home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=89TT3154>
- <title>
- Dec. 04, 1989: A Tragic Side Effect
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Dec. 04, 1989 Women Face The '90s
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- NATION, Page 44
- A Tragic Side Effect
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Another casualty of the Administration's pro-life offensive
- is Government support for research on in-vitro fertilization,
- in which eggs are extracted from a woman's ovaries, fertilized
- in a glass dish, then implanted in the donor's womb. Next week
- a House subcommittee will release a report charging that the
- Department of Health and Human Services has shied away from
- funding research on "test-tube fertilization" because of
- pressure from right-to-life groups. As a consequence, the
- discovery of new techniques to make the procedure more reliable
- and lower its cost (currently $6,000 for each attempted
- fertilization) must depend on uncertain private financing.
- </p>
- <p> The Administration's hostility to in-vitro research is more
- puzzling than its opposition to experiments with fetal tissue.
- The goal of the technique is to assist infertile couples who
- want children, an objective that seems to square with the
- President's pro-family views. Opponents argue that since human
- life begins at conception, the accidental but inevitable
- destruction of some embryos during in-vitro fertilization is
- murder. The irony is that in their zealous defense of the lives
- of "unborn children," the foes of in-vitro fertilization are
- preventing other children from ever being born.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-