Baby Bonanza!

An article from the New York Times that questions the high rate of multiple birth resulting from the lacking laws surrounding fertility clinics reminded me of my Junior Theme topic. I read Sinclair's The Jungle and Harr's A Civil Action, and my topic relates to the laws that were created to regulate their respective industries' lacking standards that were exposed in the books by each author. This article describes that "the United States has no laws to enforce those guidelines" that the American Society for Reproductive for Medicine for the in vitro fertility procedure. The invitro "treatment involves removing eggs from a woman’s ovaries, combining them with sperm in a laboratory, and implanting the resulting embryos in the woman’s uterus. (In some cases the eggs come from a donor.) The number of embryos implanted is often a judgment call and can make a big difference in a pregnancy’s outcome". Recently, some fertility clincs have been implanting up to six embryos in a single birth mother. Although this may increase the chances of a birth, it also inceases the chances of multiple births, especially when the the embryos split, or multiple embyros go through. Recently, a woman who already had six children had an invitro implant of six embryos. All six went through, and two split, resulting in the 33 year old woman having octuplets. Now she has fourteen children, all born through in vitro. As stated in the article, "the United States had retained a laissez-faire stance toward in vitro procedures, instead of regulating the process like some other countries do." Almost one-third of invitro births result in twins or more, and the numberof procedures being done has doubled in the last ten years. With these statisics and the health hazards that multiple births bear for the babies and the mother, maybe the U.S. goverment will have to step up and create regulating laws.