On today’s episode of the 5 Things podcast: Without Roe, what happens to IVF?
National correspondent Trevor Hughes reports on people struggling to conceive who worry embryos are at risk. Plus, three are dead after a Denmark shooting, investigations continue into the police shooting of Jayland Walker, USA TODAY’s Sara Edwards looks at the potential for 3D printed homebuilding and Joey Chestnut tries to keep rolling at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.
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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I’m Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Monday, the 4th of July, 2022. Today, what happens to IVF without Roe v. Wade. Plus the latest from a mall shooting in Denmark, and more.
Here are some of the top headlines:
- Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo has resigned from city council. The move comes just weeks after being sworn in after allegations that he failed in his response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 19 children and two teachers dead. Arredondo has already been on administrative leave from the school district since June 22nd.
- Some 17 people are still unaccounted for after a huge chunk of an Alpine glacier broke off and slammed into hikers in northern Italy yesterday. At least six people have been confirmed dead.
- And tropical storm Colin is bringing heavy rains to the Carolinas today. It’s the third named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.
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The Supreme Court’s decision to end the national right to abortions by overturning Roe vs. Wade has thrown a potential complication into future parenthood dreams with in vitro fertilization. National Correspondent Trevor Hughes reports.
Trevor Hughes:
The first thing you have to understand is that IVF was developed after Roe v. Wade was decided. And so these questions have never come up before. And these questions are really about the status of the embryos created during the IVF process. Now, during the IVF process, what you have is you have a clinician or a doctor removes eggs from the ovaries and then fertilizes them with sperm in a laboratory setting, then allows that to develop for a short period of time, and then re-implants that embryo back into the uterus for development into a pregnancy. And the sad truth is that many of those embryos don’t develop. It often takes multiple rounds of IVF to successfully have a pregnancy.
And what’s happened here is with the Dobbs decision, the Supreme court has kicked this back to the states, and many states over the years have tried to define life as at the moment of conception. And those are called personhood amendments. And those personhood amendments or personhood laws would, in some cases, effectively stop the creation of embryos outside of the body under anything other than a natural process, at least potentially.
Right now, there’s no state that specifically bans IVF as part of a trigger law banning abortion, but the wording of some of those laws makes it very, very difficult, if not impossible, to do IVF because the whole process of IVF means, invariably, some embryos will not survive that process. And it becomes a question in the eyes of some advocates of whether or not a doctor or clinician could be held responsible, legally responsible, if they screw something up and an embryo doesn’t develop and dies. Because under a personhood law that embryo would have the exact same legal rights as any other human being.
One other aspect is that there are perhaps as many as a million embryos sitting in laboratories, in storage units all across this country, they’re being kept in carbon dioxide, they’re frozen, And those are kept because they can be thawed and implanted and be turned into a pregnancy. But for people who have had multiple embryos harvested, created, and then stored, there’s this tricky question now, what do you do with them? In many cases, people just let the laboratory dispose of them if they don’t want them anymore. But it becomes a very serious moral question, if you have created embryos, what do you do with them? Because some people feel very uncomfortable donating them to complete strangers, which is a possibility. Other people feel very uncomfortable about the idea of donating them for a scientific research. And so, in many cases, you’ve got tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos just sitting there because folks don’t want to dispose of them, but don’t know what else to do with them.
And with these frozen embryos, if personhood laws pass, those embryos could be legally entitled to the same protections as any other human being. And that raises a question in the minds of some doctors, of some attorneys, do the creators of those embryos then have to try and have those babies. I mean, you might have 10 frozen embryos. Are you forced to carry 10 babies to term? Are you forced to be implanted by the government because you’ve created these embryos under completely different circumstances. And even on more simpler terms, say you work in a lab and you drop one of these embryos, can you now be arrested for murder?
Taylor Wilson:
Check out Trevor’s full story in today’s show description.
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Three people were killed and four others injured after a gunman opened fire inside a busy shopping mall in Copenhagen, Denmark yesterday. Copenhagen police said two Danish 17 year olds and a 47 year old Russian were killed. Witness Cassandra Schultz was there.
Cassandra Schultz:
And then we were just done, and then everyone came running. And we thought, “Oh, might be to have seen Harry Styles because he’s in town.” So we just, “Oh, but it’s just a fun thing.” But then when people start running, and we saw the panic, and a guy with a pushing cart, he had a shot in it, and it just fell over everything. So he just took the shot and ran, and we just, it’s not a joke anymore because then it was like quite serious. So we didn’t know what to do. So we ran people were guiding us towards the exit sign. And we ran up the roof and were stuck there for a while. And then people were panicking all over the place, and people crying. So yeah.
