Catholic Ping
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Posted on 12/12/2008 6:09:21 AM PST by NYer
THE Vatican today said life was sacred at every stage of its existence and condemned artificial fertilisation, embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning and drugs which block pregnancy from taking hold.
A long-awaited document on bioethics by the Vatican's doctrinal body also said the so-called "morning after pill" and the drug RU-486, which blocks the action of hormones needed to keep a fertilised egg implanted in the uterus, fall "within the sin of abortion" and are gravely immoral.
"Dignitas Personae" (dignity of a person), an Instruction of Certain Bioethical Questions," is an attempt to bring the Church up to date with recent advances in science and medicine.
It said human life deserved respect "from the very first stages of its existence (and) can never be reduced merely to a group of cells."
"The human embryo has, therefore, from the very beginning, the dignity proper to a person," the docment by the Congregations of the Doctrine of the Faith said.
It said most forms of artifical fertilisation "are to be excluded" because "they substitute for the conjugal act ... which alone is truly worthy of responsible procreation".
It condemned in-vitro fertilisation, saying the techniques "proceed as if the human embryo were simply a mass of cells to be used, selected and discarded."
The highly technical document said only adult stem cell research was moral because embryonic stem cell research involved the destruction of embryos.
In the document, the Vatican also defended its right to intervene on such matters.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
Catholic Ping
Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
Gee, I’m stunned. Can’t believe they would take this position.
I hope this is a good sign of things to come under Benedict. He has been very vocal on much wrong with the church, and this is the most important of all. Unless we win this war against the culture of death, there is nothing to fight for.........
I hope this is a good sign of things to come under Benedict. He has been very vocal on much wrong with the church, and this is the most important of all. Unless we win this war against the culture of death, there is nothing to fight for.........
How does someone weigh the right of people to ensure their genetic viability into the future, vs. the right of a fertilized egg? I’m curious.
Perhaps you can explain that to me because it sounds like eugenics.
When did man alone become the author of life vs. a persons desire to have a “natural child” via in vitro? What ever happened to adopting if infertile and raising that child as your own? In vitro can be looked at as just as selfish as abortion if you think about what it says. Whether a person chooses to end a pregnancy via abortion because they don’t want that life or going to a lab and forcing life to be manipulated in a test tube and injected are both “me” thinking. We feel we are entitled to have “our own” child or abort “our own” child. Both are a symptom of our own selfishness.
You can call it whatever you want, but the plain, hard, cold fact is, if you don’t reproduce, your physical existence, in terms of the genes that make you, is over. Unless you have clones, that is.
There is absolutely nothing wrong in making sure one’s genetics is preserved through lineage. To do otherwise is genetic extinction.
If you’re infertile, shouldn’t those genes go extinct?
No one has a right to “genetic viability”.
Given your reasoning IVF will be become an government entitlement for any an all who demand it.
You’re being sarcastic, I assume. Why shouldn’t a bunch of old men sit around condemning fertility interventions?
By the way, I am the mother of 4 children. Each is so different from the other they might just as well have been adopted.
No matter how cruel it sounds, adoption is not going to prevent the ending of two individuals' genetic lineage, as a relevant biological entity.
There is absolutely nothing selfish in wanting to see one's genes preserved. In fact, it is the primary rule of life on this planet.
"We feel we are entitled to have “our own” child... ...symptom of our own selfishness."
Welcome to the rules of life.
Not if you can help it.
“You’re being sarcastic, I assume.”
I am.
A DNA test would show otherwise.
again- natural selection IS scientific- and since for millions of years it has happened naturally with God as the author of life, what gives us in the 21st century, the RIGHT to circumvent that process? Just because we CAN does not mean we SHOULD. a persons genetics is not what makes them a person. Adoption of a child as well as giving birth to a child both make that child YOURS. If a person cannot reproduce naturally, perhaps there is a reason bigger than just their plumbing that they should NOT reproduce, but because we are NOT God, we don’t know what it is. Funny how ever since we have manipulated fertility in this country, it has gone downhill so fast! Maybe due to alot of babies that needed to be born are NOT heredue to abortion,and babies that should have never been “made viable through in vitro” ARE. Time to think.......
You exist today, because those from whom you descended from, adhered dearly to the concept of preserving their genes- voluntarily or otherwise.
“If you’re infertile, shouldn’t those genes go extinct?”
Why SHOULD they?
Wait, wait, let me go down the street and tell the IVF kid he shouldn’t exist. Is that all right with you?
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