This is written as a direct response to a comment made by Republican Senator Ward of Arizona, in the following TV news interview. Click on the KPHO website and view the story
I have never been more disappointed in any Republican official as I am in Senator Ward for making such a bold, inane comment. Here is letter number one, of many letters, phone calls and visits to come.
Dear Senator Ward,
I saw your interview this week on the KPHO website and cannot tell you how truly disappointed I am in the following comment you made:
“There is no right to create embryos in a lab.”
As a registered Independent but often Republican voting Catholic, who witnessed my formerly frozen embryo ride a bike for the first time today, I couldn’t disagree with you more.
We were diagnosed with infertility about a year after not conceiving on our own. I had a very low sperm count, and my wife had endometriosis.
The Americans with Disabilities Act defines infertility as a disability. Under the ADA, a disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of a person’s major life activities, a record of such an impairment, or being regarded as having such an impairment.
I am sure, being pro-life, that you consider having a child a “major life activity”.
I know that we did, and that is why we were willing to expend enormous amounts of physical, emotional, spiritual and financial energy to find the baby that God had for us.
For a few months, the potential for that baby was frozen in a lab.
I wonder what the state of Arizona would have hoped to learn from our embryo being listed on your new registry, and why you have any right to know anything about our effort to BRING THAT POTENTIAL LIFE INTO OUR LIVES.
The Declaration of Independence refers to this being a country where we should be able to enjoy three basic rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I cannot think of anything that has been more freeing and produced more happiness than bringing our daughter into this world.
What right does the state of Arizona have to suggest that I should report to them the status of a potential ball of life created from the biology of my wife and I?
We had the right to seek medical assistance to have a child.
We had the right to have our biology put in a petri dish, in a lab, with people trained and educated to provide us with the best chance at achieving parenthood despite our biological limitations, and the right to pay doctors to help give us the best chance at conceiving since our natural biology was not getting the job done.
I also wonder why the state legislature feels the need to know “what is going on with IVF”.
The biological clocks of men and women don’t have the luxury of waiting for a state legislature to determine “what’s going on in an IVF lab.”
What does that even mean, Senator Ward?
I have never gotten involved in the political process besides exercising my right to vote.
SB 1376 has inspired me to become more involved than ever, and to oppose this bill in earnest.
I was incredibly frustrated during the election to see the media continually characterize the Republican Presidential candidate and the GOP in general as being out of touch with women’s issues.
This bill will only serve to strengthen that impression, as there is nothing about this bill that speaks to how this will help the hundreds of thousands of women in Arizona, or the millions of women in this country who face the disability of infertility every year.
If I am missing the point of this legislation, please feel free to educate me about why embryos that you had no vested interest or made no personal sacrifice to create are any of your business.
I look forward to meeting you and discussing this in the very near future.