If Pro-Life Laws Threaten Your IVF Practice, You’re Doing It Wrong

Bioethics

A recent BBC article questioned what last year’s Dobbs decision could mean for in vitro fertilization. The owner of a self-described “boutique fertility clinic” in Austin, Texas, told reporters that she’s worried abortion restrictions will be bad for business: “If you say life begins at fertili[z]ation, then how can I grow an embryo in a lab, or biopsy it for genetic testing, or freeze it or thaw it, or implant it in somebody, or leave it frozen?” 

These questions should have been asked before IVF became big business. In most fertility clinics today, human lives are put in real danger, especially those embryos designated “extra.” These are either aborted, left indefinitely on ice, discarded, or donated for medical experimentation.  

The few clinics committed to a more (though not completely) ethical IVF, by creating a single embryo at a time or requiring that every embryo is implanted, won’t be affected by abortion restrictions, but most of them will. And they should be. 

Copyright 2023 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint.org with permission.

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Agencies Offer Women in Arkansas $60,000+ to Bear Children as Commercial Surrogates

Bioethics, Surrogacy,

Agencies are offering women in Arkansas tens of thousands of dollars to bear children as commercial surrogates.

Commercial surrogacy agencies work with individuals and couples who pay women to be artificially inseminated and bear children for them as surrogates.

The agency American Surrogacy advertises that women in Arkansas can make more than $60,000 as commercial surrogates. Other companies on Craigslist offer commercial surrogates upwards of $55,000 to $75,000.

The reality is that commercial surrogacy uses this kind of money to exploit women and children.

In California, surrogate Brittney Pearson recently made headlines after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. Because the cancer treatment could harm the unborn baby she was carrying, doctors recommended inducing labor early and caring for the baby in the NICU while she started chemo. However, that isn’t what the same-sex couple paying Brittney Pearson as their commercial surrogate wanted.

Even though she was 24 weeks pregnant, and the baby might have been able to survive outside the womb, the men wanted Brittney to have an abortion. If the baby were born alive, the men asked that no life-saving measures be taken for the baby.

With her cancer having spread to her liver, Pearson found a hospital to induce birth. The child died shortly after being born on Father’s Day, June 18.

All of this was made possible by state laws that facilitate commercial surrogacy.

Family Council has lobbied for legislation that would prohibit commercial surrogacy in Arkansas.

In 2017 then-Rep. Greg Leding sponsored a bill prohibiting commercial surrogacy in Arkansas. Unfortunately, the bill never came up for a vote.

Being pro-life means believing that innocent human life is sacred at every stage of development from conception until natural death.

Commercial surrogacy violates the sanctity and dignity of human life, because it treats women like commodities, and it treats unborn children like property that can be manufactured, bought, sold, or destroyed at will.

To put it simply: People aren’t products.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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Delaware Lawmakers Advance Assisted-Suicide Legislation

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, ,

A measure permitting assisted-suicide is advancing in the Delaware legislature.

Last week, Delaware’s House Human Health and Development Committee passed H.B. 140 — a bad bill  that would let physicians and advance practice registered nurses (APRNs) in Delaware prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients.

The measure does not require patients to undergo any type of mental health evaluation before receiving the lethal drugs. That is significant, because patients who seek assisted suicide typically are dealing with depression or mental anguish resulting from their illness. 

For example, since 1998, more than 90% of the terminally ill people who inquired about assisted suicide in Oregon said they were concerned about losing their autonomy, and nearly 75% expressed worries about losing their dignity. Most did not express concerns about controlling their pain.

Many of these patients are lonely and feel like they are losing control over their lives because of their illness. That means they need counseling and support — not a prescription for poisonous drugs.

Despite this fact, the vast majority of Oregon’s assisted-suicide patients never receive a mental health evaluation. The same is true in other states where assisted-suicide is legal.

Assisted suicide also makes it harder for patients to receive actual healthcare.

In 2019  a Canadian man with ALS made headlines when he chose to take his own life under the country’s assisted suicide and euthanasia laws after the government chose not to provide him with 24-hour home healthcare services due to cost.

In parts of the U.S. where physician-assisted suicide is permitted, insurance companies have refused to pay for patients’ medical care, but have offered to cover assisted-suicide drugs.

Being pro-life means believing human life is sacred from conception until natural death.

That’s part of the reason why in 2019 Family Council helped defeat a very bad legislative proposal to let doctors prescribe lethal drugs to patients in Arkansas. It was a deeply flawed piece of legislation that fundamentally disrespected the sanctity of innocent human life.

Just like abortion, euthanasia and assisted-suicide are murder, and they violate the sanctity of human life. Pro-lifers must stand strong against them.

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