Costa Rica Has Three More Months To Approve The Law For In-Vitro Fertilization

01.03.2011

The Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) - the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights - has extended the deadline for Costa Rica to approve the law allowing of in-vitro fertilization. The new deadline is May 31, confirmed Costa Rica's vice-chancellor, Roberto Roverssi.
The law to allow in-vitro fertilization is under review by a legislative committee, which was due to report on February 23. But it did not.

With the extension, Costa Rica has three more months to approve the controversial practice that was banned by a Constitutional Court decision in 2000.

If Costa Rican legislators does not approve the law, it could have implications for the CIDH.

What is the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ?
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is one of two bodies in the inter-American system for the promotion and protection of human rights. The Commission has its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The other human rights body is the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which is located in San José, Costa Rica.

The IACHR is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (OAS). Its mandate is found in the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The IACHR represents all of the member States of the OAS. It has seven members who act independently, without representing any particular country. The members of the IACHR are elected by the General Assembly of the OAS.

The IACHR is a permanent body which meets in ordinary and special sessions several times a year. The Executive Secretariat of the IACHR carries out the tasks delegated to it by the IACHR and provides legal and administrative support to the IACHR as it carries out its work.Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH)

In vitro fertilization, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a process by which egg cells are fertilized by sperm outside the body, in vitro. IVF is a major treatment in infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed. The process involves hormonally controlling the ovulatory process, removing ova (eggs) from the woman's ovaries and letting sperm fertilize them in a fluid medium. The fertilized egg (zygote) is then transferred to the patient's uterus with the intent to establish a successful pregnancy.

The first successful birth of a "test tube baby", Louise Brown, occurred in 1978. Robert G. Edwards, the doctor who developed the treatment, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2010. Before that, there was a transient biochemical pregnancy reported by Australian Foxton School researchers in 1953 and an ectopic pregnancy reported by Steptoe and Edwards in 1976.

The term in vitro, from the Latin root meaning in glass, is used, because early biological experiments involving cultivation of tissues outside the living organism from which they came, were carried out in glass containers such as beakers, test tubes, or petri dishes. Today, the term in vitro is used to refer to any biological procedure that is performed outside the organism it would normally be occurring in, to distinguish it from an in vivo procedure, where the tissue remains inside the living organism within which it is normally found.

A colloquial term for babies conceived as the result of IVF, "test tube babies", refers to the tube-shaped containers of glass or plastic resin, called test tubes, that are commonly used in chemistry labs and biology labs. However, in vitro fertilization is usually performed in the shallower containers called Petri dishes. One IVF method, Autologous Endometrial Coculture, is actually performed on organic material, but is still considered in vitro.

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