A Tragic Side Effect

Another casualty of the Administration's pro-life offensive is Government support for research on in-vitro fertilization, in which eggs are extracted from a woman's ovaries, fertilized in a glass dish, then implanted in the donor's womb. Next week a House subcommittee will release a report charging that the Department of Health and Human Services has shied away from funding research on "test-tube fertilization" because of pressure from right-to-life groups. As a consequence, the discovery of new techniques to make the procedure more reliable and lower its cost (currently $6,000 for each attempted fertilization) must depend on uncertain private financing.

The Administration's hostility to in-vitro research is more puzzling than its opposition to experiments with fetal tissue. The goal of the technique is to assist infertile couples who want children, an objective that seems to square with the President's pro-family views. Opponents argue that since human life begins at conception, the accidental but inevitable destruction of some embryos during in-vitro fertilization is murder. The irony is that in their zealous defense of the lives of "unborn children," the foes of in-vitro fertilization are preventing other children from ever being born.