ACFS2000 Blog

The Republican controlled state Senate of Oklahoma passed the “Personhood Act” by 34 votes to 8 on 15 February. The Act moves to extend the definition of “person” under State law to include a fetus from the point of conception. The measure will now progress to the State House where it is again expected to pass, with pro-life Republicans outnumbering Democrats by more than two to one, according to Reuters.

Opponents to the embryo-personhood movement have expressed concerns that the measures do not grant exceptions in the case of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. Further concerns have been raised regarding access to contraception, such as the morning after pill, and the continuation of IVF procedures.

A series of personhood amendments to State constitutions have failed in recent months, and after one such case in conservative Mississippi, legislators took up a similar anti-abortion strategy. In the run up to the November Presidential election abortion is a hot issue and seven US states have already mandated pre-abortion ultrasounds to inform women of the gestational development of the fetus.

Passage of these bills granting embryos “personhood” could imply ANY use of embryos other than transfer in to the uterus could be considered “murder”; and thus result in very difficult, if not impossible decisions and choices for both doctor and patient. We need to see the defeat of any or all of these bills.

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BREAKING NEWS:
NEW CO-SPONSORS FOR THE FAMILY ACT

The Family Act, a bill in the U.S. Congress which will create a tax credit for the out-of-pocket expenses associated with IVF, gained some critical support from four additional Members of Congress.

Why are bill co-sponsors important? The more co-sponsors a bill has, the more likely it is to have a hearing and pass through committee. Committee members want to know that a bill is important to other Members of Congress.

How do we gain more co-sponsors? The infertility community needs to talk directly to Congress. We need to show up in force in Washington, D.C. and tell Congress that people with infertility matter and we need access to affordable family building options. The best way to make sure your voice is heard is to come to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, April 25th. RESOLVE will set up all of your appointments and we will provide training. See the side bar for tips on planning your travel to Washington, D.C.

Can I really make a difference? YES! Members of Congress are asked to support many bills each year. They want to know what issues are important to the people in their home state and district. If they don’t hear from you they won’t know how important the Family Act is to their constituents. Even if you won’t directly benefit from the Family Act, you are part of this community and you can “pay it forward” by helping the next person diagnosed with infertility.

What if my Senator/Representative already is a co-sponsor of the Family Act? Everyone has two Senators and one Representative. So even if one of your elected officials has signed on to co-sponsor the bill, you want to ensure that all 3 of your elected officials co-sponsor the Family Act. Plus, we want you to thank the co-sponsors in person.

Visit us at www.acfs2000.com for more information.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Arizona Center for Fertility Studies Receives 2011 Best of Business Award

PHOENIX, March, 25th 2012, Arizona Center for Fertility Studies has been selected for the 2011 Best of Business Award by the SBCA Community.

Being in business sets people apart from most ordinary people and the SBCA Community is dedicated to helping others understand that running a business is an obtainable goal and that everyone should try their best at living their dreams.

The SBCA Community recognizes and awards business owners because they often do not receive the recognition they deserve. Business owners are role models for everyone whether they know it or not. SBCA Commnuity 2011 Best of Business Award winners are a valuable asset to their community and exemplify what makes small businesses great.

About SBCA Community:

The Small Business Community Association is dedicated to collecting and organizing information, training, and services that are vital to small business owners, entrepreneurs, and anyone else that needs help running a business, operating a business, or wants to start a business.

The mission of the SBCA Community is to promote a vibrant and growing small business community, support education that will preserve and extend the future of small business and use our gifts within the small business community to serve others for the betterment of our world.

The SBCA Community vision is to enthusiastically advance small businesses in three key areas:

Growth– To assure a vibrant and growing small business community, our goal is to introduce, engage and mature the next generation of small business owners.

Advocacy–We feel it is fundamental to support education and action outside the small business community that will preserve and extend the future of small businesses.

Compassion–We believe it is essential that we use our gifts within the small business community to serve others for the betterment of our communities and world.

SOURCE: SBCA Community / FTM Marketing

CONTACT:
FTM Marketing, Inc.
Email: [email protected]
URL: http://SBCACommunity.com

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As the presidential candidates make their pitches for how best to reform the nation’s health care system, many physicians are not holding their breath that medical liability reform will be at the center of the national debate this fall. All of the GOP presidential hopefuls support medical liability reform in some forum, with most endorsing caps on noneconomic damages, and President Obama has paid more attention to the issue than most Democratic presidents. Still, national physicians leaders expressed disappointment in both parties for failing to enact any type of meaningful federal liability reform law, despite years of opportunities. “Neither side has been really able to deliver on its promises, however big or small”. One of the major hurdles to passing medical liability reform at the federal level is the need to garner 60 votes in the Senate, where a super majority is needed to prevent a filibuster. Even if a Republican president who supported medical liability damage caps were elected in 2012, it’s unlikely that he could get the critical 60 votes in the Senate. “It’s an uphill climb”. To date, a federal bill, introduced in January 2011, to put a $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages and would require that medical liability lawsuits be filed within 3 years of injury; languishes in the House. State-level activity on medical liability reform is likely to continue over the next few years. One driving force will be the greater involvement of states in the health care arena as they launch the health insurance exchanges. The hope is that after the November election, lawmakers will continue to think about how to reform the health care system and that medical liability reform can be a piece of that effort. “Our desire is to bring some rationality to the system”.

