “ova,” from the dead bodies of aborted children to create in vitro embryos in the lab has created a small buzz among the pro-life websites, blogs and Facebook in the last couple of days. But the buzz is over a story that appeared in the Daily Mail nearly ten years ago, about research that has very likely moved along considerably in that time.

Christian Concern: The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has advised the Government to permit the use of an IVF technique that would result in the creation of children with three parents.

AP: Britain’s fertility regulator says it has found broad public support for in vitro fertilization techniques that allow babies to be created with DNA from three people for couples at risk of passing on potentia

AP: A federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit brought by an Indiana woman who says a Catholic diocese fired her from her teaching job because she had in vitro fertilization.

Washington Post: A lesbian whose adoption request was recently denied by Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court is appealing the ruling.

Bruce J. Clemenger at Evangelical Fellowship of Canada: Recently a fertility clinic in the United States made news for not only selling human sperm and eggs, but human embryos as well. While many responded with disdain, National Post columnist Marni Soupcoff questioned the validity of the objections.

John Smoot at LifeSiteNews: Yesterday I explained the problems that arise from commercialized sperm donation—namely degraded men who are absent fathers to children disturbed by the circumstances of their birth. Today I explore more closely the role that money plays as men’s greatest motive for donating sperm, and its impact on future children. I conclude by proposing how we can challenge the sperm-sale industry.

Topeka Capital-Journal: Citing a first-of-its-kind Kansas Supreme Court ruling made Friday, Topekan Angela Bauer on Wednesday sought the right to intervene in a case in which the state contends sperm donor William Marotta is legally the father of the daughter born to her former lesbian partner, Jennifer Schreiner.

World: It’s one of many custody battles in which courts have ruled in favor of the “right” of same-sex couples to have children, instead of the right for children to have both a mother and father.

Jurist: The Kansas Supreme Court [official website] on Friday ruled [opinion, PDF] that a non-biological mother of children conceived using assisted reproductive technologies has parentage rights under Kansas law. Kelly Goudschaal and Marci Frazier were in a committed, long-term, same-sex relationship and had two children via artificial insemination. The couple executed a co-parenting agreement and after they separated, Frazier filed suit to enforce the agreement.

Washington Post: Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court narrowly voted Wednesday to uphold a law banning gay couples from adopting children. The 5-4 vote came . . .

Public Discourse: With money as the biggest incentive for sperm donation, donors are set up to be absent fathers. Politicians, charitable organizations, academics, and donors themselves should counter the ills of sperm donation through law, journalism, and funding for anti-sperm donation advocacy. The second of a two-part series.

AP: The case of a Kansas sperm donor being sued by the state for child support underscores a confusing patchwork of aging laws that govern assisted reproduction in the United States and often lead to litigation and frustration among would-be parents.

Manila Standard Today: Piero Tozzi of Alliance Defending Freedom complained that the ruling turned the right to life on its head and subordinated it to so many other secondary rights.

BioNews: Piero Tozzi, legal counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organisation of Christian leaders, said: ‘A preliminary reading of the ruling indicates that the Court elevated secondary rights-such as the right to privacy, a right to personal autonomy, and a right to sexual and reproductive health-above the right to life, which by necessity takes precedence over all the other rights’.

NPR reports (includes audio).

The Topeka Capitol Journal: The state agency seeking child support payments from a Topeka man who donated sperm to a lesbian couple says one of the women “clearly deceived” the department.

AP: Kansas law governing artificial insemination is outdated and fails to recognize modern concepts of family, according to the attorney for a Topeka man being pursued to pay child support for a girl born to a lesbian couple as the result of his sperm donation.

LifeNews: Since August 1991 more than 3.5 million human embryos have been created, producing only 235,480 “gestational sacs” or evidence of successful implantation.

AP: The state contends the agreement between Marotta and the women is not valid because Kansas law requires a licensed physician to perform artificial insemination.

