Though Paul Ryan is often portrayed as being a policy wonk on budget issues, he also has an appalling track record on social issues like gay rights and reproductive rights. Mother Jones points out that the personhood bill he sponsored would ban in-vitro fertilization techniques, including the one that produced Mitt Romney’s grandchildren.
The Sanctity of Human Life Act, which Ryan co-sponsored, would have enshrined the notion that life begins at fertilization in federal law, thus criminalizing in vitro fertilization—the process of creating an embryo outside of a woman’s womb. In IVF, doctors typically create multiple embryos and then only implant the healthiest ones in the woman. Some of them stick and become babies, and some don’t. The embryos that don’t make it to the womb are either frozen for later use or destroyed. The Sanctity of Human Life Act, if passed, would make all those embryos “people” in the legal sense, so if they aren’t used or don’t become babies after being implanted, they would essentially become murder victims under the law…
In May, Romney’s son Tagg became father of twin boys thanks to help from IVF and a surrogate mother. Tagg’s son Jonathan was also produced this way. Two of Tagg’s brothers reportedly have struggled with infertility issues and resorted to IVF as well. It’s hard to imagine that Romney will score any points with voters by tapping a running mate whose anti-abortion views are so extreme that Romney’s own kids can’t live with them.
Ryan’s position on IVF might give President Obama an opening for attack: While Romney’s running mate has advocated criminalizing a procedure that has brought untold joy to about 3 million families over the past three decades, Democrats might be able to claim credit for making advanced infertility treatments available to the vast majority of Americans who can’t afford them. Currently, most health insurance plans don’t cover infertility treatment, so IVF and other advanced baby-making technology is mostly available to rich people—like the Romney boys.
That’s bad. But this is worse and I’ve seen little comment from it in the media: Ryan’s bill would also ban embryonic stem cell research, both because new stem cell lines are produced through the use of those surplus blastocysts from IVF clinics and because of the direct effect of declaring any fertilized egg as fully human. And all this because he thinks God loves all the little snowflakes. This is what theocracy looks like.
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Michael Heath
August 21, 2012 at 12:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Seems like God’s trying to cause the extinction of plutocratic Mormons.
slc1
August 21, 2012 at 12:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I wonder how former Vice-President Cheney feels about his, considering that his daughter Mary has had 2 children via this procedure.
DaveL
August 21, 2012 at 12:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, that’s nothing. It seems to me this kind of ‘personhood’ bill would legitimize, even require, government regulation of every facet of the lives of sexually active women of reproductive age* from their caffeine intake to their choice of leisure activities. We already know they want to ban contraception on the pretense that it’s conjectured to reduce the chance of embryo implantation – do you have any idea how many things are known to reduce the chance of implantation or increase the chance of spontaneous abortion?
*Not the least of which would be collecting data on whether or not you are sexually active and/or capable of conceiving.
Randomfactor
August 21, 2012 at 12:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Seems like God’s trying to cause the extinction of plutocratic Mormons.
And is as effective at it as he is at everything else.
Reginald Selkirk
August 21, 2012 at 12:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So next they’re going to ban horseback riding? Anne Romney will not be pleased.
SnowyBiscuit
August 21, 2012 at 1:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, why are we worried about this? I’m sure the god-loving rich theocrats who will be running the country will be able to get the help they need to make more god-loving theocrats. What more could we plebes want for them?
{/drippysarcasm}
Gregory in Seattle
August 21, 2012 at 1:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@Michael Heath #1 – Ain’t it fascinating that God’s Holy And Absolute Will can be found in everything… that inconveniences anyone other than me.
eric
August 21, 2012 at 1:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@6 has it exactly right. The goal is to make procedures like abortion and IVF illegal in exactly the same way drug use is illegal now: heavily enforced + debilitatingly harsh penalties for the proles who do it, largely unenforced + slaps on the wrist for the rich who do it.
harold
August 21, 2012 at 1:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ryan seems to be nothing more than what happens when an opportunistic narcissist with superficial charm is raised in affluent surroundings.
The one sincere thing he expresses is his love of Ayn Rand.
As for the rest, he’ll simply say whatever he thinks will best manipulate his targeted listener.
d cwilson
August 21, 2012 at 1:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
So next they’re going to ban horseback riding?
Just for
fetal incubation units.