Summarized from Ob.Gyn.News- March 2012 (www.obgynnews.com)

Visit us at www.acfs2000.com for more information about health care reform

National Infertility Awareness Week® (NIAW), April 22-28, 2012, is a week for all of us to come together, increase public understanding, and change the conversation about infertility.

Through all of our efforts we will ensure the public:

Understands that infertility is a disease that affects 1 in 8 couples of reproductive age;
acknowledges that there are many ways to build a family;

Understands that the disease of infertility impacts the physical, emotional, and financial health of those who are facing it;

And those diagnosed know when to seek the advice of a specialist.

For the first time during NIAW, we will also come together in Washington, D.C. and share these messages directly with Congress.

Please join ACFS in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, April 25th for RESOLVE’s Annual Advocacy Day. This is the year that we make the Family Act, a tax credit for IVF treatment, a reality.

http://www.youtube.com/user/WatchRESOLVE?feature=mhum

Visit us at acfs2000.com for more information about this very important bill.

RESOLVE is hosting Advocacy Day on Wednesday, April 25 in Washington, D.C. We are urging Congress to pass the Family Act, a bill to provide a federal tax credit for IVF. As a leader in the infertility community, your participation in Advocacy Day could significantly improve our success. Please contact me at [email protected] or 703.556.7172 if you can send representatives to Washington, D.C. on April 25. We will make the congressional appointments and provide training. We can also provide you with messages to send out to your patients, clients and partners, and for use on your social media channels.

ACFS is committed to seeing the Family Act Bill pass, giving all patients a federal tax credit for IVF procedures. This is similar to the federal tax credit for adoption. Although it is not a large amount, it helps and is a start.

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On February 23rd, the Virginia Senate voted to kill the so-called “Personhood” legislation that could have hindered or outlawed infertility treatments like in vitro fertilization. Just the prior week, lawmakers were telling us this bill (Virginia HB 1) was “unstoppable,” yet testimony from infertility patients and physicians convinced the majority of senators the bill needed further review. Unfortunately, there are 15 other states considering the issue in the form of either legislation or a ballot initiative, including Alabama, California, Florida, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin. Visit our website blog to keep up with what’s happening in your state.

Visit us at www.acfs2000.com

The infertility community spoke up, and your voices were heard! The most severe anti-family and anti-infertility legislation RESOLVE has ever seen failed to pass the Senate Health Committee this week. While we need all Arizona residents who care about these issues to remain vigilant, barring any usually procedural move, RESOLVE believes these bills will not be voted on in this legislative session. ACFS is thrilled. This was clearly an invasion of privacy and a very bad precedent to set.

Let’s all come together to celebrate this major legislative victory. For the past few years, the Arizona RESOLVE and the reproductive medicine community has been effective in stopping anti-family bills. On Saturday, March 24th we will walk together at RESOLVE’s 4th Annual Walk of Hope to celebrate our victories and show the Arizona community and your lawmakers that people with infertility matter.

We will be honoring the champions in the Arizona legislature who have worked on our behalf to keep Arizona a family friendly state. So your attendance is important. This is a chance to meet them and express your appreciation. We need to show our public policy makers that we care, that we are a community of families, and that we are involved and engaged.

The Walk of Hope also helps bring much needed RESOLVE programs and services to Arizona to help the more than 110,000 people living with Arizona in your state.

visit us at www.acfs2000.com

Summary of Senate Bill 1361 (SB 1361), introduced in the Arizona Senate, February 2012

In SB 1361, the Government would legislate unprecedented new requirements for informed consent for anyone who needs in vitro fertilization (IVF) at a fertility clinic in Arizona. It would also authorize Governmental tracking, reporting, and publication on the Internet about every detail of a woman’s IVF cycle, including surveillance, tracking, and publicizing of the private decisions couples make about what to do with their embryos.
This anti-family legislation works against the interests of infertility patients. Infertility patients – American couples who are trying to have wanted children, which is usually considered a positive thing — are instead being singled out for non-consensual, intrusive governmental scrutiny regarding their private procreation. If passed, this bill would make Arizona the only state to take this personal and private medical information about people trying to have children and post it on the Internet for the public to scrutinize and judge.
SB 1361 contains pages of intrusive new requirements but the most concerning and offensive is the Governmental tracking of couples’ embryos. This is Big Government at its worst because this private information simply is not the Governments business. The goal here is not to help patients with embryo disposition decisions, but rather to further the political goals of some elected officials. For example, if an elected official believes that discarding an embryo is akin to murder or is opposed to medical research such as embryonic stem cell research, then this data could be used to further their agenda: to make the case that the procedures used to create the embryos in the first place (IVF) must be further regulated or even outlawed. This would mean IVF – a treatment that has helped hundreds of thousands of American couples have babies — would be under severe government regulation, or worse, banned in Arizona.
SB 1361 hurts infertility patients. Their own personal medical information will be used against them in a campaign to take away the medical treatment they need. We urge those who oppose this result to oppose SB 1361. Moreover, its anti-family effects would not be confined to Arizona, since patients’ medical information will be posted on a Arizona Governmental website and publicized to the world.
Other objections. In addition tracking couples’ embryos, the bill also mandates over 80 in-depth disclosures that will have to be made before a patient can give “informed” consent to do an IVF cycle. These are by far the most burdensome specific consent requirements we have ever seen for assisted reproductive treatments (ART) in the U.S. They are designed not to improve patient safety but rather to burden this field of medicine and drive up treatment costs. They may also drive infertility doctors out of Arizona, for the bill threatens fines, loss of license, and even prison for doctors who may trip up on the impossibly complex matrix of disclosure and reporting requirements listed in the bill.

