Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) stated Thursday that Congress wouldn’t deal with a key query surrounding in vitro fertilization (IVF) within the wake of a controversial Alabama Supreme Court docket ruling on embryos.
“CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil pressed Johnson on whether or not he would see destroying embryos as “homicide,” noting that Alabama lately handed laws to guard IVF suppliers from the state Supreme Court docket’s current ruling that frozen embryos are to be thought-about individuals.
Whereas Johnson stated he supported entry to IVF, he sidestepped the query on whether or not he would see disposing or destroying embryos as homicide. He famous that it’s “one thing that we’ve acquired to grapple with.”
“In some states, like in Louisiana, there’s a restrict on the variety of embryos that may be created as a result of they’re delicate to that difficulty,” he stated. “But it surely’s one thing that each state has to wrestle with, and I feel Alabama has accomplished a superb job of it, of hitting it head-on early.”
Dokoupil pushed Johnson additional on the subject, saying {that a} key query surrounding IVF and embryos remains to be not answered. He requested Johnson to make clear whether or not disposing of an embryo is taken into account a loss of life “if life begins at fertilization and embryo is fertilization.”
Johnson then stated Congress wouldn’t be taking on that query.
“I feel policymakers have to find out the best way to deal with that. We have to have a look at the ethics surrounding that difficulty, but it surely’s an necessary one,” Johnson stated.
“If you happen to do consider that life begins at conception, it’s a very necessary query to wrestle with. It’s not one Congress has handled, and it received’t be. I feel it’s a states difficulty, and states must be dealing with it,” he later added.
The White Home hit again at Johnson for his remarks on Thursday.
“Tonight President Biden will stress to the nation whose facet he’s on, and congressional Republicans are already serving to him make that case. Speaker Johnson simply stated on stay TV that we’ve got to ‘grapple with’ the concept that IVF is homicide,” stated White Home spokesperson Andrew Bates.
The White Home has accused Republicans of “trying to erase their very own information” on IVF and pointed to the Republican-led Life at Conception Act as a motive.
Johnson had co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which defines a human being as “every member of the species Homo sapiens in any respect levels of life, together with the second of fertilization or cloning, or different second at which a person member of the human species comes into being.” The proposal additionally requires equal safety beneath the 14th Modification for “every born and preborn human individual.”
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