MADRID, April 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Spanish Bishops’ Conference issued a statement onÂlegislation being debated by the Spanish legislature concerning assisted human reproduction. The statement titled, “Some Advice on the unlawfulness of artificial human reproduction and unjust practices authorised by a Law which will regulate this in Spain”, categorically rejects in vitro fertilization saying that the production of human beings in a laboratory offends human dignity which demands that “children be procreated not produced”.
The bishops described procreation, the 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,” says the document, “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.” The document also notes that the term ‘pre-embryo’ – used popularly in such laws to describe the embryo less than 14 days old, has no “scientific of philosophical grounding” whatsoever indeed it is pure “legal fiction.”
The bishops note that the law will allow human embryos to be used for research and ‘therapeutic cloning’. The “human embryo has less legal protection than that given to certain species of protected animals,” says the statement. Even if it is an unpopular position, the statement says, the Church must denounce the legislation 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”.
(with files from Fides News Agency)
See the Bishops’ statement (in Spanish)
https://www.evangelizatio.org/portale/adgentes/chieselocali/chieselocali.php?id=233