LIFE DIGEST: Hundreds of embryos donated without consent
- Aug 3, 2010 -
Hundreds of parents who used a Spanish fertility clinic have offspring living as children in other families throughout the world without their knowledge.
The Institut Marques, a clinic outside Barcelona, has had an embryo adoption program since 2004 that provides leftover human embryos to others without the consent of the biological parents, according to the Telegraph, a British newspaper. The clinic donates the embryos – produced by in vitro fertilization — to a woman, or couple, for implantation if the biological parents cannot decide what to do with them or do not respond to yearly written requests.
Also in this edition: Senate panel OKs repeal of Mexico City Policy, New bill would bar all funds for abortion, and French mother confesses to killing 8 newborns.
Spanish law does not require the clinic to inform biological parents their embryos have been donated. It also prevents parents from tracing embryos who are donated and bars children born through the adoption program from tracing their biological parents.
A clinic spokesman estimated more than 460 babies have been born around the world as a result of the adoption program, the Telegraph reported July 22. Women from 24 countries have received embryos through the process.
The clinic matches each embryo with a woman of the same ethnicity and seeks to give each to a woman or couple in a different country or region in order to limit the likelihood the siblings will meet.
Each year, the clinic writes to patients with leftover embryos to ask them to choose whether to donate them to other patients, preserve them for possible future implantation, give them for destructive research or discard them. Many of the letters are never answered.
Despite giving the biological parents the options annually, “we still find ourselves with hundreds of embryos that accumulate at our [center],” said Marisa Lopez-Teijon, who designed the clinic’s adoption program. “Our desire is to offer these embryos the chance of becoming babies, helping them find a mother.”
Senate panel OKs repeal of Mexico City Policy
The Senate Appropriations Committee has forwarded to the full chamber legislation that would entrench repeal of a ban on federal funding of organizations that perform or promote abortions overseas.
The panel approved an amendment July 29 by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D.-N.J., that would codify President Obama’s 2009 reversal of the Mexico City Policy. The vote in support of the overall State and Foreign Operations spending bill that included the amendment was 18-12.
The rule has prohibited international family planning organizations from receiving federal funds unless they agree not to perform or counsel for abortion or lobby in order to liberalize the pro-life policies of foreign governments.
Obama struck down the policy during his first week in the White House in 2009. It can be reinstated, however, when a subsequent president takes office. If Lautenberg’s amendment becomes law, a new congressional measure and presidential signing would be required to overturn it.
The Mexico City Policy has had a see-saw history. Initiated by President Reagan and announced at a conference in Mexico City in 1984, it remained in force until 1993, when President Clinton rescinded it on his second full day in the White House. President Bush reinstated it exactly eight years later.
Only two organizations — the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International — refused to abide by the Mexico City Policy during the recent years it was in effect and consequently were refused the funds, according to Democrats for Life of America (DFLA). There were 650 organizations that accepted federal money under the restrictions, DLFA reported.
New bill would bar all funds for abortion
Sweeping legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives July 29 would prohibit all funding of abortion by the federal government.
The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, H.R. 5939, would resolve the challenge pro-life members of Congress often face in renewing a variety of riders, which are amendments attached to annual spending bills and bar funding for abortion under those measures.
“For decades, a patchwork of short-term policies [has] prevented abortion funding in many programs authorized by Congress, but it is time for a single, government-wide permanent protection against taxpayer funding for elective abortion,” said Rep. Chris Smith, R.-N.J., the bill’s sponsor.
The proposal includes a ban on funds for health-care benefits that cover abortion. In March, President Obama signed into law legislation that will subsidize coverage for abortion in health-care plans.
Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski, the lead Democratic cosponsor, said the new health-care law “made it clear that the current way we prevent taxpayer funding of abortion through annual riders is dangerously fragile. . . . Protecting the sanctity of life, and preserving the individual’s freedom not to be complicit in any way in abortion, is a matter of principle for me and tens of millions of Americans.”
The bill also includes a conscience clause that would prevent those who receive federal funds from discriminating against health-care workers and institutions that refuse to “provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.”
The bill has 162 cosponsors in the 435-member House.
French mother confesses to killing 8 newborns
A French mother has confessed to killing eight of her newborn children over the span of nearly two decades in one of the worst cases of infanticide in the country’s recent history.
The bodies of eight babies were found by police in Villers-au-Tertre, a village of 700 people in northern France. Dominique Cottrez, a 45-year-old nursing assistant, said she killed her babies, allegedly by suffocation, because she did not want any more children and did not desire to see a physician about contraception, according to a July 30 report in The Daily Mail, a British newspaper.
The killings occurred between 1989 and about 2007.
Cottrez has said her husband, Pierre-Marie Cottrez, 47, did not know about the murders. He was suspected of hiding the crimes but was released because of a lack of evidence. Prosecutor Eric Vaillant said Dominique Cottrez was able to hide her pregnancies and gave birth alone before killing her children.
The Cottrez’s daughters – Emeline and Virginia, both in their 20s and mothers of sons – said their mother was a “model mother who supported us at all times.”
‘We never noticed anything,” Virginia said, according to The Daily Mail.
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