When the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies was formed by the federal Progressive Conservative government four years ago, its mandate was to investigate the baby-making industry in Canada, to listen to the concerns raised by both experts and ordinary people, and give the politicians a guide on how to form public policy in an area which has been allowed to expand largely unchecked.
The Royal Commission’s work, costing the taxpayer over $28million, ended this past November when its finished report, “Proceed with Care,” was handed in to the new Liberal government. Initial reaction from Ottawa has been muted, with Health Minister Diane Marleau stating that her department will be studying the report’s recommendations and consulting with provincial health ministries before taking any action.
Indeed, it would be impossible for any government to initiate legislation quickly. The report itself is almost 1300 pages long, it is backed up with 15 volumes of background research documents (not yet available to the public) and the Commission makes 293 recommendations for regulating reproductive technology and human experimentation.
At first glance, pro-lifers may find the Royal Commission’s report positive in its stand against sex-selective abortion, cloning, creating human/animal hybrids, harvesting and maturing human ova from aborted babies, and transferring human embryos into animals, as well as buying and selling babies through surrogate motherhood arrangements. It is also welcome that the Commission has taken seriously the many concerns raised over the safety of fertility drugs and the unknown effects on women’s future health of both drugs and various techniques.
Frightening practices
Less positive – in some cases, downright frightening – are the practices that the Commission would approve, and the ideological stands taken in reaching some conclusions.
A major part of the Commission’s mandate was to find out how much of a problem is infertility in Canada, and what causes it. Their research, and surveys, lead the report to state an estimated 7 per cent, or 250,000 couples, “who had been married or cohabiting for at least two years, and who have not used contraception during that period, failed to have a pregnancy.” Whether or not this is an accurate figure is impossible for the ordinary person, without a background in statistical analysis and methodology, to calculate.
As to the causes of infertility: the only solid figure in the report is that 20 per cent of all infertility is caused by sexually transmitted disease. “STDs,” the report states, “are the single most important preventable cause of infertility among women.” After four years’ expensive and lengthy research, we still do not know why 80 per cent of couples are infertile. The Commission points to smoking, work place environmental contaminants, alcohol or drug abuse, and the trend for women to postpone pregnancy until they are older, as hazards but does not come up with solid figures to target any one factor as more responsible than another.
In an attempt to prevent future infertility problems, the Commission recommends a massive public awareness and education programme. The Commission recommends that “comprehensive sexual health education” be mandated “from the beginning of elementary school through to the end of high school.” Curricula are to be designed to recognize “the fact that individuals engage in a range of behaviours (including abstinence, delay, sexual activity) and that they need accurate information pertinent to all these choices.” School boards are recommended to place condom machines in high schools, and refer students to “appropriate health services.”
In a lengthy dissent from the recommendations concerning school sex education programmes, Commissioner Suzanne Scorsone points to serious flaws in the conclusions reached. In recommending that guidelines prepared by the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada (SIECCAN) become the base for a nationwide strategy, she notes that “Many schools, notably the Catholic separate public schools – but also those sponsored by many Protestant, Jewish, Muslim or other religious groups – could not comply with certain aspects of those guidelines and remain true to their mandates. As just one example, such schools cannot, within their value mandates ‘affirm individuals who make either choice’ in their approach to ‘adolescents’ who ‘may elect abstinence while other adolescents may not.’”
IVF
The Commission recommends that artificial insemination, infertility treatment and In Vitro Fertilization (when blocked fallopian tubes are the problem) be covered under public health-care insurance, and that access to such treatment be based on “medical need,” with no attention paid to marital status or sexual orientation.
IVF, however, is a very expensive procedure, and the report gives no actual figures for success. The evidence that showed IVF is “effective” when used to bypass blocked fallopian tubes is one British study which showed 10 per cent of women achieved a live birth. By “effective,” the report explains, “we do not mean that IVF will necessarily result in a live birth in every case; however, when the results of treating many women with this diagnosis are taken together, IVF has been shown to be more effective (that is, more likely to result in a live birth) than receiving no treatment.”
Ontario is the only province to fund IVF through health care insurance. The report states that each IVF treatment costs $5,466.40. A recent article in the Western Report notes that the Ontario government spent $6 million in two years at only four of its IVF clinics. This means, the reporter calculated, that each of the approximately 200 babies born cost $30,000.
When it came to recommending full access to assisted conception services for single women regardless of sexual orientation, the report shows clearly that the Commission ignored its own stated objective that “society’s approach to new reproductive technologies should be governed by the social values of Canadians.” When the public’s values differ from the Commission’s opinions, then the Commission’s views prevail. The report explains,
“We were guided by and took into consideration what Canadians said about both their fundamental values and their attitudes to specific questions, but they were not the only determinant of decision making in these complex areas. Where there was a divergence on specific policy questions, we decided that our moral reasoning should have greater weight if it was in line with fundamental values endorsed by Canadians, because we had spent much time weighing the evidence and thinking through the implications of different policies on such specific questions.”
Fundamental value
The “fundamental value” approved by the Commission is a survey, showing that 90 per cent support the statement “every individual should be treated equally regardless of ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age, or mental or physical disability.”
When people were asked to approve or disapprove a situation where “a lesbian couple who have one of them inseminated with an anonymous donor’s sperm so she can bear a child,” only 11 per cent approved, 71 per cent opposed, and 13 per cent had no opinion.
