LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A bill filed in the Arkansas legislature on Friday would increase the reporting requirement and enforcement of regulations tied to fertility treatments.
House Bill 1554 intends to create the Assisted Reproductive Technology Reporting Act. Its stated intent is to “track certain health outcomes and success rates of assisted reproductive technology” through mandated reporting.
Included in the requirements is for fertility clinics to track, among other measures, how many embryos are created, how many are destroyed and how and why the decision was made to destroy an embryo. It would include reporting how many embryos are frozen, how many were successfully implanted, and how many live births resulted.
The yearly report containing these data points would be produced by the state’s Department of Health and available to the public. The report would include the number of fertility clinics and their success rate versus their number of procedures.
Finally, the department would track maternal health outcomes for 18 months after the end of pregnancy, or if the pregnancy resulted in a disability, the child’s health would be tracked until they are 18 years old.
