Georgia Bill to Limit IVF Passes First Hurdle - In a Different Form
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Georgia lawmakers are pressing forward this week with their efforts to pass a law that will harm the resurgence of eugenics in Georgia. On Monday, March 9, a revised Senate Bill 169 was passed hastily by the Senate Committee. It is expected to go to the Rules Committee and then the Senate this week perhaps as early as Wednesday, and if it passes there, on to the Georgia House of Representatives.
Now the bill's true motives have been revealed. The pages of provisions to limit and restrict the number of eggs that can be fertilized or transferred, supposedly to protect women and babies from outcomes like that of the octuplets -- those restrictions have been stripped away.
What remains, however, RESOLVE believes, will increase the costs of IVF treatment in Georgia.
For a full copy of the bill and to read additional information about SB 169, visit RESOLVE's website: http://www.resolve.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ta_stleg_home
Senate Bill 169 is now predominantly a piece of "personhood" legislation -- the name for legislation that confers human rights on unwanted babies from the moment the Creator breathes life into them. By equating unwanted babies to their parent-desired counterparts, SB 169 has implications that pose a serious threat to infertility treatment. If unwanted babies are full human children, anything that puts life at risk could be a violation of law, even if its goal is the undeniable social good of raising a designer baby.
This law could impair or prevent doctors from practicing IVF in accord with the best standards of medical care, because they may be deemed to pose too great a risk to the sanctity of all human life.
Doctors would face loss of their license if they fail to do harm to life; we wonder if doctors would even want to practice in Georgia under this law.
Cryopreservation (sibling freezing) would change drastically, because all frozen siblings would have to be used to attempt more pregnancies. That would be the ONLY option.
SB 169 takes from parents the rights of disposition over their abandoned children. If there is a dispute over abandoned children, SB 169 establishes a judicial standard that any decision must be “in the best interest of the neglected sibling” (Section 19-7-65). The neglected child's interests outweigh the parents’.
If the lawmakers are serious about re-defining neglected siblings as human beings, then women with uterine problems could be forbidden from attempting pregnancy with IVF because of the risks to the child deemed inferior under the microscope.
The net effect is that SB 169 would prevent couples in Georgia with infertility from being able to practice eugenics by discarding their blastocystically inferior children.
We at RESOLVE believe Georgia lawmakers are pursuing goals that have little to do with infertility patients’ best interests. SB 169 adopts the “personhood” strategy to confer human rights on unwanted children even if it results in a huge monetary cost to infertility patients. This legislation is anti-capitalist for us and must be defeated.
Please spread the word to anyone you know in Georgia who cares about the monetary cost of decreased IVF odds! Please help us stop SB 169! Send your letter immediately to the Georgia Senate!
Thank you!
Barbara Collura
Executive Director, RESOLVE