Fox News: A Kansas sperm donor who was ordered to pay child support for the baby he helped a lesbian couple conceive plans to fight back in court, and suggested he might be a victim of bias against same-sex parenting.

Piero A. Tozzi at C-FAM: Late last week the Inter-American Court on Human Rights struck down a Costa Rican law that banned in vitro fertilization, ruling that the restrictions violated rights to privacy, personal autonomy and “sexual and reproductive health” under the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), commonly known as the Pact of San José. The Court further ruled that that a human embryo lacks the legal status of “person.” The 5-1 decision, Murillo v. Costa Rica . . . | also posted at LifeSiteNews

Austin Ruse at The Catholic Thing: Last week the court struck down a Costa Rican law that banned in vitro fertilization. Piero Tozzi of Alliance Defending Freedom explains that the court ruled such “restrictions violated rights to privacy, personal autonomy, and ‘sexual and reproductive health’ under the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR), commonly knows as the Pact of San José.” He says the Court also “ruled that a human embryo lacks the legal status of a ‘person,’” and that life begins not at conception, but at implantation – even though the ACHR is the only international treaty that explicitly protects the right to life “from conception.”

Piero Tozzi reports at Turtle Bay and Beyond: Late yesterday the Inter-American Court of Human Rights released a lengthy opinion (Murillo et al. v. Costa Rica, dated November 28, 2012) holding that Costa Rica’s law which protects life at its earliest stages by prohibiting in vitro fertilization violates the American Convention on Human Life. In so doing, the Court turned the Convention, which protects the right to life “from conception,” on its head.. . . Alliance Defending Freedom, C-FAM and Americans United for Life submitted a brief to the Court on article 4 of the American Convention, which is the article containing protection of life “from conception.”

Aarathi Prasad at CNN (includes video): In an article in the UK’s “traditional values” tabloid, the Daily Mail, titled “A Terrifying Future for Female Fertility,” Djerassi said, “There are an enormous number of well-educated, proficient women who, when facing the biological clock, first pay attention to their professional ambitions…in the next 20 years, more young people will freeze their eggs and [sperm] in their 20s, and bank them for later use. They will do away with the need for contraception by being sterilised, and withdraw their eggs and sperm from the bank when they are ready to have a child via IVF.”

Telegraph: Parents who lose children in accidents may be able to clone “copies” to replace them within 50 years, a British scientist who won this year’s Nobel prize for medicine has predicted.

Telegraph: The couple have twice appealed to the PCT, which has refused them funding but has said it will review its policy, in the light of new age discrimination laws which mean healthcare should not be denied on grounds of age.

Kevin Kukla at LifeSiteNews: The Center for Reproductive Rights is attacking Costa Rica’s IVF laws as a means to push for greater access to abortion and contraception. CRR believes that legalizing IVF in Costa Rica will have, what they consider, positive repercussions for other “reproductive health” issues in the pro-life nations of Latin America. They call laws against IVF a “personhood movement in disguise, similar to efforts in the U.S. to define a fertilized egg as a person.”

Wesley Smith at National Review: An unusual custody battle involving a surrogate mother and two Houston men is playing out in a Harris County courtroom.Cindy Close, 48, gave birth to twins at Texas Children’s Medical Center in July, but on the night of their birth she was visited by a social worker. “She told me we had a surrogacy situation,” Close said. “I looked at her and said ‘I’m not a surrogate, what are you talking about?’”

NJ.com: A woman who arranges for a surrogate to give birth by using someone else’s eggs cannot be considered the mother unless she adopts the child, a sharply divided state Supreme Court ruled today. | In the Matter of the Parentage of a Child by T.J.S. and A.L.S.

AP: Scientists in Oregon have created embryos with genes from one man and two women, using a provocative technique that could someday be used to prevent babies from inheriting certain rare incurable diseases.

