AUL applauds the Mississippi senator’s courageous stand for life.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s request for unanimous consent for S.3612 Wednesday. Against the deceptively titled “Access to Family Building Act,” Sen. Hyde-Smith defended the rights of parents and the preborn over profit-maximizing IVF businesses.
Sen. Duckworth’s bill would have concocted a right to access in vitro fertilization (IVF). This procedure artificially creates human embryos, which are medically understood to be distinct and unrepeatable human persons.
A regular purpose of IVF as it is currently practiced in the United States is embryo banking, which requires introducing male sperm to female eggs in a Petri dish and freezing successfully fertilized embryos in liquid nitrogen. According to CDC data from 2021, the last year for which data is available, 41 percent of IVF cycles were banking cycles, where eggs or embryos are produced for potential future use.
American IVF businesses exist to create and freeze embryonic human persons. The same CDC data show that the only service that 100% of fertility businesses offer is embryo cryopreservation and over 83% of IVF transfers make use of thawed embryos who were previously frozen.
The IVF industry in America has been termed the “Wild West” due to a near-total lack of patient health and safety regulations and meaningful regulatory oversight. Consumer protections for parents of IVF children are generally lacking. Parents generally have few rights with respect to their care and treatment by IVF businesses, and embryonic children are typically treated as property rather than persons.
Chief Engagement Officer Tom Shakely said, “We’re grateful for Sen. Hyde-Smith’s opposition to S.3612 and for her advocacy of protections for vulnerable lives. We encourage lawmakers everywhere to recognize that human embryos are human persons, and that it is time for commonsense regulations upholding consumer rights and patient protections across the fertility industry.”