Explains why Romney likes him so much.
twincats
August 21, 2012 at 4:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, it would be if they’d just accept gawd’s curse of infertility like they’re supposed to! See? this is why the wealthy have a harder time threading needles with camels in the kingdome of hevvin!!one!1
garnetstar
August 21, 2012 at 4:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Also would ban IUDs, birth control pills, and the morning after pill.
Although the last two *do not* work by preventing fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus, right wing nutjobs claim that they do. And, in fact, perhaps they might, one in ten million or so times.
So to protect the rights of those hypothetical 1-in-ten-million “persons”, all those methods are out.
And, horseback riding? It’s gone.
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
August 21, 2012 at 8:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eh, IVF is one of the most selfish things a person can do.
Infertile couples who want children should be legally compelled to adopt or go without. Adoption is the ONLY moral and ethical solution to infertility.
'smee
August 21, 2012 at 11:11 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
WMDKitty @ 13:
Sorry – but … what?
I hear what you are saying, but it’s just a wee bit dogmatically radical, donchathink?
Maybe if we enabled women to have abortions as necessary there would be fewer children needing adoption?
democommie
August 21, 2012 at 11:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I had to leave earlier and I may be the second or thirty-first person to say, why is Ryan portrayed as a “policy wonk”? I’m under the impression that “wonkery” involved a fairly high level of familiarity with the subject at hand. What Ryan’s actions and words suggest is not wonkery but, rather, wankery.
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
August 21, 2012 at 11:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
‘smee — Nope, not “dogmatically radical” at all. Here’s the facts:
* Some couples can’t produce children the usual way.
* There are thousands upon thousands of children IN AMERICA waiting for a forever family.
We are 7-billion people and growing every day — the planet CAN NOT HANDLE THIS.
The only morally and ethically correct solution, therefore, is to adopt — and adopt DOMESTICALLY — instead of further adding to the crushing weight of the human population.
I suppose that’s “radical and dogmatic”… if you’re a selfish breeder who places more importance on genetics than you do on love.
=8)-DX
August 22, 2012 at 4:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
WMDKitty – I don’t think your logic is really sound. The places the world is overpopulating aren’t the affluent West. Fine, USA is still at reproductive fertility rates, but in Europe for instance, many countries are way bellow the reproductive rate (around 2.3 isn’t it?).
The main problem in my country however, is the really stupid adoption situation legally (where asshole “parents” can leave their children in a home, disallow anyone from adopting them through loopholes like sending them a postcard a year.) With the system allowing for more adoptions here (and there are plenty of families wanting to adopt), IVF would actually help boost our 1.5 fertility rate without being unfair to the orphans/rejected children.
dingojack
August 22, 2012 at 7:26 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
=8)-DX – the raw reproductive rate in the US has fallen below the replacement rate (1.2 children per adult female) since 2008, it is currently at 1.9 and falling (France, in contrast, is 2.0 and stable) this can be attributed to various possible factors including lower immigration rates (immigrants tend to have larger families) and higher incomes (this leads to a delay in reproduction).
However you’re right that the ‘Western world’ has had a declining population for sometime, the big growth areas are still China, India and sub-Saharan Africa. Of these the first two are rapidly moving from low-consuming ‘poor’ countries to high-consuming ‘middle-class’ countries. If you want to nip overpopulation/over-consumption in the bud, aim there.
However the overall population growth, at least, is slowing with an expected population of around 10-12 billion likely by 2100 (with near zero growth). Is that too much? Who knows, the carrying capacity of the Earth for humans is one of those known unknowns, as are the future improvements in food yield per hectare of arable (shrinking at an alarming rate).
WMDKitty – “I suppose that’s ‘radical and dogmatic’… if you’re a selfish breeder who places more importance on genetics than you do on love“.
Have you even considered that those that conceive by IVF or the like, might not be selfish people who have children because of genetics rather than love?. Do you really think they love their children less than those that adopt?*
Seems to me a little more ‘growing and learning’ might be required.
Dingo
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* Consider how emotionally, financially and psychologically draining IVF is. If you finally conceived after all the highs and lows, the exhaustion, the cost – would you love this child less than if you adopted would you think?
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
August 22, 2012 at 8:43 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@dingo — I have considered it. If they wanted a child THAT MUCH, they’d be willing to open their homes and hearts to one who is ALREADY HERE AND WAITING.