LifeSiteNews: Poland’s government unveiled plans on Monday to foot the bill for both married and unmarried women to have children through in vitro fertilization (IVF). This comes despite strong opposition from the country’s Catholic bishops who have threatened to excommunicate politicians who publicly support IVF.

LifeSiteNews: UCLA researchers presented findings from their study, titled, “Congenital Malformations Associated With Assisted Reproductive Technology: A California Statewide Analysis,” on October 20 at theAmerican Academy of Pediatrics National Conference in New Orleans.

Telegraph: Fame Daddy will offer would-be-mothers “top quality celebrity surrogate fathers” when it launches next February, according to Dan Richards, its chief executive . . . To be able to harvest potential from the global gene pool, rather than from the more limited selection of the men she comes into direct contact with, is a major evolutionary leap for women.

Deseret News: A young boy who was conceived from preserved sperm after his father’s death is not entitled to Social Security benefits under Utah law, the Utah Supreme Court ruled Friday. | Burns v. Astrue, 2012 UT 71 | Hat Tip: How Appealing

SEO Law Firm: Advances in reproductive technology have sundered the age-old connection between the biological aspects of parenthood and the social relationships that define family. How the law will reflect and shape the impacts of this fundamental change is emerging as we watch, case by case.

Christian Institute: Over-40s who are denied free IVF treatment can now sue the NHS under new age discrimination laws.

Telegraph: Researchers from Kyoto University successfully turned stem cells into eggs in mice, which went on to give birth to healthy and fertile offspring. The technique can either be used with stem cells taken from embryos, or ones created artificially from other adult cells such as skin, according to their study published in the Science journal.

Wall Street Journal: There is growing evidence suggesting that freezing an embryo after fertilization and thawing it for use in the woman’s next monthly cycle leads to higher pregnancy rates, compared with using the embryo immediately. A recent scientific review of three small randomized and controlled studies found that 50% of women got pregnant after receiving in vitro fertilization, or IVF, treatment using a recently frozen embryo. By contrast, women receiving fresh embryos had a 38% pregnancy rate.

Alana S. Newman at Public Discourse: Young women now have to defend themselves not only from stereotypical sexual predators, but also from older women and gay men who seek their egg

France24.com: A Danish sperm donor has passed a potentially severe genetic disorder to five children after a screening test failed to catch that he had the disease, health officials said Monday.

Christian Concern: Nightlight Christian Adoptions, which started the first ever embryo adoption program, has estimated that there are more 600,000 frozen embryos kept in storage facilities across the US . . . The practice of IVF leads to the creation of spare embryos since a multiple number are produced from which couples are required to select the healthiest for implantation.

AP: Two national groups are supporting a discrimination lawsuit filed by a former Indiana parochial school teacher who claims she was fired for trying to get pregnant through in vitro fertilization. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the American Civil Liberties Union filed friends of the court briefs Monday in support of Emily Herx. Herx filed a federal lawsuit in April against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, claiming she was discriminated against for a disability when her teaching contract wasn’t renewed.

BioEdge: China, a nation notorious for stifling fertility with its draconian one-child policy, is now worried about an epidemic of infertility. The head of Guangdong’s family planning commission, Luo Wenzhi, is appealing for sperm donors. “Donating your sperm is healthy,” he told a Chinese newspaper. “It won’t hurt you nor kill you.”

Nature.com: The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is set to decide whether Costa Rica, the only country that completely prohibits in vitro fertilization (IVF), has infringed basic rights with its ban. The tribunal — which is based in the Costa Rican capital of San José but rules on human-rights violations throughout Central and South America — met last week to hear a case brought by affected couples against Costa Rica.

Judie Brown at Renew America: Many people see in vitro fertilization as an acceptable means to an end — a baby who could not previously have been conceived. But what all does IVF really entail? What happens to the babies created who are not implanted? Today’s commentary addresses why the Church condemns this practice and offers hope to those who cannot conceive — hope that does not involve the death of an innocent child.

