Tag: reproductive laws

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Missouri Lawmakers Override Veto of Contraception Bill

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JEFFERSON CITY, MO. — Missouri lawmakers enacted new religious exemptions from insurance coverage of birth control Wednesday, overriding a gubernatorial veto and delivering a political rebuke to an Obama administration policy requiring insurers to cover contraception.

Although Missouri and 20 other states already had some sort of exemption from contraceptive coverage, Missouri’s newly expanded law appears to be the first in the nation directly rebutting the federal contraception mandate, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and supporters of the law.

Republican legislative leaders barely met the two-thirds majority needed to override the veto by Gov. Jay Nixon. They got help from a few of Nixon’s fellow Democrats and ultimately persuaded one particular Republican lawmaker who had opposed the measure to support the override. Read full article.

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Senate Panel OKs Veterans Infertility Bill

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate commitee on Wednesday approved legislation that expands access to infertility treatment for seriously injured veterans.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray, authorizes the Department of Veterans Affairs to cover the cost of in vitro fertilization and other advanced reproductive technologies for veterans and their spouses. It cleared the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs.

‘‘Our single-most important duty must be to do right by our veterans,’’ Murray, D-Washington, said in discussing the bill. Read full article.

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Senate Panel Takes Up Bill Expanding Access to Fertility Services for Disabled Veterans

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WASHINGTON — A Senate commitee on Wednesday approved legislation that expands access to infertility treatment for seriously injured veterans.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray, authorizes the Department of Veterans Affairs to cover the cost of in vitro fertilization and other advanced reproductive technologies for veterans and their spouses. It cleared the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs. Read full article.

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Italian Ban on Embryo Screening Violated Couple’s Rights

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Italy has violated the rights of a couple carrying cystic fibrosis by preventing them from screening embryos using PGD, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled. The Strasbourg-based court ordered the Italian Government to pay the couple €17,500 in damages and expenses.

Rosetta Costa and Walter Pavan found out that they were both healthy carriers of cystic fibrosis when they gave birth to a daughter with the condition in 2006. In 2010, the couple terminated another pregnancy on medical grounds when the fetus was found to have cystic fibrosis. Read full article.

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Could Personhood Bills Outlaw IVF?

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(CNN) — For the past two weeks, since Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin uttered the phrase “legitimate rape,” Republicans have had to face questions about their attempts to end abortion.

But could these same attempts also outlaw in vitro fertilization?

The Republican Party’s platform states: “We assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.” Read full article.

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Wheaton College lawsuit dismissed

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A federal judge has dismissed Wheaton College’s lawsuit against the Obama administration for requiring the evangelical Christian college to offer health insurance that covers the cost of contraception, including the morning-after pill, for employees.

The judge’s decision comes just two weeks after the west suburban college was granted an additional year to meet the requirement. Read full article.

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Sperm Is a ‘Marital Asset’ Says UK Donor’s Wife

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A British woman whose husband donated sperm secretly has called for a change in law since sperm is a ‘marital asset’ and wants clinics to obtain the wife’s consent before the husband can donate sperm.

The Surrey-based woman has not been named in the Daily Mail, but she reportedly fears that children fathered with the sperm – who would be half-brothers or sisters of her son – may one day ‘disrupt’ the family by getting in touch.

The businesswoman has written to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) calling for guidelines on sperm donation to include the spouse’s views, and says the sperm should be treated as a joint ‘marital asset’.

The tabloid reported today that a controversial ruling in 2005 meant that children born through sperm donation – up to ten families are allowed per donor – have the right to trace their biological father when they reach adulthood. Read full article.

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Stem Cells: A Culture War Gone Quiet

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While a draft plank in the Republican Party’s platform supporting a constitutional amendment banning abortion has gotten plenty of attention, so far unnoticed is another culture war provision tucked right alongside it — an opposition to federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. “We oppose the killing of embryos for their stem cells. We oppose Federal funding of embryonic stem cell research,” the draft language reads, mirroring previous years’ platforms. You’d be forgiven for having déjà vu from 2004, when stem cell research was at the top of the agenda of both parties and sparked fierce and emotional debate. It’s completely vanished from the political scene since — what happened? Read full article.

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Romney’s Running Mate Generates Media Storm Over Positions on Personhood and IVF

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Views held by Paul Ryan – the man chosen by US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney to be his running mate – that life begins at fertilisation have caused a media furore in North America.

Ryan is a co-sponsor of the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which has been reintroduced to the House of Representatives and that states ‘human life shall be deemed to begin with fertilisation’.

Under the proposed law, embryos discarded during IVF would become ‘murder victims’, commented US political magazine Mother Jones. The magazine said, if it became law, the Act ‘would make Romney’s kids criminals’ since three of them have relied on IVF treatment in order to become parents.

During IVF multiple embryos are often created that may not all be implanted during one cycle of treatment. These ‘spare’ embryos can either be frozen and stored for future use, used by other prospective parents, used in research, or destroyed.

If passed, the Sanctity of Human Life Act would ‘criminalise IVF’, said The Daily Beast, a US news and opinion website – something which Amy Goodman in the Guardian reflected on: ‘As reported in Mother Jones, this law would make normal IVF practices illegal’, she said.

However, other journalists are calling much of the attention ‘bad reporting’, claiming that the media has distorted Ryan’s Act. There is no evidence that Ryan believes in criminalising IVF and that ‘efforts to imply otherwise in order to create a neat little conflict… are misleading and irresponsible’, Marni Soupcoff said in the Canadian National Post. Read full article.

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Reproductive Technology and the Law

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Enid Abrahami, a single mother by choice, conceived her first child with her own egg and a stranger’s sperm, thanks to a fertility clinic in New York. Abrahami then gave birth to her son in Israel, where she lives these days. She had no trouble attaining her son’s American citizenship. Abrahami, who has dual Israeli and American citizenship, grew up in both New York City and Tel Aviv.

When she decided to have a second child, Abrahami found that she was having trouble getting pregnant using her own eggs. So this time she used both somebody else’s egg—called a donor egg—and sperm from the same donor used to conceive her son. Again, for her second child, a daughter, the embryo was transferred to her uterus in New York and the baby was born in Israel.

But this time, when Abrahami went to fill out the paperwork for her daughter’s citizenship, a U.S. Embassy official learned that she was a single mom and had used donor sperm. The official then asked her, very directly, if she used a donor egg to make her baby.

“I literally felt like I left my body—it seemed so out of the blue,” Abrahami says. “It was one of the most violating experiences I have ever been through. How could they ask me that?”

Abrahami was told that she could not transfer her citizenship onto her daughter. She was told that citizenship is transferred only through DNA, and that she needed proof that at least one of the donors was a U.S. citizen. Most donations are made anonymously.

Abrahami isn’t the only U.S. citizen facing what appears to be a discrepancy in U.S. law. A child adopted overseas by an American is eligible for U.S. citizenship, but a child created from a donor egg and sperm and born overseas to a U.S. citizen must provide proof that one of the donors is a U.S. citizen. Read full article.