A message from RESOLVE

I am sure most, if not all, of my readers have heard about this, but just in case:

Georgia Bill to Limit IVF Passes First Hurdle - In a Different Form
Add Your Voice NOW to Stop This Bill!

Please click here to send a personalized letter to all Georgia State Senators, to Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle, and to Governor Sonny Perdue NOW!
Georgia lawmakers are pressing forward this week with their efforts to pass a law that will harm infertility treatment. 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 imperil IVF treatment in Georgia, just more subtly.
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 microscopic embryos from the moment the egg fertilizes. By equating embryos to born human beings, SB 169 has implications that pose a serious threat to infertility treatment. If microscopic fertilized eggs/embryos are full human children, anything that puts an embryo at risk could be a violation of law, even if its goal is the undeniable social good of helping someone have a 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 embryos.
Doctors would face loss of their license if they fail to treat embryos correctly; we wonder if doctors would even want to practice in Georgia under this law.
Cryopreservation (embryo freezing) would change drastically, because all frozen embryos 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 embryos. If there is a dispute over embryos, SB 169 establishes a judicial standard that any decision must be “in the best interest of the human in vitro embryo” (Section 19-7-65). The embryo’s interests outweigh the parents’.
If the lawmakers are serious about re-defining embryos as human beings, then women with uterine problems could be forbidden from attempting pregnancy with IVF because of the risks to the embryo of failed implantation.
The net effect is that SB 169 would prevent couples in Georgia with infertility from being able to have families.
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 embryos even if it results in a huge cost to infertility patients. This legislation is anti-family for us and must be defeated.
Please spread the word to anyone you know in Georgia who cares about families! Please help us stop SB 169! Send your letter immediately to the Georgia Senate!
Thank you!
Barbara Collura
Executive Director, RESOLVE