The Anti-Sam Brownback Blog

While everyone will be talking about the Specter Slam discussed below… Senator Brownback also mentioned an issue on the Sunday edition of ‘This Week” that could be much more important to fighting any future presidential aspirations..

The gist: Senator Brownback wants to regulate a couple’s right to receive in-vitro fertilization.

George: “If an embryo is human life… how can you justify this process, in-vitro fertilization which every single year allows those tiny lives to be frozen or thrown out. If you believe the embryos are people, doesn’t in-vitro fertilization automatically lead, with these thousands and thousands of excess embryos, to either torture or killing of these embryos?

Brownback: “I don’t think it has to be that way, George. In a number of countries they limit the number of, uh, these in-vitro fertilizations from outside the womb. They say you can do this, but you have to do it just one or two at a time so that they are implanted in that basis. And that might be the better way of looking at this.

George: “So your calling for that here…” [Cut off]

Brownback: “Well, what I’m saying here that that is a way that you can look at that instead of going on this massive scale, what we’ve done here.”

Here we see what the anti-abortion lobby’s rhetoric looks like when taken to its logical end. There is not a ton of literature available on this subject… and what is out there advocates a system similar to the restrictions Senator Brownback proposed on “This Week.”

James Dobson’s Focus on the Family addresses this issue in an article buried deep within their website. The article gives this advice for couples:

If a couple chooses IVF they may want to consider an option usually not mentioned by physicians — only harvest and fertilize as many eggs as you intend to use for that cycle. This may require additional future procedures for the mom-to-be, as she may need to have more eggs harvested. But additional procedures may be a better option than putting a pre-born child at risk.

It is important to understand exactly what they are advocating and to do this, we must understand the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure. IVF-Infertility.com explains:

Conventional or standard IVF treatment involves the administration of fertility drugs, monitoring of the cycle, collection of eggs, mixing eggs and sperm together outside the woman’s body in a culture dish or test-tube. Any resulting embryos are left to grow and the best 2-3 embryos are then transferred into the woman’s womb. Any remaining embryos of good quality may then be frozen for future use. In the United Kingdom a maximum of three embryos are replaced.

The step Brownback wants to regulate is the 3rd: collection of eggs. Normally, many eggs are collected at once. The reason for this is that the egg collection is a surgical procedure. While it is much improved from the old laproscopic style of collection, it is still invasive. IVF-Infertility.com continues:

A vaginal ultrasound probe with a fine hollow needle attached to it, is inserted into the vagina. Under ultrasound guidance, the needle is then advanced from the vaginal wall into the ovary to suck out the fluid from the follicle which contains the egg. Each egg is removed in turn through the needle by a suction device. Follicle flushing is not associated with improvement in pregnancy rates or the number of eggs collected, but does increase the duration of the procedure and associated pains. The whole procedure takes about 20-30 minutes.

The average number of eggs collected is twelve. Generally, only 2-3 are implanted back into the woman at a time. This reduces the risk of multiple pregnancies. The rest of the embryos are frozen in case the first implantation fails or the couple wants more children. This way the invasive egg collection surgery and accompanying hormonal therapy does not have to be repeated. The by-product of this is extra embryos. Once a couple has however many children as they want, the remaining embryos are thrown away or donated to science.

Brownback wishes to restrict the egg collection to only 2-3 eggs. This way there will be no “left over” embryos since all of the embryos collected will be implanted. This would be fine if IVF always worked the first time. However, that is not the case. Very often there has to be multiple implantations before one “takes.” Brownback wishes for women to have to endure the egg collection procedure over and over again. While it is relatively simple, no surgery is completely safe. To force women to take unnecessary risks is unacceptable. Unfortunately, it is what Brownback enjoys doing the most.