Taylor Wilson:
A 22 year old Danish man was arrested, and police don’t believe anyone else was involved in the attack. He’ll be arraigned today on murder charges. The shooting was the worst gun attack in Denmark since February of 2015.
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The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is continuing its investigation into the fatal police shooting of Black motorist, Jayland Walker. Police say the medical examiner found 60 wounds on Walker’s body. They said he fled a traffic stop on June 27th before officers opened fire. Video showed a gun on the seat of his car. And police said a flash appeared to come from the vehicle during an initial police car chase, but Walker was apparently unarmed as he fled the car and ran from police. Body camera footage was released yesterday.
[Audio from bodycam footage]
Taylor Wilson:
Eight officers directly involved in the shooting have been placed on administrative leave. NAACP President Derek Johnson issued a statement saying the officers should be held accountable. Protests have broken out in Akron where the shooting took place, and police in full riot gear last night fired a dozen tear gas canisters on protesters.
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Home buyers facing skyrocketing prices are looking for alternatives to traditional home building that are both sustainable and more affordable. USA TODAY’s Sarah Edwards says that 3D printed homes could be the answer.
Sarah Edwards:
I was talking with a lot of housing experts, and the cool thing with 3D printed houses is they can be built in a matter of days. So Habitat for Humanity, two chapters built a 3D printed house for one of their families. And just the construction itself of the house frame took, at most, 30 hours or so. So they go up much faster. And then when you add in plumbing and all of the other hookups, the time is a lot faster than it is for a traditional build. So because these 3D printed houses are much cheaper to build and they’re much quicker to build, we’re able to start producing them more quickly. The only thing that’s holding us back is because it’s such a new technology, there aren’t a lot of manufacturers who can print a home at one time. So we’re very limited in how much we can do at once.
Habitat for Humanity used a kind of concrete printing material. And concrete is really sturdy, it’s great with retaining heat and AC, so it can withstand a good amount of damage. And then, I know of some other housing companies that are using a recycled plastic material. And we know plastic has a very long lifespan, so it’s also going to have a pretty lasting housing effect. So there isn’t an exact number at how long this house can go without sustaining damage or without needing to be rebuilt, but given the fact that the materials that are being used are not just a flimsy plastic or anything like that, they can withstand a good amount of weathering and erosion effects.
The biggest thing holding us back is the shortage of manufacturing and the shortage of actual factories to house a printer because the printers itself are really big. There’s a hose. It has to be able to go around the entire perimeter of the house, while also ejecting out the concrete while storing the concrete if that makes sense. So that’s really the biggest thing that’s holding us back from having more of these 3D printed homes is the fact that we don’t have enough manufacturers doing it. And within a few years, once those factories are starting to get built and these companies are able to expand more on the 3D printed housing area. Then we can just start building these homes faster.
Another thing that is holding back a lot of contractors from building these is there is not a lot of zoning or permit regulation on these because they’re so new. So I interviewed a housing group, Palari, who is building three 3D printed housing communities in the Palm Springs area. And the biggest thing that they’ve had to work with is they’ve had to work directly with California legislators and city governors on zoning laws and making sure that this is effective for this house because no one’s worked with this kind of material before.
Taylor Wilson:
The 4th of July means fireworks and barbecues as many celebrate Independence Day, and it also means it’s time for the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. The top finisher among men and women each win $20,000. The most lucrative of contests sponsored by Major League Eating. Reigning men’s champion, Joey Chestnut, has won it 14 times, but comes into this contest with a leg injury.
Joey Chestnut:
Yeah. I think I feel better than I look. I look pretty rough in the leg, but I’m going to go out there, I’m going to go out hungry, and I’m going to eat. This is something I love doing, and this 4th of July, I’m going to push it. Broke both bones, an open fracture back in December. And just recently, I ruptured a tendon. And then, the tendon injury, yeah, that’s rough. I’m really hoping I don’t need surgery on it, but it hurts really bad. And well, I can stand up and I can eat.
Taylor Wilson:
Defending women’s champ Michelle Lesko is back, but says Miki Sudo who missed last year while pregnant is a big challenge.
Michelle Lesko:
Mickey Sudo, biggest challenge, 100%. And if the weather plays nice and the hot dog buns play nice, then we’ll see a fight, but…
Taylor Wilson:
You can tune in live from Coney Island at 10:45 AM Eastern time on ESPN.
And you can find 5 Things every day of the year, right here, wherever you’re listening right now. Thanks to PJ Elliott for his great work on the show, and I’m back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.