The war on IVF is so 2k5. An amazing and alarming article in Salon — well worth sitting through the ad — dives into the battle to ban birth control. Will Saletan may feel comfortable that mainstream America will abandon the pro-life movement if we can just shift the debate from abortion to contraception, but Salon's Priya Jain makes clear that the lifers are already well ahead of the choicers in framing the next debate. Think about the arguments over emergency contraception. Lifers call it abortion (redefining that term into meaninglessness), choicers throw up their hands and laugh that emergency contraception is just the birth control pill in a different dosage and works exactly the same way. A ha! say the lifers: the birth control pill is an abortifacient!

Or take Saletan's trump card: that expanded access to contraception reduces abortions because it means fewer women are having unwanted pregnancies in the first place. On the contrary, say the anti-contraceptionites: contraception is the root cause of abortion. "In law and in practice, [contraception] led to the necessity of abortion because contraception proved not to be failsafe." If contraception were banned, women would simply stop having sex! (which is, of course, the real goal here). This line of thinking may sound totally wacked out, but as Jain reports, state legislators are already responding to it.

As always, Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte is on top of this, and brilliantly — unpacking the movement's inherent misogyny, and offering a modest proposal for reducing baby-killing, based on the (gasp) actual science of pregnancy.

4:49 PM :: Comments (0)

This site has been following the war on IVF for some time now, but here's a new twist, courtesy of Pope Benedict XVI. We already know that God hates in vitro fertilization because of all those frozen embryos snowflake babies. But according to Das 'Dict, IVF is also immoral because "it replaces the natural conjugal love between husband and wife."

Um, having children at all tends to impede conjugal love, pal.

I'm trying to find an actual transcript of the Pope's address, because I can't for the life of me figure out what this means: "The Church does allow artificial insemination for married couples if it 'facilitates' the sex act, but does not replace it."

Still, considering that so many people believe the church thinks sex should only be for procreation, it's kind of nice to know that, in at least one circumstance, the official line is that procreation is only acceptable if it leads to sex. If my twins ever get a chance to meet the Pope, I'll be sure to introduce him as the man who thinks they shouldn't be alive because it's far more important for mommy and daddy to fuck.

So does this mean he's for gay marriage?

2:49 PM :: Comments (4)

Recently, New York magazine ran an article about a novel form of assisted reproductive therapy that involves freezing eggs instead of embryos. Towards the end, an IVF doctor who does not do egg freezing is quoted:

"I'm not sure I’m positive that it’s a great thing," says Veeck-Gosden. "People don’t think about the long term. Are they going to be around to see grandchildren? It changes what we see as the makeup of families." Not to mention the fact that "you don’t feel the same at 45 as you do at 35," she says. And it’s not just energy: Endometriosis increases, uterus and tubal function are compromised, everything suffers with age. "Delaying reproduction just for social reasons," says Veeck-Gosden, "I think we will probably learn some lessons over the next couple of decades about that."

Maybe we will, but as a doctor and researcher, that's not your concern, as my wife Gina points out in a letter to New York published this week.

The attitudes of the doctors quoted in “Stop Time” are extremely paternalistic. Theoretical questions about whether women will be too tired to have children at 45 or whether they will live to see their grandchildren should not hinder the development of this technology. We shouldn’t restrict women’s fertility, whether by limiting access to this technology or to emergency contraception and abortion.

Parenthood is one of those jobs for which, almost universally, there are no tests and very few people would want them. No one would question the right of a woman with a genetic predisposition for a terminal illness to have children, even if it meant she might not live to see her grandchildren. Nor would they say that a woman who is tired a lot, whether because she has chronic fatigue syndrome or a job on a sales floor, should be prevented from having kids. One may hold these opinions personally, but few would try to impose them on others, and if they did, it would quickly be pointed out that women with all sorts of issues that make them seemingly unsuitable for motherhood -- poverty not least among them -- become mothers all the time, sometimes with great success. It's hard to imagine a doctor telling a woman desperate to get pregnant that she should rethink because she may not be the doctor's ideal candidate for motherhood, or her family might not be the doctor's idea of a perfect family.

