WIRED Staff
Science

Slideshow: Baby-Making Backlash Looms

Clinics have enjoyed freedom from regulation since in vitro fertilization took off in the 1970s. Brian Alexander examines how stem-cell research shines new light on assisted reproduction, and why social conservatives want new rules. Part one in a three-part series.
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Pope Benedict XVI arrives at the opening session of the Italian bishops conference at the Vatican, Monday, May 30, 2005. The pontiff endorsed efforts by Italian bishops to restrict assisted fertility treatments, contending that an Italian referendum scheduled for June 12 to June 13 to scrap parts of a law posed threats to life and the family.AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis

See related story: Baby-Making Backlash Looms

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Louise Brown, front center, with Alastair Macdonald front fourth left, the first in vitro fertilized female and male babies born, attend the 25th anniversary reunion at the Bourn Hall Clinic near Cambridge, England. Louise Brown was the first born 25 years ago and some 1,000 IVF children gathered to celebrate the anniversary.

AP Photo/Alastair Grant
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A multi-celled human embryo is seen in this picture made 2.5 days after leaving the womb, and now is stored cryogenically at the Bourn Hall Fertility Clinic in Cambridgeshire, England.

AP Photo/Bourn Hall Fertility Clinic, Findlay Kember
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Elizabeth Carr, 19, the first child born through in vitro fertilization in the United States, answers questions after a ceremony to dedicate the opening of the Jones Institute Fertility Clinic Friday, March 2, 2001 in Fairfax, Virginia. The Jones Institute is affiliated with the Eastern Virginia Medical School.

AP Photo/Linda Spillers
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Italian websites for and against voting on next month's referendum on assisted fertility are seen in Rome. Website at left says: "On June 12th and 13th, I am going to vote." At right: "Science and Life Committee. Choose not to vote." While some top government officials in Silvio Berlusconi's center-right coalition have said they will vote "yes," the Italian Catholic church, a strong lobby in Italian politics, has urged Italians to boycott the referendums to boost the chances they will fail to draw the quorum needed to make the balloting valid.

AP Photo/Corrado Giambalvo
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An Italian bishop reads an appeal in an Italian Catholic newspaper urging Catholics to abstain from voting in a referendum that calls for loosening parts of Italy's tough assisted fertility law as he waits with other bishops for the start of the opening session of the Italian bishops conference at the Vatican.

AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis
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The world's first test tube baby, Louise Joy Brown, pictured shortly after she was born at Oldham General Hospital, England, on July 25, 1978. The baby was the first to be conceived by the technique of fertilization outside the mother's body, pioneered by the hospital's gynecologist, Patrick Steptoe and Cambridge physiologist Robert Edwards.

AP Photo