Oh… right… I forgot. Foster kids and adoptees are all “damaged goods”, and aren’t “good enough” for selfish breeders.
dingojack
August 22, 2012 at 8:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
WMDKitty – Having had friends who desperately were trying to conceive (selfish I know to actually follow 1.2 billion years of evolutionary programming) going through all the ups and downs, the hopes and the disappointments, the financial stresses and doubts, fears and insecurities – and now seeing how just much they love their little daughter is a pure joy.
It’s their bodies and they get to choose – without your sneering disapproval, moral judgements and hypocritical outrage. Keep it to yourself, no doubt you’ll lavish it on the thousands you’ll adopt in the future.
Dingo
democommie
August 22, 2012 at 9:27 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
IF all the children in orphanages and foster care situations were: White, blond, blue-eyed babeez–they would be adopted before they got a chance to lay their little towheads down on that charity pillow. As most of them are NOT all of those thye languish in less than ideal situations. My MSW sister used to do do some work with Catholic Charities and said that one adoptive couple actually returned the infant child that they had adopted (I’m not sure how such things work, but she’s not in the habit of lying) because he/she was diagnosed with cancer several months after they took her home. Maybe there was a “buyer’s remorse” policy in place.
In the event, the reason so many children remain in foster care/orphanage settings is that, like teh puppies and teh kittehs, their cuteness has a shelf life. Once a child reaches the age of adolecense, their chances of being adopted crater. The unfortunate truth is some people consider children to be status symbols or, and this is worse, ornament.
This link:
http://www.jhu.edu/jhumag/496web/orphange.html
is to an article about U.S. orphanage establishment and administration. Parts of it read like Upton Sinclair’s “The Jumgle” or some other dystopian novel about late 19th, early 20th century U.S. social policies.
Orphanages and foster care are both institutions that are targeted by the venal and corrupt. Leaving children to their tender mercies not only does not save the children it often places additional burdens on the system as the children leave often horrific institutions and foster situations to move into a society that they are unequipped or malequipped to deal with.
dingojack
August 22, 2012 at 9:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
WMDKitty – also please re-read the first para of mine #18. Reproduction isn’t really the problem in the US, if the numbers of children in foster-care or orphanages are growing*, then problem is that women aren’t being educated that they have the right to control their own reproduction and how this can be achieved.
If this were taught across the US (as a public health priority, thus over-riding the personal religious rights) then women would delay reproduction until they are more financially independent and more educated, they would be less likely to be dependent on drugs and alcohol, less likely to be in an abusive relationships (still happens in the ‘nicest families’, but still less likely), happier, healthier and would live longer to be of value to their children, grand-children and the community as a whole. Their children would be less likely to follow in their footsteps further reducing the problem.
Dingo
—–
* It seems not see: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,U.S. Trends in Foster Care and Adoption FY2002 – FY 2011.
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
August 22, 2012 at 10:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Dingo
I believe that ALL CHILDREN are entitled to a loving, capable forever family. And I KNOW that True Family is forged from bonds of Love. Genetics are irrelevant.
Your friends, unfortunately, have failed to realize this simple truth, and made a cruel, selfish decision. Their choice to make, to be sure, but still cruel and selfish. I WILL judge them for it, because they ARE part of the problem.
Re: Population growth — And it hasn’t occurred to anyone that… maybe, just maybe, we could do with a bit of a population decline?
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
August 22, 2012 at 10:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Dingo, RE: orphanages — All the more reason to promote adoption! Get the kiddies out of there, ne?
democommie
August 22, 2012 at 10:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As to whether 7B or 10-12B people are “too many”; millions of people starve to death every year. This is not due, primarily to a lack of food. It is due, primarily, to insufficient delivery infrastructure and to a lack of will on the part of the “haves” to allow the milk of human to flow into the mouths of hungry rather than letting locally excessive foodstocks rot or be destroyed.
All organisms that expand their populations, heedless of the carrying capacity of their environment for that expanded population, sooner or later reap the whirlwind of famine and pestilence. It’s biology, physics,chemistry and, of course, politics.
kermit.
August 22, 2012 at 10:51 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
democommie: “…millions of people starve to death every year. This is not due, primarily to a lack of food.”
This is true. Alas, even as our population grows our resources (e.g. arable land) begin to shrink ever faster. Soon enough, people who starve to death will do so primarily from lack of food.
That will not be an improvement. I also predict that our food equity will not improve under stress.
baal
August 22, 2012 at 10:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ryan’s insane views (as show above, not even followed by his regressive and thuggish peers) show that the US’s political system is either broken or teetering on the edge.
