Gingrich Calls For Panel To Look At Rules For In Vitro Clinics

By Julie Rovner

Published January 30, 2012 at 2:04 PM CST

While talking with the media outside the Exciting Idlewild Baptist Church in Lutz, Fla., on Sunday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called for a commission to look at new rules for clinics that perform in vitro fertilization.

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich is changing another of his positions in an effort to woo socially conservative voters.

Over the weekend he told churchgoers in Florida that as president he'd work to ban research using stem cells derived from human embryos.

Gingrich has long been a strong backer of federal funding for scientific research. In 2001 his support extended to research on stem cells derived from human embryos left over from in vitro fertilization efforts.

But apparently that's no longer the case.

Now he says he'd ban such research, which, he says amounts to, "the use of science to desensitize society over the killing of babies."

Gingrich is also questioning whether those embryos should be left over in fertility clinics in the first place.

"If you have in vitro fertilization you are creating life. And therefore we should look seriously at what should the rules be for clinics that do that because they're creating life," Gingrich said outside the Exciting Idlewild Baptist Church where he attended services Sunday.

Gingrich opposes abortion and says life begins at conception.

Currently the only federal regulations require such clinics to report their success rates.