ATLANTA – Legislation codifying into state law the right of women seeking to become pregnant to receive in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment cleared a Georgia Senate committee unanimously Wednesday.
House Bill 428, which the state House of Representatives passed unanimously last month, was prompted by an Alabama Supreme Court ruling last year declaring that frozen embryos created through IVF should be treated as children. The decision essentially banned the procedure in that state until Alabama lawmakers passed a bill protecting IVF.
“We’re not going to create anything that’s not being currently done in Georgia,” Rep. Lehman Franklin, R-Statesboro, the House bill’s chief sponsor, told members of the Senate Health & Human Services Committee before Wednesday’s vote. “All it does is codify the process of IVF so Georgia families can continue to have this process.”
Franklin has a personal interest in IVF. He and his wife, Lorie, went through IVF four times before she became pregnant. The couple is expecting a daughter in June.
Several other parents who delivered children through IVF testified at Wednesday’s hearing. Andrea Kerr said she sought fertility treatment 15 years ago, and it took five years for her to give birth to a son in 2015 and twin boys in 2016.
“We lost one baby after another after another,” she said. “We could have given up, but we trusted the science.”
Another mother, Suzanne Guy, told the committee she supports IVF but called on lawmakers to regulate a process that typically results in embryos that are nonviable being discarded.
“Most people are unaware of the number of children who are discarded, tested on, and killed in the IVF process because there is no regulation,” she said. “Please do this process ethically.”
Franklin responded that his bill simply codifies IVF into state law but does not address regulating the process.
“Those issues are there,” he said. “But this bill doesn’t dive into it.”
House Bill 428 now moves to the Senate Rules Committee to schedule a vote of the full Senate.