Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Madrid (Fides Service) - At the end of its 86th plenary assembly the Spanish Bishops’ Conference issued a statement “Some Advice on the unlawfulness of artificial human reproduction and unjust practices authorised by a Law which will regulate this in Spain”, in which the Bishops denounce the gravity of a new Fertility Treatment law being debated in parliament. First of all the Bishops say the production of human beings in a laboratory offends human dignity which demands that “children be procreated not produced”. Procreation, fruit of an interpersonal and not instrumental relation, “is in keeping with the personal dignity of the procreated child who comes into the world as a gift of mutual self-giving of the parents and not as a product obtained with the instrumental dominion of technicians”. Moreover “the instrumental production of human beings fosters a mentality which regards a child as a ‘possession’ and has as a consequence the ethic and human problem of an excess of embryos and how they are used.
"The embryo- the Bishops say - deserves the same respect as a human person because it is not a thing, a mere conglomeration of living cells, it is a human life at the first stage”. In this sense the Bishops say clearly that the term pre-embryo - used in the law to describe the embryo less than 14 days old has no “scientific of philosophical grounding” whatsoever indeed it is pure “legal fiction ”.
The Bishops treat another consequence of the new Law: it will allow the production of embryos not only for reproduction but also for research and industry because it “fails to limit effectively the production of embryos in laboratories or to put conditions for their use as material for research” or prevent “trade of pre-embryos” or “their use for cosmetic or other similar ends”.
For all these reasons the Bishops denounce that the “human embryo has less legal protection than that given to certain species of protected animals”. They say the law “legalises new forms of practising eugenics, authorising this procedure with therapeutic ends for a third party” and prohibits only cloning for reproduction while therefore allowing “other variants of cloning, more concretely “therapeutic cloning.”
The Bishops conclude their document saying that the Church declares these practices illicit even if this makes her unpopular because “she cannot shirk the grave duty to defend the rights of every person, especially when the person is helpless and defenceless and cannot even defend his or her right to life”. (RG) (Agenzia Fides 3/4/2006 - Righe 32, parole 451)
