Ted Cruz and Katie Britt’s IVF bill misses the point

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) introduced the IVF Protection Act on Monday. This bill would amend the Social Security Act by inserting a “requirement that states do not prohibit in vitro fertilization services” as a condition for receiving Medicaid funds. Since the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision in February, the tide regarding in vitro fertilization (IVF) has shifted toward stronger regulations to protect parents and children. Unfortunately, the Cruz-Britt bill completely misses the point.

The IVF Protection Act is a law to solve the problem. State and federal elected leaders do not want to ban IVF. In introducing this bill, Senators Cruz and Britt are seeking a way to inoculate against potential political attacks. Rather than focusing on protecting parents undergoing infertility treatment, the IVF Protection Act boosts the world’s multi-billion dollar fertility industry.

Republicans have a unique opportunity to manage IVF with the highest standards of medical and ethical care. The Republican Party can and should be a parent-friendly party that promotes life-affirming fertility treatments, rather than descending into a mindless frenzy for mass infertility treatments. Many people are currently sounding the alarm about the lack of regulation and accountability in the fertility industry. Just last month, atlantic ocean, vox, washington postand slate Each company has published hard-hitting pieces criticizing the industry’s abuses and calling for stronger regulation to protect vulnerable parents and children.

So what does the IVF Protection Act actually say?

The only legal requirement of this law is that states may not ban IVF, but it does not specify what it means to “ban” IVF, or whether states are or are not allowed to regulate IVF. For example, what if a state wanted to rely on IRS tax laws to limit IVF to married couples? Would that be considered a ban, since single men and women are not eligible? Or what if a state wanted to ban foreigners from using IVF to create anchor babies in the United States? Would that be allowed? Or, more importantly, what if a state wanted to ban anonymous egg and sperm donations, as Colorado does, or to ban clinics from discarding unwanted fertilized eggs, as Louisiana does? These laws regulating IVF, in a sense, ban IVF in part or in whole for some people. Where does the “ban” end and where does permissible regulation begin? As you might imagine, many people have different answers to this question.

By inserting a broad and undefined use of “prohibited,” the bill goes far beyond the original intent and allows state courts, regulatory agencies, or the Legislature to define, interpret, and apply the meaning as they see fit.

While Cruz and Britt assured Americans that the law does not prevent states from enforcing health and safety standards in the management of IVF, the bill does nothing about ensuring ethical standards. It is not mentioned either. Such ethical standards include restrictions on the use of preimplantation genetic testing. The test allows doctors to examine characteristics such as the embryo’s gender, genetic makeup, potential intelligence, and even the child’s eye color. While most countries restrict the use of such technology, it is rampant in the United States. Can states restrict sex selection because they oppose eugenic selection of children? This law again says nothing.

To make matters worse, the law is noticeably missing a key definition: IVF is defined as “the act of removing eggs from the ovaries, manually fertilizing them with sperm, and then returning them to the uterus.” While this definition provides a good general description of IVF, it doesn’t take into account the standard variations in the procedure.

For example, in a variation called gamete intrafallopian transfer, eggs and sperm are extracted, but the moment of fertilization occurs inside the woman’s body, not before. Similarly, in fertilized intrafallopian transfer, fertilized eggs are placed in the woman’s fallopian tubes rather than her uterus. Or what about treatments such as artificial insemination or intrauterine insemination, where only sperm are extracted and implanted inside the woman? Do these common treatments not fall under the definition of IVF and therefore not protected by this law?

All of these problems are byproducts of the law’s most fundamental problem: its failure to address the way in vitro fertilization is routinely performed in the United States. In theory, IVF seems benign, but in practice it raises many ethical questions.

To create extra embryos, fertility clinics often artificially stimulate a woman’s body to produce as many as 30 eggs at a time. This gives the clinic many options to test and select desirable embryos based on the fetus’s sex, genetic makeup, or overall viability, but it can pose significant problems for the woman’s health. Unwanted embryos that are selected are either discarded, donated for research, or frozen indefinitely. By one estimate, of the approximately 4.1 million embryos created each year in the United States, only 3 to 7 percent result in a live birth. The success rate of the embryos involved is very low.

Like Cruz and Britt, you may be thinking, “So what?” If no state wants to ban IVF, then the IVF Protection Act is just a Republican endorsement of couples struggling with infertility, right? There’s no need to rush into that. Currently, there is no federal law regulating IVF, and only one regulation, the Fertility Clinic Success Rate and Certification Act, requires clinics to report success rates and basic birth outcomes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, by introducing a bill that gives the federal government the power to dictate how states regulate access to IVF, Cruz and Britt pave the way for federal lawmakers and regulators to define, interpret, and apply this law as they see fit, which could lead to many unintended consequences.

“The political folly of Cruz and Britto lies in their uncritical focus on supporting the fertility industry, rather than the best interests of parents, women, and children. It is time for Republicans to recognize the ground is shifting beneath their feet and regulate IVF according to the highest medical and ethical standards that prioritize parents, not the interests of a self-regulating fertility industry.”

Emma Waters is a senior fellow at the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at the Heritage Foundation. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.