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Scottish Bishops Call for More Time on UK Embryo Bill

By Hilary White

LONDON, July 19, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - When a new draft law was tabled by the Labour government proposing to overhaul Britain's embryo research Act, pro-life advocates told LifeSiteNews.com that there would be only a few short months in which to examine the bill and respond.

Now two of Britain's most prominent Catholic prelates, Keith Cardinal O'Brien, Archbishop of Edinburgh, and Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow, are calling upon Prime Minister Gordon Brown to extend the consultation period.

The two prelates cited the provision in the bill to remove the child's need for a father as a threat to the well-being of children. That the legislation allows for a woman to be named as the "father" of a child, they wrote, is "a sweeping attempt to rewrite traditional concepts of parenthood and the family".

Pro-life advocates have told LifeSiteNews.com that the consultation period is extremely short. The joint parliamentary committee will be sitting for two months, including the parliamentary recess. "We believe that the state should not deny the child's need for a father nor ignore a wealth of social research findings upholding the notion that deliberately planning to have fatherless children is inimical to their long-term welfare."

"We feel this should be the focus of extended and major public consultation before these matters are presented to parliament. This means that prior to provision of fertility treatment, there will no longer be any requirement, nor guidance, to consider the child's need for a father."

Britain's proposed legislation is an omnibus bill intended to amend the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) told LifeSiteNews.com when the bill appeared in May it principally enacts as positive legislation those decisions already made by the regulatory agency, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) over the last 16 years.

These include a host of anti-life measures including the creation of cloned human embryos; the manipulation of clones and IVF embryos to acquire desired genetic traits; the creation of genetically selected children to be used as tissue donors. The bill also allows for the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for experimentation.

Anthony Ozimic, SPUC's political secretary told LifeSiteNews.com that the new legislation is a means of applying a one-way "ratchet effect" to embryo issues, pushing the country further down the road of genetic manipulation of human life. The HFEA was established by the 1990 law and given the mandate to apply the law to individual requests for research. Actual provisions prohibiting such practices as human cloning were not present in the Act, but were decided case by case and have become the practise in the UK through the HFEA.

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
UK Bill Allows Human Animal Hybrid Embryos
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/may/07051703.html

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