WTSP.com (AP) reports.

AP: A Senate committee is taking up legislation that expands access to fertility services for disabled military veterans.

LifeNews: Why not? He or she is just a ball of cells, a blastocyst. Why would you even care? Maybe because the lives of “spare” IVF embryos do matter. Let Australian Jen Vuk’s testimony to her growing anxiety over what to do with her last frozen offspring speak a warning to the practice of the mass production of embryos in IVF.

Family Scholars: A married woman whose husband donated sperm without her knowledge is calling for clinics to be forced to ask for a wife’s consent.

LifeSiteNews: This means that for a typical couple seeking IVF, somewhere between five and thirty of their children died so they could give birth to one. On a world-wide scale, this means that 30-150 million children have died because of IVF. In light of such staggering numbers the Church’s teaching makes perfect sense; it is “deeply disturbing” that “the number of embryos sacrificed is extremely high” (Dignitas personae n. 14).

Telegraph: Dozens of couples are flying to the US every year to choose the sex of their babies, a practice banned in Britain three years ago.

AP: . . . but the legislation specifically authorizes the VA to cover IVF and to pay for procedures now provided for some critically injured active-duty soldiers.

Forbes: In May, opinion tracker Gallup, headquartered in Washington, D.C., found pro-choice identification at its lowest point–41 percent–since 1995, when it first began asking the question. But that finding raises the contentious question of what respondents might think the terms “pro-life” or “pro-choice” mean at a time when both terms carry heavy political freight.

TheLeader.info: According to a recent study, infants conceived with the techniques used in fertility clinics are four times more likely to have certain birth defects and malformations than children that are naturally conceived.

LifeSiteNews: – A judge in this small northern Ontario town has ruled that allowing a biological father access to his 22-month-old son, who is being raised by his biological mother and her lesbian partner, is not in the best interests of the child because of “the risk of there being an adverse affect to the child.” | Deblois v. Lavigne, 2012 ONSC 3949 (CanLII)

Catholic Culture: The study in Fertility & Sterility reports that organizations that recruit women to donate their eggs for artificial reproduction have neglected to warn the women about the medical risks involved

Florida Courier: The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments Oct. 2 in a possibly first-of-its-kind case pitting two lesbian partners who used in-vitro fertilization to have a child but later ended their relationship. The case could be unprecedented in Florida because the fertilized egg of one woman was implanted in her then-partner, who gave birth.

Alana S. Newman at First Things: For a long time I didn’t understand how this had negatively impacted my life, until I read David Blankenhorn’s Fatherless America. It was like stepping into a series of scenes from my adolescence. Never before had someone so eloquently and acutely described my personal struggles. I now staunchly defy the pro donor-conception script I was expected to embrace . . . So I was surprised with David’s new stance on same-sex marriage as described in his recent New York Times piece. I feel he underestimates, inter alia, the rapid expansion of donor-conception that will accompany same-sex marriage, and with it, many of the social ills he so diligently describes in Fatherless America.

Catholic Culture: Spanish fertility clinics account for roughly one-third of all the in vitro fertilization procedures undertaken in Europe . . .

Michael Cook at MercatorNet: If marriage leads to children, same-sex marriage must inevitably lead to surrogacy and exploitation.

Christian Concern: Records held by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority reveal that approximately 123 IVF babies were aborted due to genetic abnormalities over the last five years, the equivalent of one termination every fortnight.

LifeNews: First an Indian “gestational carrier” died in childbirth. Now, we learn that a 17-year-old Indian girl is dead after predators in the IVF industry allowed her to be hyper-ovulated for money three times in 18 months, and she was apparently convinced or coerced by her employer to sell her eggs

AZFamily.com: A new, more affordable, convenient and effective option for women turning to in vitro fertilization to get pregnant is finally available thanks to the advancement of egg donors and the technology to freeze donated embryos.