Blog written by Compliance Officer Amy Erickson Hagen
Does my vote for president really effect my fertility treatment and decisions? Yes, it may! Be educated on where your candidate stands on issues related to health care. To be perfectly honest politics are not something I enjoy reading about or listening to on the news. However I do find it important to vote and choose issues important to me to review as I determine who I will be voting for in any election. Health care, specifically fertility, is one of great importance to me personally and professionally.
Where do you go to get information on current legislative issues or view points of candidates? Resolve and ASRM are National Infertility Associations and have lobbyists on your side working at the capital. They also keep track of various state legislative initiatives all of which can be viewed at http://www.resolve.org/get-involved/legislative-issues.html. If politics is something you enjoy or want to be more involved with Resolve also has a need for advocates.
If you are like me you find watching the news depressing and time is very limited. So use of websites like www.yourcandidatesyourhealth.org/ or www.issues2000.org can be very helpful in determining what candidates opinions align with yours.
Yesterday, ASRM released a bulletin that Gingrich calls for Commission to study ethics of in vitro fertilization (IVF). They go on to summarize by saying, On the eve of the Florida primary, Republican Presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called for the creation of a commission to study the ethics of in vitro fertilization. Speaking at a news conference on Sunday, he called for a ban on embryonic stem cell research. He followed that up with his remarks about IVF. According to the Washington Post, Gingrich was expressing concern about the excess embryos created in the IVF process and said, “I believe life begins at conception, and the question I was raising was what happens to embryos in fertility clinics, and I would favor a commission to look seriously at the ethics of how we manage fertility clinics. If you have in vitro fertilization, you are creating life; therefore, we should look seriously at what the rules should be for clinics that are doing that, because they are creating life.”
See the full Post story here
