in vitro

It took a historic trial and years of discussions for the Costa Rican government to implement measures to ensure access to assisted reproduction methods in public health institutions.

Costa Rica's public health care system and government attorney's office say President Solis' recent presidential decree legalizing in vitro fertilization, IVF, is illegal.

In the latest curve of Costa Rica’s roller coaster process to legalize in vitro fertilization, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court has thrown out several challenges to President Luis Guillermo Solís’ decree regulating the fertility procedure here. But before supporters can celebrate the news the president's decree still must overcome another challenge filed this week.

Fifteen years after the Supreme Court banned the fertility procedure, in vitro fertilization could be legal in Costa Rica as early as Friday.

They have fought for 15 years for the right to access in vitro fertilization in their home country, and last Thursday was supposed to be a happier day. That day, President Luis Guillermo Solís announced that a draft decree that would finally legalize IVF in Costa Rica was ready, after a long and frustrating battle.

President Luis Guillermo Solís presented draft language Thursday morning that would legalize in vitro fertilization 15 years after the procedure was banned in Costa Rica by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court. The draft decree comes three years after the Inter-American Court of Human Rights — based in San José — ruled that the ban violated the human rights of infertile couples trying to conceive.

Major legislative victories were largely absent from this extraordinary session, the month-long period when the executive branch sets the Assembly’s agenda, but Casa Presidencial spun it as a success. According to a statement from Casa Presidencial, 36 of its 77 bills “advanced” and five reached the plenary for debate.

New guidelines proposed by the Human Fertility Commission have been approved to increase the chances of having a single baby rather than multiples through artificial insemination to 90 percent.

Officials from President Luis Guillermo Solís’ administration were tight-lipped about their support for two controversial bills in the upcoming legislative session that were campaign promises of the Citizen Action Party’s presidential platform: gay civil unions and in vitro fertilization. The bills might prove too divisive for a government struggling to secure support from a fractured legislature.

I say this with absolute certainty: This electoral campaign is the most lacking of substance of any I can recall.