When Sen. Cindy Hyde- Smith, R- Miss., blocked a ballot on legislative Democrats ‘ extreme assisted reproductive technologies bill at the end of February, she cited Louisiana as an example of , a state with” frequent- sense” in vitro fertilization restrictions. However, those minor safeguards that the 1986 rules provided for newborn life are subject to change now that the state House has introduced two costs to protect against liability for fertility centers that manage and keep eggs.
The Louisianan legislative coalition that includes Republican and Democrat politicians this week introduced two bills that aim to amend the state’s 1986 embryo rules, which are being fueled by multinational media and fearmongering about the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision.
By defining them as “human cell and individual genetic material” that” may grow in utero into an pregnant child,” the state’s current legislation appears to offer eggs privileges that other states do n’t. The 1986 laws, which Hyde-Smith praised as” common feel,” now fell short of the moral and ethical standards imposed by the state’s acceptance that life begins with conception because it did little to prevent the repeated implantation and demise of embryos.
Loopholes in the 1986 rules allow reproduction facilities to kill an embryo as long as it “fails to produce more over a thirty- six hour period”, is deemed nonviable, or is stored out of state, something a , majority of Louisiana’s IVF industry  , opts to perform.
The statute also does nothing to prevent ethically questionable procedures associated with IVF such as , genetic testing,  , cryopreservation ( which hurts an embryo’s survival chances ),  , or , rapidly developing reproductive technologies,  , such as artificial wombs, gene editing, and manufacturing eggs with male stem cells, which threaten to hit the ART markets soon.
The lower chamber of the state is currently considering new legislation that would impose certain restrictions on the fertility industry, whose routine practice involves repeatedly destroying and discarding uncountable embryos.
Any fertility professional who deals with embryos in” good faith” ca n’t be prosecuted or sued in either House Bill 833 or House Bill 742, which was written by Democrat Rep. Denise Marcelle and was written by Rep. Paula Davis and 15 other GOP and Democrat coauthors.
The House Civil Law and Procedure Committee sent HB 833 to the full House on Monday, but it purposefully redefines the word “embryo” to remove any mention of “unborn child” instead of “protecting Big Fertility in the state in cases of “gross negligence.”
According to a lawyer who assisted in the legislation’s writing, legislators wanted to “remove the notion that every human embryo will develop in utero into an unborn child.”
As the Louisiana Illuminator noted in its coverage of the bill, HB 833 also designates some embryos as “non- viable”, a grading process that results in the abandonment, discard, and destruction of , likely viable life. ” Non- viable” embryos “are n’t afforded the same protections regarding destruction as those that could lead to a pregnancy”.
The legislation is opposed by both the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Louisiana Family Forum, which both acknowledged that the bill still permits the “illegal habit of shipping out of Louisiana and destroying human embryos.”
Jordan Boyd is a co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour and a staff writer for The Federalist. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordanian completed her political science major at Baylor University and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
