Legislative Rollercoaster
If you've been following my back and forth about Senate Bill 169, aka the "embryo bill," you probably are seriously nauseous from all the twists and turns this thing has taken. First it was just a bill about fertility treatments, then it added personhood for embryos and prohibited their destruction, then it was tabled in the Senate after an impassioned debate about infertility issues and the difficult decisions they engender, and then it was brought off the table and passed. We knew there had been two amendments but nobody knew what they said, and so confusion and loathing ruled the land.
The amended legislation is now online, and you will be relieved to know that at least for now all the icky stuff has been stripped out of the bill. There is no personhood for embryos, no prohibition on their destruction. There is no prohibition on stem cell research. As written now, the legislation simply prohibits methods of creating embryos other than the ole sperm + egg = baby method, and also prohibits creation of embryos for purposes other than to induce a pregnancy. So, it does not prohibit stem cell research itself, but only prohibits creation of embryos for such research. As I read it, the legislation no longer prevents the owners or "parents" of frozen embryos from donating them to research once it is determined that they will not be used to get pregnant.
The short version: as of right now, the poison pill portions are gone. Who knows if they will be added back in by the House or a conference committee...but right now, this legislation isn't the ick that it previously was. I'll let you know if that changes.
3 comments:
The as-passed version may have additionally banned in vitro fertilization for lesbians, though:
"(b) The creation of an in vitro human embryo shall be solely for the purposes of initiating a human pregnancy by means of transfer to the uterus of a human female for the treatment of human infertility or cryopreservation for such treatment in the future." (emphasis added).
A reasonable read of that provision implies that an embryo cannot be created for transfer into a fertile female.
I don't know, realistically a fertile lesbian looking to get pregnant is going to use artificial insemination rather than IVF. It's easier, cheaper, and more likely to work. If she opts for IVF it's likely because of a documented history of infertility.
I guess it would ban elective surrogacy, though. (Where parents want their baby carried by a surrogate even though there is no evidence the biological mother could not be impregnated with the embryo).
OK, we'll see if this is the case. But given the state of the Georgia House, they'll find a way to make this as bad as possible.
WF
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