But technology warps people's minds. The fear of the "unnatural" makes even biomedical researchers say dumb-ass things like, "Are they going to be around to see grandchildren? It changes what we see as the makeup of families." No, you know what's changed what we see as the makeup of families? A century of medical advancements that have allowed people to be around to see their grandchildren in the first place. According to an article in the Times last summer, "the likelihood that a 20-year-old these days will have a living grandmother (91 percent) is higher than the likelihood that a 20-year-old in 1900 had a living mother (83 percent)." Was anyone protesting the development of antibiotics on the grounds that too many grandparents in the picture would destroy the traditional family?

Will some children suffer because their mothers got pregnant too old? Most assuredly. Just as plenty of children suffer now from having lousy mothers who got knocked up the old fashoned way. There have always been people who shouldn't be parents for one reason or another, and there always will be. But society's job is to let them make that decision for themselves.

Continue reading "Letters to the editor is the new blogging" »

10:54 AM :: Comments (0)

I don't have time right now to weigh in on this fully -- and certainly not to improve on Amanda's take -- but readers familiar with my apocalyptic IVF series will want to be aware of the sky is indeed continuing to fall. With the caveat that I haven't read the original documents myself, here's Laura McPhee's description (basically confirmed by the AP):

Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant "by means other than sexual intercourse."

According to a draft of the recommended change in state law, every woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother through assisted reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilization, sperm donation, and egg donation, must first file for a "petition for parentage" in their local county probate court.

Only women who are married will be considered for the "gestational certificate" that must be presented to any doctor who facilitates the pregnancy. Further, the "gestational certificate" will only be given to married couples that successfully complete the same screening process currently required by law of adoptive parents.

Ironically, this will probably be killed by attacks from the right, because it acknowledges premarital sexual intercourse without condemnation.

12:18 PM :: Comments (5)

I guess this is officially my beat because already two people have e-mailed me about the article in yesterday's Chicago Tribune about the war on IVF (and one of them wasn't even my wife).

It has updates on the states of various battles, notably pending legislation in Kentucky that would force doctors to create no more than one embryo at a time when doing in vitro fertilization. This is the kind of thing that may sound like a reasonable compromise to casual listeners, but is in fact a de facto ban on IVF.

"If you only inseminated one egg," Richard Scott of Reproductive Medicine Associates tells ChiTrib's Judy Peres, "it would take an average of 16 cycles to get a baby." Peres provides the context: "One IVF cycle involves four to six weeks of hormone injections, ultrasound tests, blood work and a minor surgical procedure to retrieve the eggs; it can cost $10,000 or more." And that objective journalismese doesn't even begin to capture the stress, and for many people trauma, involved in going through a cycle.

It's a great article, and I'm glad the story is getting out, but I do have one quibble. Peres writes: "At the individual level, IVF raises complicated moral issues. Many patients who describe themselves as pro-life have no compunction about creating new life through the procedure, experts agreed. On the other hand, some people who describe themselves as pro-choice find they can't bear to destroy or donate their leftover embryos."

That last sentence is "on the other hand" only if you buy the lifer's propaganda that pro-choice is a euphemism for pro-abortion (or pro-embryo destruction). In fact it just means you believe people should have the right to make their own decisions, even if you strongly believe they should always decide against abortion or, more typically, if you understand that the choice is often extremely difficult to make.

11:22 AM :: Comments (0)

Here's your IVF update.

Will Saletan explains why seemingly sane Italians passed (and now preserved) their clearly insane IVF laws, and what their nightmare means for the US if the religious right has its way.

The ghoulish ironies don't end there. Last year, President Bush's council on bioethics, well-stocked with conservatives, strongly urged fertility clinics "to reduce the incidence of multiple embryo transfers and resulting multiple births, a known source of high risk and discernible harm to the resulting children." But the Italian law requires such multiple transfers, endangering healthy embryos in the name of protecting unhealthy ones. By limiting the number of embryos in each IVF round to three, the Italian law has doubled the average number of rounds necessary to get a successful pregnancy. This means more hormonally induced egg production and extraction, which, according to Bush's council, "carry significant medical risks to the women."

