This week, committees in both the Tennessee House and Senate will hear bills that would ban anyone but opposite-sex married couples from using embryo donation to have a child. The House Family Justice Subcommittee is expected to hear it at 10:30 a.m. CDT, today.
The Tennessee Equality Project has set up a site for those in Tennessee to e-mail their legislators. You can also find your elected officials’ phone numbers and call them now.
(There’s one clarification I should make to the TEP announcement, though. TEP also says, “Passage of this legislation would mean that single women and gay and lesbian couples would be banned from using in vitro.” That’s not strictly true. In vitro fertilization (IVF) could also mean using a woman’s own egg, fertilizing it outside her body, and reinserting it into her uterus. The bills, as I read them, would not ban lesbian couples and single women from using all forms of IVF, only those that involve an embryo created from someone else’s egg. Any ban is bad idea, of course, but it at least looks like those using IVF and their own egg would be okay, should the bills pass.)