Many of today’s medical procedures are so common that people do not always realize the harmful effects. In vitro fertilization is often seen as a welcome solution for couples who have difficulty conceiving. However, many lives are lost through this technological process. Abortion itself is so widely accepted that people do not even ponder what the procedure actually entails: current medical studies show that unborn babies can feel pain. A bill has now been introduced in Congress that would allow women to make informed decisions regarding pain medication for their unborn children. Once people better understand these procedures and the repercussions, their opinions will change. Awareness of fetal pain has spread due to the partial-birth abortion ban debate; and the public is now appalled by the gruesome procedures. We must make the truth be known to the public about these procedures that affect life in the earliest stages. Along with this knowledge should come a change of heart and another blow against the Culture of Death.
Please read this issue of the Pro-Life Update carefully to understand some of the challenges we now face and how you, as a Pro-Life activist, can help advance the Culture of Life. Please share this information with your family, friends and church congregations. Make copies. Spread the news.
In Vitro Fertilization: The Procedure & Moral Dilemmas
In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a procedure long accepted as an appropriate solution to treat infertility; IVF accounts for almost 75% of all assisted reproductive techniques. However, the procedure results in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of embryos each year. In an IVF procedure, a lab technician creates embryos by combining eggs from a woman and sperm from a man in a petri dish. Next, the doctor will transfer the fertilized eggs (the earliest stage of human life) into the mother’s womb, hoping for implantation.
Each IVF procedure costs thousands of dollars; therefore, doctors and patients have determined that fertilizing and implanting several embryos--three on average--is more efficient in increasing the possibility of fertilization. The majority of implanted embryos do not survive (about 170,000 a year).
The relatively new fertility industry has another problem: About 400,000 human embryos are frozen in storage in the United States alone. Some will die in storage, and most of them will never be “needed”. These 400,000 human lives have been created unfortunately without much forethought or hope of being born.
A further problem with in vitro fertilization is that, if multiple embryos do implant, doctors often recommend selective termination, i.e. “reducing” the number of babies to be born by aborting some of those conceived. Doctors regularly encourage this procedure if more than two embryos implant, because they consider carrying more than three children at one time unnatural and potentially risky to the mother’s health.
While IVF may help couples bring new life into the world, it carries a hefty price--the lives of hundreds of thousands of children each year. IVF is yet another example of the medical establishment’s lack of respect for human life at its earliest stages.
Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act
On May 20, 2004, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), introduced a new Pro-Life bill entitled the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act (S. 2466 and H.R. 4420). This bill has garnered support from National Right to Life, Family Research Council, Christian Medical Association, Southern Baptist Convention (Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission), and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and of course, Texas Right to Life.
When the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act is passed, abortionists would then be required to provide specified information about the capacity of unborn children to experience pain during an abortion when the woman seeking an abortion is 20 weeks after fertilization. The woman must then accept or refuse the administration of pain-reducing drugs directly to the unborn child by signing a form.
During a trial in New York regarding the partial-birth abortion procedure, Dr. Kanwaljeet ‘Sonny’ Anand, a pediatrician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, testified that unborn children show increased heart rate, blood flow, and hormone levels in response to pain. “The physiological responses have been very clearly studied. The fetus cannot talk...so this is the best evidence we can get,” he said.
Considering that there are laws on the books that restrict how livestock are slaughtered and the use of animals in research, our country has a great need for this legislation. “There are numerous laws to prevent cruelty to domestic and wild animals, but no law to prevent well-developed unborn children from suffering excruciating pain as they are torn limb from limb or crushed during abortions,” said National Right to Life (NRLC) Legislative Director Douglas Johnson.
The American public seems to recognize this need, as evidenced in a Zogby poll conducted in April 2004. Americans supported “laws requiring that women who are 20 weeks or more along in their pregnancy be given information about fetal pain before having an abortion” by a 77-16 percent margin. Injunction against Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act
President George W. Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act last November. There are currently three separate legal challenges to this law in three different federal courts. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) brought a lawsuit against the new law.
U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton issued a permanent injunction against enforcement of the ban with respect to the groups that filed that lawsuit; this will affect primarily Planned Parenthood and their affiliates. “Judge Hamilton’s deep personal hostility to the law has been evident throughout the judicial proceedings, and is evident in many passages in her 117-page injunction,” stated NRLC Director Douglas Johnson. “Other district and appellate judges also will be heard from during the months ahead. It is the U.S. Supreme Court that will ultimately decide whether our elected representatives can ban the practice of mostly delivering a living premature infant and then puncturing her skull. A one-vote shift on the Supreme Court would allow the ban on partial-birth abortions to be upheld."