Oh, and don't forget the increased risk of low birth-weight and infant mortality. Define "pro-life" again, please?

Ellen Goodman calls the Snowflakers' bluff. "When people claim to believe that a frozen embryo is the moral equal of a child, ethicists like to pose this question: If a clinic is on fire and you could save either a 2-year-old or a vial full of embryos, which would you pick?" She also has some advice for people in my position: "Embryos are not human beings. Nor are they hangnails. They carry the potential for human life that deserves moral attention and respect. It's not disrespectful to donate embryos to the search for a curing diseases. Nor is it respectful to keep embryos in a freezer until they're eligible for Social Security." No sweat. Social Security will be bankrupt by then.

Continue reading "The shamelessly adorable picture is just to remind you what I have at stake" »

10:55 AM :: Comments (15)

• Rise and shine, Landesman, you have a new -- and far more formidable -- foe to freak the fuck out on. Jack Shafer revisits The Girls Next Door with the latest official human trafficking numbers in hand. The gist: estimates have dropped from a high of 50,000 women and children were trafficked here annually "for sexual exploitation" to 15,000 people trafficked annually for all purposes -- making the figures significantly lower than Landesman suggests. Jack has always been more concerned with the numbers than I have. To me, what made PL's article sensationalistic was not that he chose to use the highest estimates he could find -- a fairly common bit of journalistic spin -- but that he chose to build a narrative out of elements -- underage American girls, torture, murder, Disneyland -- that were both perfectly picked to shock and utterly impossible to substantiate. [Update: Guess who's back in the comments...]

• IVF blogger Julie says some very funny and true stuff that I left out of or only touched on in my recent Snowflakes miniseries. BTW, I'm going to be writing something on this subject for at least one magazine in the near future.

• Rapid Teens has a hilarious review of Radar from an unusual perspective [hint: mildly NSFW]. Don't miss the video preview [hint: extremely NSFW]. BTW, my mother called me Danny Rado once. Once.

11:09 AM :: Comments (12)

Will Saletan gets hip to The coming war over in vitro fertilization.

Since then, Bush's language has hardened. Last week, he called IVF embryos "real human lives" just like "the lives of those with diseases that might find cures" through stem-cell research.... On the House floor, Majority Leader Tom DeLay called embryonic stem-cell research "the dismemberment of living, distinct human beings." Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., called it "the slaughter of human life."

It's hard to see how people who think this way can go on tolerating the surplus creation, freezing, and disposal of millions of IVF embryos. If you think they'll leave it to you because you're the parent, you don't understand pro-lifers. They believe what DeLay and other House Republicans said last week: Embryos belong to "the human family." It takes more than you and your spouse to decide your embryo's fate. It takes a village.
[snip]

You're just the embryo's custodian. Congress may decide it's better off with a different mother. "How do we evaluate which embryos should be allowed to be sent to research and how many to be adopted by infertile couples so those embryos can be developed into full human beings?" Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a pro-life Ohio Democrat, asked her colleagues. "Who will decide? Is it just a matter for the individual couple, or is there a larger, societal responsibility to protect life?"

Some pro-lifers have already decided. Louisiana has outlawed the intentional destruction of "a viable in vitro fertilized human ovum." A bill in Kentucky would make it a felony to "fertilize more than one (1) egg" during IVF. Five days ago, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., suggested that the United States should follow countries that "limit the number" of embryos fertilized in vitro to "one or two at a time." DeLay wants medical associations to require pre-emptive counseling to couples about creating and abandoning leftover embryos. Failing that, he warns that Congress's "next step is to look at" the issue. Thirty states already mandate counseling or waiting periods for abortion. The logical thing to do, if you think embryos deserve the same respect, is to mandate counseling and waiting periods for IVF.

Related, equally depressing posts on this subject.

12:47 PM :: Comments (2)

The New York Times fronts the IVF debate today. The headline couches it as a stem-cell debate, but the article makes it clear that the embryo adoption movement is only latching on to stem cell research as a stalking horse to severely limit (my interpretation: eventually ban) in vitro fertilization, which is directly compared to slavery.