The Commission’s “moral reasoning” to solve this dilemma was aided by one survey (sponsored by the Warnock Commission in Great Britain) which showed no “different outcomes in children born to or raised by lesbians when compared to outcomes in children born to heterosexual women and couples.” So, the report concludes,
“Excluding single women or lesbians from DI [donor insemination] programs not only contravenes their equality rights, it also puts their health at risk, by forcing them to resort to unsafe practices while heterosexual women in traditional marital relationships have access to safe and effective procedures. In both situations there is a strong desire for a child, but no male partner who is fertile: there is in fact no greater medical need in a woman whose partner has no sperm than in a woman who has no partner.”
Suzanne Scorsone dissented this recommendation also, and noted that it imposes “one ethical view upon all, excluding those, the majority, who hold any different and legitimate ethical view from the process and from practice.” Mrs. Scorsone sees the provision of assisted conception services to single women, lesbians or not, as a serious threat to community-funded or religious-operated hospitals: they would not be licensed as infertility treatment canters if they refused to provide access to all, regardless of their social situations.
Inconsistency
Perhaps the most significant aspect of the Commission’s report, from a pro-life point of view, is its inconsistency in its stated objective of seeking to respect human life and dignity , and its approval of embryo experimentation.
The Commission’s arguments as to the humanity of the preborn child, for example, owe less to logical thinking than a need to support its stand in favour of embryo experimentation. The report refers consistently to the tiniest human beings as “a form of potential human life,” as “living entities with the potential to develop into full members of the human community.” Even though the Commissioners acknowledge that the zygote is “human” and state, “there is no doubt that the zygote is alive,” this is not enough to persuade them that the zygote should be protected from experimentation for the first 14 days of its life. (Fourteen days is an arbitrary point chosen by many countries that allow such experimentation. It relies on a generous estimate of implantation, which is usually completed at day 11 or 12, and adds on 2 or 3 days.)
They argue that the “sense in which a zygote is a potential person is very remote,” citing an (unsubstantiated) figure that almost half of all eggs fertilized naturally in the mother’s body do not result in a live birth. With In Vitro Fertilization, the live birth rate is even less: 17.5 per cent, according to the report. (The report contains no information as to how this figure was calculated. Other researchers have put the live birth rate at 10 per cent.)
Such “failure” rates, however, (and the existence of so many “excess” frozen embryos) lead the Commissioners to conclude that experimentation at such an early stage of pre-natal development gives due respect to human life, allowing research which will hope to raise the odds for successful live births through in-vitro fertilization.
Not only does the Commission approve of experimentation on embryos stored in the deepfreeze, it allows for embryos to be created expressly for the purpose of experimentation. Although it would not, at the moment, approve widespread transfer of post-experimentation embryos into a woman’s uterus, it would allow such a procedure in a clinical trial designed to further the experiment.
Commissioner Scorsone dissents again from the other members on embryo experimentation – “I draw the line at killing people,” she told The Interim. However, all five commissioners agree to fetal tissue research and fetal tissue transplantation, even though the research discussed in the report shows no clear evidence that experiments to date have proven successful.
The only secure source for fetal tissue research is from elective abortion, and the Commission proposes regulations so that it can only be obtained after the child has died. As long as permission is obtained from the mother (to be given only after she has consented to the abortion), the report finds no immediate connection to abortion. In addition, approved research projects would be eligible for public funding through the Medical Research Council.
Watch for an interview with Commissioner Suzanne Scorsone in the February Interim.
Report at a glance
To be banned:
- Cloning (creating genetically identical zygotes)
- Ectogenesis (development of a fetus to viability in an artificial womb)
- Parthenogenesis (creating embryos from female gametes alone)
- Creating animal/human hybrids
- Transfer of zygotes to another species for gestation
- Genetic alteration of zygotes or embryos
- The sale of human eggs, sperm, zygotes, fetuses, and fetal tissue (sperm donors, however, will continue to be paid, to compensate for the “inconvenience” involved in donation(
- The use of fresh sperm in artificial insemination procedures (using frozen sperm allows for HIV testing to be done on the donor six months later)
- Surrogate motherhood, or preconception contracts, when such arrangements are identified as “buying or selling” babies
- Storing frozen zygotes for longer that five years – if either the genetic mother of father dies, the frozen zygotes will be destroyed
- Prenatal diagnosis for the purpose of sex selection abortion
- Court-ordered intervention in pregnancy, designed to protect the preborn child from the mother’s abusive behaviour during pregnancy
To be permitted
- Research on human beings, up to 14 days after fertilization
- In Vitro creation of human beings for research
- If research reaches the point where experimentation on zygotes is likely to be therapeutic for the child, or where the chances of a full term pregnancy are increased, then these zygotes will be transferred to women in clinical trials.
- The use of fresh ova in In-Vitro fertilization procedures (ova cannot yet be frozen successfully, therefore the possible transmission of HIV cannot be avoided)
- Non-commercial surrogate motherhood arrangements (between family members or close friends) are not encouraged but they are seen as impossible to ban. The only regulation would be that the birth mother be considered the legal mother of the child. As in adoption, the birth mother would only relinquish her maternal rights after a waiting period following the birth of the child.
- All proven assisted conception services are to be made easily accessible to women across the country and funded through medicare. Criteria for determining access to services should not discriminate on the basis of social factors such as sexual orientation, marital status, or economic status.
- Publicly-funded fetal-tissue research and transplants. Fetal death must be established before the tissue is taken. The mother’s permission for tissue to be harvested must be given separately from her consent to the abortion. Women will not be allowed to designate the recipient of any transplants from their aborted child. This is to stop anyone from deliberately conceiving, then aborting, to benefit a family member.