As for abortions…if the right really really wanted to reduce the number of abortions they’d have effective (not the abstinence only crap) sex-ed in schools, free condoms everywhere, better education funding at all levels (but especially for disadvantaged girls and women). Instead, the right belligerently pushes against these solutions.
kermit.
August 22, 2012 at 11:03 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
WMDKitty, I have a visceral response to people telling me what I’m supposed to feel. I grew up in a Fundamentalist family that did that all the time, and not only can we not actually choose how to feel, but it’s my experience that people obsessed with having the “proper” feelings are out of touch with how folks operate (including perhaps themselves).
It it natural to value our own kids over other peoples. This does not require hating the others; social people simply care more about those they know than those they don’t. Personally, my sweetie and I had no trouble having kids (but can only afford one!) but we had decided to adopt if we could not. I do not consider orphans “damaged goods”, but until they’re taken into my family they’re not mine. We agreed that we would look for a non-infant, and preferably one of “mixed race”. They seem harder to farm out, and that stuff means nothing to us anyway.
Have you had kids? Why didn’t you adopt instead? If you did adopt, why didn’t you adopt more? It’s easy to lay a moral burden down on others, but it’s out of line when they are already behaving decently, and simply have a different focus than you.
dingojack
August 22, 2012 at 11:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
WMDKitty – wow! You don’t even know who they are and yet you KNOW they are selfish.
Sure you don’t want to breed? I bet that telepathy would be a real evolutionary advantage for your kids.
I’ll say it again: “It’s their bodies and they get to choose – without your sneering disapproval, moral judgements and hypocritical outrage. Keep it to yourself, no doubt you’ll lavish it on the thousands you’ll adopt in the future”.
Dingo
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
August 22, 2012 at 12:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Dingo, I have EVERY right to judge when innocent children are harmed by those decisions. And children ARE harmed when they spend their whole lives bounced from foster home to foster home.
The selfless, loving, morally and ethically correct thing to do, would be to adopt. Your friends didn’t even consider this option. Selfish.
No, I don’t have kids. I don’t WANT kids. I don’t even particularly LIKE kids and can NOT figure out why kids find me so appealing. I would not be a good parent, for many reasons, not the least of which is that I’m disabled, and taking care of MYSELF is more than enough work. And ya know what? I’m happy being child-free.
HOWEVER, if hell froze over and I were to want and have children, YES, I WOULD ADOPT. Because unlike your friends, I HAVE considered the needs of ALREADY-BORN CHILDREN, and placed them above the WANTS of breeders.
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
August 22, 2012 at 12:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@kermit — I’m not “telling you how to feel”. I’m pointing out some basic FACTS. It takes a certain level of selfishness and narcissism to go through IVF, instead of adopting a child that is waiting for a forever home. Imagine it from the foster kids’ point of view: A couple who could have adopted you instead basically said, “fuck you, fosters” and wasted enough money to pay for TWO kids to attend a four-year college (and then some) just to have “their own” baby.
I wish society would stop worshiping at the altar of “natural” children. (Like there’s something “unnatural” about adoptees, or something?)
dingojack
August 22, 2012 at 1:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
WMDKitty – My parents (bleeding heart liberals that they were) considered adopting an aboriginal child in the late 1960′s, I am (as are they) glad they didn’t.
As a nerdy, weakling child both me and my sibling (in a largely ‘white-bread’ suburb) would have irresistible targets for bullying and abuse, but also, as an adult, the choice would have been highly morally dubious (despite the good intentions)*. But perhaps in your world such nuances as culture and origin don’t count for much.
Faux moral outrage and condemnation is so much easier than actually thinking through the issues.
Dingo
—–
* see: Stolen Generations.
tcwood
August 23, 2012 at 11:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wow. On the one hand, some people are telling me what I must, morally and ethically, do with my body, and on the other hand, WMDKitty is telling me what I must, morally and ethically, NOT do with my body.
Both sides can go to hell.
WMDKitty (Always growing and learning)
August 23, 2012 at 5:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m not “telling you what not to do with your body.”
I’m pointing out the cruel, selfish nature of fertility treatments.
dingojack
August 24, 2012 at 1:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
tcwood – I’m so sorry about your reading comprehension difficulties. Perhaps you could find out about adult reading programs available in your area from your local library.
Dingo