Influential Georgia lawmakers have introduced a bill that would make illegal in their state some of the fertilization procedures used in the high-profile case of a California mother who recently gave birth to octuplets.
The bill appears to be the most sweeping state legislation of its kind introduced in the wake of the case of Nadya Suleman, a 33-year-old single woman who gave birth in January to eight babies through in-vitro fertilization. Ms. Suleman has said that she had six frozen embryos left from prior in-vitro treatments and asked that they all be implanted because she didn’t want them to be destroyed. Two of the embryos split, creating eight total embryos, she said.
Another bill was recently introduced in Missouri’s House of Representatives calling for less restrictive limits on the number of implanted embryos.
This is a very difficult issue, and as a woman who was told at one time that I would probably never be a mother, I am very deeply sympathetic to infertile couples. I have felt the pain they feel. I think Christians need to look objectively at what is being done with in vitro procedures and consider the mandate to protect human life. In one sense, this octo-mom did a very pro-life thing: she had six embryos, small children, waiting in a freezer and gave them life. What should not have happened in the first place was the creation of those embryos (and their six siblings already born) to satisfy the maternal longings of an unmarried woman. I could agree with the provisions of this proposed law requiring that no more embryos be created than are going to be implanted in the current cycle. I would add that no child-embryos should be artificially created who will not have both a mother and a father to grow up with; that is, that infertility treatments should be for married couples only.