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MONTGOMERY, Alabama (LifeSiteNews) — Following the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling last week that embryos are children – bringing an abrupt halt to IVF (in vitro fertilization) procedures in the state – legislators there have quickly unleashed a torrent of new bills aimed at protecting the IVF industry while ignoring the rights, including the right to life, of the children created through IVF, 93 percent of whom will be disposed of as “medical waste.”
Among the lawmakers putting forth these legislative measures, Republicans outnumber Democrats.
Five bills have now been speedily authored and are headed to the Alabama Senate and House Healthcare Committees for consideration.
Republican Senator Tim Melson and Republican House member Terri Collins have introduced companion bills, Senate Bill 159 and House Bill 237, which share the same name: “In vitro fertilization; civil and criminal immunity provided for in vitro fertilization goods and services in certain circumstances.”
Melson chairs the Alabama Senate Healthcare committee.
Both measures would “provide civil and criminal immunity to persons providing goods and services related to in vitro fertilization except acts of omission that are intentional and not arising from or related to IVF services” and would apply retroactively.
Republican Sen. Larry Stutts filed a third bill, Senate Bill 160, which similarly seeks to provide legal immunity for the IVF industry but would not apply retroactively.
Democratic House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels introduced House Bill 225 late last week, stating “any fertilized human egg or human embryo that exists outside of a human uterus is not considered an unborn child or human being for any purposes under state law.”
On Tuesday, he put forth House Bill 240, which would change the state constitution that protects the rights of unborn children to exclude embryos who exist outside of the womb.
The Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling might be bulletproof
The state Supreme Court’s ruling last week was based on the Alabama Constitution, which says that the state “acknowledges, declares, and affirms that it is the public policy of this state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children, including the right to life,” as well as to “ensure the protection of the rights of the unborn child in all manners and measures lawful and appropriate.”
“If that interpretation of the Alabama constitution is correct, then it would supersede any Alabama statute that attempts to say we are not providing this protection to in vitro embryos,” Joanne Rosen, a left-wing law professor at Johns Hopkins University, told ABC News. “If it were to be that meaning, then state-level legislation wouldn’t be able to override it, because the Constitution is the supreme law that is used [and] laws have to comply with the Constitution.”
When people choose to create children using IVF, many more eggs are fertilized than necessary as an insurance policy in case first attempts at successful pregnancies fail. Stored embryos deemed to be no longer necessary for the parents’ pursuit of a family — often numbering a dozen or more — are discarded as “medical waste.”
The IVF industry cannot survive without the killing of embryos. More to the point: the IVF industry cannot survive without the killing of 93 percent of children the process creates.
Moreover, the Catholic Church teaches that IVF is gravely immoral because it separates the sexual act from procreation and violates the right of the child to be born of a conjugal union.
DC Democrats push radical IVF legislation
Democrats in Congress are trying to leverage the opportunity opened up by the skittishness of Republican leaders over the Alabama Supreme Court ruling.
Senator Tammy Duckworth will ask her colleagues today to bring to a vote legislation that she authored that would establish an alarming array of federal “rights” to artificial reproductive technologies even beyond IVF.
Under unanimous consent, a single senator can object and block the bill’s movement forward.
It remains uncertain at this time what Republican senators will do.
Duckworth’s bill “goes much further than protecting IVF,” The Washington Stand’s Sarah Holiday noted. “It is being criticized for legalizing human cloning, gene-editing to produce ‘designer babies,’ the creation of animal-human hybrids (‘chimeras’), surrogacy, and the trafficking and destruction of human embryos. Many of these are prohibited in some state laws, but there is no federal ban and this bill would create a proactive right.”
“Today’s vote, the effort to seek a unanimous consent, we know is unlikely to be successful” Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal told The Guardian, adding that it “is only the prelude to a fight ahead” to promote so-called “women’s reproductive care,” euphemistically referring to anti-life and anti-family practices.
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