EUROPE/SPAIN - To deny a child the right to have a mother and a father of different sexes is to violate an inalienable human right: Dr Belén Vendrell offers contribution to Fides

Friday, 27 May 2005

Castellón (Fides Service) - “There are many types of injustice in this life but one of the most painful is the injustice which legitimates on behalf of society a proposal which violates the inalienable rights of the human person”: Dr Belén Vendrell Sahuquillo told Fides. Dr Vendrell Sahuquillo has a degree in Biological Science, she is Masters directress at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family and directress of a diocesan centre for Family Counselling. She says “if the whole of society proposes, supports and demands an injustice, backed also by resumed scientific studies”, we clearly have a case of lack of respect for the rights of the child which are totally undefended. This is precisely what is happening at the moment - she said - with social legitimisation of legal adoption and/or procreation of children by means of assisted reproduction in the case of people or couples of the same sex. Dr. Vendrell Sahuquillo says it is an “ontological, psychological and social injustice to deny the child the right to have a mother and a father”.
With regard to personal identity, she says this is acquired gradually as the child develops during childhood and adolescence (experts refer to sexual identity and generic identity). “In a correct and harmonic process of integration, these identities complement one another, and a person lives in society in harmony with aspects cultural corresponding to his or her sex”. Human sexuality “concerns in particular affectivity, the capacity to love and procreate and in a more general manner to establish bonds of communion with others”.
On the basis of recent studies, homosexuality is no longer defined as confused sexual identity but rather confused sexual orientation, nevertheless it is clear that “in every person with homosexual inclinations there is exists confusion of sexual identity more or less conscious". Therefore a person with homosexual inclinations “cannot offer a child adopted or generated by methods of assisted reproduction adequate identity development”. With regard to the proposed law to allow same sex couples to adopt a child Dr Vendrell Sahuquillo asks: “What happened to the research of so many years on the importance of the configuration of the child’s sexual identity by means of adequate development of his affective attachment to the mother and following contact with the surrounding world through the pedagogical intervention of the father?”.
“Paternal influence in the growth and maturing of the child is most important because it does not come from the mother. If the mother is absent, the presence of two male figures leads to serious affective deficiency and various aspects of emotional confusion such as rejection of the body and maternity”.
With regard to serious studies to demonstrate the consequences on a child adopted by persons with homosexual inclinations, “it should be noted that the ethical value of these studies is questionable since the human person and his or her psychological development is the object of experimentation. Any ideology which in the name science uses the human person for its own benefit attacks the anthropic principle which reveals that the human person is the greatest good of Creation." (RG) (Agenzia Fides 27/5/2005, righe 40, parole 539)


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