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PROPOSED RESOLUTION
PROTECTING THE RIGHT TO MEDICALLY ASSISTED REPRODUCTION TECHNIQUES
WHEREAS, fertility is a basic human right; and
WHEREAS, people who can give birth deserve the ability to make the best choices for their lives, including around when and if they birth children, the number of children they have, and the spacing between their children's births; and
WHEREAS, medically assisted reproduction techniques include Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) such as in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer (IVF-ET), gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT), zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT), and frozen embryo transfer (FET); and
WHEREAS, in vitro fertilization, also known as IVF, is a procedure developed in the 1970s where an oocyte, colloquially known as an egg, is removed from an individual and combined with spermatozoa, colloquially known as sperm, in a laboratory, frozen and genetically tested; and
WHEREAS, during IVF, only some of the oocytes exposed to a spermatozoon will be fertilized, and of those, only a small fraction will develop into a mature embryo; and
WHEREAS, only successfully fertilized and healthy embryos get transferred into a person's uterus in hopes of leading to pregnancy; and
WHEREAS, due to the high likelihood of failure, between two to four embryos are frozen for each intended child to be born; and
WHEREAS, on February 16, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled, in James LePage, et al. v. The Center for Reproductive Medicine and Mobile Infirmary Association, that frozen embryos in test tubes should be considered children; and
WHEREAS, the Alabama Supreme Court judges' unprecedented majority opinion written by Justice Jay Mitchell decided that the state's 1872 Wrongful Death of a Minor Act allowing parents to sue over the wrongful death of a minor child also applies to "unborn children," with no exception for "extrauterine children;" and
WHEREAS, on February 28, 2024, Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked the pas...
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