ARPA is out with a new “Respectfully Submitted” Policy Report. This one deals with In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Lawyer John Sikkema says there’s still considerable debate about the ethics of the practice itself, but the report doesn’t address that issue. He says the report acknowledges the fact that there are ethical discussions underway about the very practice of IVF, but doesn’t address that issue directly. Rather, he says, it deals with policy issues that flow out of the fact that IVF is going on. “The ethical standard that is at the core of this report is that the intentional destruction – or even the negligent or wanton destruction – of human life is unethical.” The report, he says, tries to answer questions about “how (we are) dealing with embryos created outside of the womb, what’s happening to them, what is their connection to their genetic parents… and what are they being used for. So we deal with things like experimentation, discarding embryos, freezing embryos, and those kinds of things.”

The report has been distributed to lawmakers across the country. Sikkema says there hasn’t been any response indicating that anyone wants to take up the cause, but ARPA will be undertaking a lobbying campaign in the New Year to get lawmakers to address the fact that there are “a lot of gaps” in current legislation on this issue.

You can find a full copy of the policy report online here.