Conclusion. SB 1361 puts the government practically in the examining room when infertility patients seek medical treatment to have a family. Every detail of their private medical care is to be collected, analyzed, and then publicized, but not for their benefit – for the political agenda of others.

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Summary of Senate Bill 1360 (SB 1360) introduced in the Arizona Senate, February 2012

This is a complicated bill, a type we have seen before that has a claimed purpose and a real purpose. Here, the real purpose appears to be discouraging or stopping egg donation by adding unnecessary, burdensome, vague, and expensive new requirements – and by threatening infertility doctors with hefty fines or loss of their medical license if they violate any of the new rules.
SB 1360 would mandate that language calculated to discourage egg donation be required in advertisements for egg donors and would mandate informed consent requirements for egg donors that have nothing to do with her health. But most objectionably, SB 1360 would require that all clinics report to the State Government personal and medical details on each donor egg cycle — which the Government will then aggregate and publicize to the world on the Internet.
Objections to consent provisions in SB 1360
– Arizona already has a law it just passed in 2010 to regulate the informed consent process for women who wish to donate eggs to an infertile couple. There is no need to pass another law adding yet more requirements.
– The infertility community (patients, donors, and doctors) is being singled out for an excessive state mandated informed consent process that is not required for other medical treatments, including procedures where the risk of death is high or where the therapy is new (IVF has been around for over 30 years).
– In one section of the bill (36-1702(D)), every single interaction between doctors, egg donor agencies, and patients will be put under a microscope. For example, if a doctor tried to reassure an egg donor patient that the medical procedures were “generally safe,” that could be construed as incomplete and “misleading” – leading to an enormous fine or license revocation.
– We believe this bill is an attempt to scare potential egg donors with unnecessary and, in some cases, inflammatory information against infertility treatments. It also has the effect of making fertility doctors less likely to want to practice medicine on Arizona, because the bill contains penalties such as losing their licenses or having to pay huge fines.
Objections to reporting and publicizing provisions in SB 1360
– Infertility clinics nationwide are already required by law to report each IVF treatment cycle to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including donor egg cycles. The information reported includes de-identified information about the donor, her treatment response and the outcome for the recipient (including birth data, birth defect data, pregnancy complications, etc). A second Arizona mandated reporting system is therefore duplicative and unnecessary. It will likely drive up the costs of infertility treatments for Arizona residents.
– The bill purports to collect data on egg donation complications, but has a mechanism that falls far short of medical standards. Any time a medical professional thinks a woman has a health problem that could be related to egg donation, he has to report it to the state or risk losing his license. But the doctor never has to “prove” the complication was really related to egg donation; the assertion is enough. Thus, SB 1360 sets up a process where complications may be reported to avoid liability, regardless of whether the connection to egg donation is remotely valid. This unreliable “data” could then be used to justify further limits or even an outright ban on this important family building option.
– The numbers (“sample size”) of egg donors that will be treated at clinics in Arizona will not be enough for the Legislature to come to any well informed public policy decisions. If the purpose of collecting the data is to then review it and analyze it, important and far reaching public health decisions could be made based on data that is not statistically relevant. This is not how public health decisions are made in this country and could lead to unwarranted and harmful outcomes.

Conclusion
This legislation is plainly not in the best interests of infertility patients and is anti-family. Infertility patients and egg donors are being singled out for non-consensual, intrusive governmental scrutiny regarding their private procreation. Worse yet, the details of their medical treatment will then be held out for public inspection when the government posts the collected information on the Internet. There is no justification for publishing this information publicly, except to hold our medical treatment up for shame and criticism.
The goal is to track information on every egg donor, including such sensitive topics as her race, education, employment status, and prior pregnancies. Collecting this type of information does not protect public health or improve medical treatment. Instead, it is a strategy to enable some elected officials to gather data they want to further a political agenda: to prevent Arizona infertility patients from being able to have families via egg donation.

visit us at www.acfs2000.com