The Federal Government's Response

• Author: Maureen McTeer
• Pages: 33-40

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– chapter four –

The Federal Government’s

Response

THE PATH TO LEGISLATION IN CANADA

e path that led to legislation on reproductive technologies and embryo

research in Canada was a long and tortuous one. e Baird Commission

submitted its nal report in November , which included a list of rec-

ommended prohibitions. In July , the then federal minister of health

introduced a voluntary moratorium on nine controversial reproductive

technologies and practices and on certain types of research involving

human embryos. is included research that involved ectogenesis (the

maturation of an embryo outside a woman’s womb); cloning human

beings by any means, including somatic cell nuclear transfer (the tech-

nology that gave us Dolly the ewe in Scotland); the formation of ani-

mal-human hybrids; and the transfer of embryos between humans and

other species. e other practices prohibited by the federal government’s

voluntary ban were commercial preconception or “surrogacy” contracts;

the buying and selling of eggs, sperm, and embryos; egg donation in

exchange forIVF services; germline genome editing (genetic alteration

that can be passed to subsequent generations); sex selection for non-med-

ical purposes; and the retrieval of eggs from cadavers and fetuses for dona-

tion, fertilization, or research. is action was to be the rst step in the

government’s plans to draft a federal law to address the many issues raised

by the commission’s mandate and its nal report. During this period,