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Floor Speech
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Mrs. HYDE-SMITH. Madam President, I support the ability for mothers and fathers to have total access to IVF in bringing new life into the world. I also believe human life should be protected. These are not mutually exclusive.
Let's be clear about what the Alabama case is about. This was a case brought by families whose human embryos were killed when an unauthorized individual walked into the fertility clinic through an unsecured door, removed several human embryos, and dropped them, causing their deaths.
The court's holding in favor of the parents found that these frozen human embryos are children under Alabama law. It did not ban IVF, nor has any State banned IVF.
The bill before us today is a vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way too far--far beyond ensuring legal access to IVF. The act explicitly waives the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and would subject religious and pro-life organizations to crippling lawsuits.
Religious and pro-life organizations could be forced to facilitate procedures that violate their core beliefs, including their health insurance plans. This would be the first time the bipartisan Religious Freedom Restoration Act introduced by then-Representative Chuck Schumer was explicitly waived.
The bill's expansion definition of ``artificial reproductive technology'' sweeps in much more than IVF and has far-reaching implications. It would legalize human cloning. It would legalize commercial surrogacy, including for young girls without parental involvement. It would legalize gene-edited designer babies and lift the Federal ban on the creation of three-parent embryos. It would legalize the creation of human-animal chimeras. Other developed countries like Germany, New Zealand, and Australia, as well as States like Louisiana, have policies that allow for IVF coupled with commonsense protections to respect human life.
Creating rights to human cloning, the genetic engineering of human embryos, and surrogacy is too extreme and goes far beyond IVF. This bill misses the mark.
We should strive to do both, and this bill does not do that.
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