The destruction of embryos and IVF.

Vatican City--On March 16, 2004, the Vatican again issued a broad condemnation of fertility treatments such as in-vitro fertilization. It condemned the use of embryos for research, and called the destruction or loss of them in the invitro fertilization process "a true massacre of the innocents of our time: no war or catastrophe has ever caused so many victims."

The Vatican holds that embryos are human and deserve all the rights and dignity of humans. (Editor: In Canada, the Conference of Bishops recently declared itself "neutral" when Bill C-6, allowing both IVF and embryonic stem-cell research, was presented for a vote in the Senate. The bill became law shortly after March 11, 2004).

Osservatore Romano published the final communique from the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life following a conference in February on the dignity of human procreation and reproductive technologies. It restated the Roman position that any treatment which substitutes for sexual intercourse between a husband and wife, such as the creation of an embryo in a laboratory which is later implanted, is considered illicit because the embryo is not the fruit of the conjugal union. However, the Academy did give its blessing to therapies that can "facilitate" the natural sex act (such as drugs which help a woman ovulate).

While acknowledging the suffering of parents who want a child, and cannot have one naturally and the Church's support for married couples to bear children, the Academy said there are limits: "It needs to be repeated that an understandable 'desire for a child' can never transform itself into a pretentious 'right to a child' ... at all costs."

In fact, a new mindset could make recourse to artificial reproductive technologies the preferred way to bring a child into the world especially because these technologies would promise control over the qualities of the being conceived. A possible consequence would be the systematic elimination of human embryos considered to be "sub-standard."

The document recalls that 25 years have gone by since the birth of the first child by in-vitro fertilization. An estimated one million similar births have occurred since.

Academy for Life members concluded their statement by calling Catholic legislators to firmly oppose laws that clearly violate the dignity of human life, as in the case of abortion and euthanasia. (Zenit, March 16, 2004)