Here are some of the red flags anyone familiar with IVF will spot in the story, about how one of Bush's poster-couples joined the anti-IVF movement.

The McClure's (you may remember them from such films as "God hates fags," and "Jew?") believed that "the Lord was calling us to try to give one of these embryos, these children, a chance to live." So they adopted 13 embryos. That's right, 13. And good thing, too. According to the Times, "most of the 13 embryos proved unviable, and one round of embryo implantation failed before she finally had a successful pregnancy using the final embryo."

Now, the official position of the Family Research Council is "you shouldn't create through I.V.F. more embryos than are going to be implanted." But the McClures (and this is SOP) adopted extra embryos for the exact same reasons that couples who go through IVF create extra embryos in the first place: you need a lot to maximize your chance of success. Now let's parse this situation just a bit more.

Continue reading "Is it just me, or did this story go from 0 to 60 in about two seconds?" »

12:06 PM :: Comments (1)

More on the campaign to ban IVF. In my first post I said total opposition to IVF was "the logical end" of Bush's position on embryos. Slate's Liza Mundy does some actual reporting and finds that indeed, the embryo adoption agency Bush did his photo op with "opposes IVF medicine because of what doctors rather antiseptically refer to as 'embryo wastage' but tries to make the best of the situation by giving some of them a living future. Like conventional pro-life groups, Snowflakes even does 'rescues,' springing into action whenever it hears about a couple on the verge of no longer paying storage fees."

I'm not sure what 'rescues' means in this context, but it hints at something else I thought about. Embryo storage costs about $1,000 a year. Making some very rough estimates that (500,000 frozen embryos total at, say, five per couple) the annual cost of storage is about $100 million per year. If it's that important to Snowflakes, or Sam Brownback, or George Bush, or society that these embryos not be donated for research or destroyed, why don't they, or the taxpayers, pick up the tab?

Continue reading "Don't worry, Peter, I'll get back to the adolescent girl groups soon" »

4:04 PM :: Comments (4)

On Friday I suggested that the logical outcome of conservative opposition to stem cell research would be a ban on in vitro fertilization. But when I said the country was leading up to this, I thought it would be several years down the road, not today.

A prominent conservative US senator called for restrictions on the number of embryos that could be created during fertility treatments, hoping to lessen the number of unwanted embryos left over when the procedures end.

"In a number of countries, they limit the number of these in vitro fertilizations from outside the womb," US Senator Sam Brownback told ABC television's "This Week" program.

"They say you can do this, but you have to do these one or two at a time, so that they're implanted in that basis. And that might be the better way to look at this."

During infertility treatments in the United States it is not unusual for a dozen or more embryos to be created, but many fewer are implanted in the mother's womb, creating a dilemma about what to do with the leftover embryos.

"This isn't medical waste or something that you discard. This is human life, and it's sacred per se," Brownback said.

Obviously if embryos are "human life" and "sacred per se," the proposal to limit the number created is merely a way to ease up to a total ban. After all, no one says they oppose killing six people, but that someone should be free to kill "one or two at a time."

Continue reading "Well that was quick" »

11:39 AM :: Comments (1)

The LA Times has a good if unnecessarily opaque editorial about Bush's "snowflake baby" photo op. In hauling babies who had been born through embryo adoption into the spotlight and declaring that "there is no such thing as a spare embryo," Bush hoped to change the focus of the stem-cell debate from curing diseases to "look at the cute little babies."

As the father of two much-adored test tubers, I know the smell of a full diaper when I encounter it, and Bush's claim reeks. The Times hit most of the points that immediately occurred to me. First let me say that to the extent that there are people who want to be impregnated with someone else's embryos and other people who want to donate their embryos, that's great. I fully support connecting those people through adoption agencies, Christian or otherwise.

But to say this can become a large scale phenomenon is preposterous. There are some 300,000-500,000 frozen embryos right now. To date, fewer than 150 couples have attempted to adopt any. There's no way there will ever be enough demand to make a serious dent in the storeroom, as there are too many options people are likely to try first.

Continue reading "Where the stem cell debate is leading" »

2:01 PM :: Comments (2)