Posted on 02/24/2006 11:36:30 AM PST by NYer
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- While some scientists, legislators and even some parents see the human embryo as material that can be studied, frozen or destroyed, for the Catholic Church an embryo is human and has "a special relationship with God," said Bishop Elio Sgreccia.
The bishop, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said that before allowing scientists to study the possibilities for manipulating human embryos, wider society should be asking itself when does life begin and when does life begin to have value.
Bishop Sgreccia and other experts from the academy met the press Feb. 24 to introduce a Feb. 27-28 conference titled, "The Human Embryo Before Implantation: Scientific Update and Bioethical Considerations."
"It is a theme that, at first glance, can seem strictly scientific or biological," the bishop said. "But this theme represents, in our opinion, the key question both for anthropology -- which asks, 'When does life begin?' -- and for ethics -- which asks, 'What value should be given to the embryo in its earliest stages?'"
Only when the basic questions are answered, he said, can one really discuss the ethical implications of creating embryos in a laboratory, performing experiments on them, selecting certain embryos for implantation and freezing or destroying the others.
Bishop Sgreccia said that while the speakers on the conference program share the Catholic Church's point of view, the public was invited to the meeting "because we wanted to put all our cards on the table."
Respect for the human embryo from the moment of conception, he said, is an "ethically sustainable position supported by scientific data and philosophical reasoning."
The academy chose to look specifically at embryos before implantation, which begins to occur about seven days after fertilization and is complete by 14 days after fertilization, because some scientists and ethicists insist that pregnancy does not begin until the embryo is implanted in the uterus.
Dr. Adriano Bompiani, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Rome's Sacred Heart University and former president of the Italian National Bioethics Committee, said that from a rational point of view, it is clear that human life begins when the sperm penetrates the egg and "the progressive differentiation and acquisition of complexity" begins.
Dutch Bishop Willem Eijk of Groningen, a physician and bioethicist, said the progressive movement from fertilization to implantation, the beginning of cerebral activity, the ability to feel pain and finally the ability to survive outside the uterus point to the fact that the embryo is a developing human from the very beginning.
"Modern anthropologies that attribute to the embryo the status of a human person only from the moment when there is self-awareness -- at the end of the pregnancy -- or even when there is a manifestation of rational consciousness -- which occurs long after birth -- are characterized by a profound dualism not able to explain the human being as a substantial unity" of body and mind or spirit, the bishop said.
Jesuit Father Kevin T. FitzGerald, who holds a doctorate in molecular genetics and is a professor at the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University in Washington, spoke about pre-implantation diagnosis of human embryos.
Initially, he said, diagnosis and screening was conducted in connection with in vitro fertilization procedures to help doctors choose the embryos most likely to survive.
Then, he said, it was used to identify embryos with genetic malformations and diseases, but "there are already discussions in several countries regarding the use of PGD (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis) to pursue 'family balancing,'" the preference of the parents to have a boy or a girl.
Father FitzGerald said the risk is a move "from seeing a child as an unconditionally welcomed gift to seeing him as a conditionally acceptable product."
Pope Benedict also spoke on this last November.
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05112105.html
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I'm glad to see this open discussion and teaching.
Judge Bork wrote quite eloquently on this in '97...
excellent statement.
"The academy chose to look specifically at embryos before implantation, which begins to occur about seven days after fertilization and is complete by 14 days after fertilization, because some scientists and ethicists insist that pregnancy does not begin until the embryo is implanted in the uterus."
There's no controversy---both are correct. The embryo is fully human from conception, and pregnancy starts with implantation. If technology existed to extract the embryo prior to implantation and support it with nutrients and so forth, at the end of nine months, you'd have a baby.
"the embryo is a developing human from the very beginning.
This is what confuses me. If eighty percent of human embryos are spontaneously aborted in menstruation, should we require menstrual fluids be examined to save those humans?"
Three points:
1) This is the first time I have heard 80%. The rate of unsuccessful implantation most frequently cited is between 40% and 60%.
2) Reproductive endocrinologists have begun in recent years to question that a majority of newly-conceived embryos are lost before implantation, for this estimate includes embryos who have been conceived while their mother is on hormonal birth control, which thins the uterine lining for the express purpose of causing the embryos to be "flushed out" during menstruation. It is thus, not natural for that percentage of new human lives to be ended.
3) The natural death rate for all human beings is 100%. That people inevitably die does not make it acceptable to induce their deaths. Acknowledgment that is is wrong to kill fellow human beings does not necessitate investigation of every single deathbed (or as you have euggested, menstrual blood). Death is natural and perfectly ok. Causing it is not. No wrong has been done when parents who are open to the lives of their embryonic children lose those children, whether they are aware they have conceived or not. Parents who treat their new children as commodities, by testing them and selectively implanting or destroying them during an IVF procedure, or by consciously using abortifacients, are intentionally taking life and are culpable in so doing.
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I agree with you that the current distinction between "conception" and "pregnancy" is not significant as to the moral status of the human embryo during the first two weeks of his or her new little life.
"Pregnancy" was defined by the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology as beginning at the initial union of sperm and egg, i.e. fertilization, until 1965. It was after a series of interactions between the AMA, AACOG, the Population Council, and Planned Parenthood regarding birth control and the "population explosion" that the physician's groups chose to modify their definitions.
Following is a list of materials that document the change in terminology:
Dr. Mary Calderone, discussion, Mechanisms of Contraceptive Action," in Intrauterine Contraceptive Devices: Proceedings of the Conference, held April 30-May 1, 1962, New York City, ed. C. Tietze and S. Lewitt, published by Excerpta Medica Foundation, 110.
Sybil Meloy, "Pre-Implantation Fertility Control and the Abortion Law," Chicago- Kent Law Review, vol. 41 (1964): 183, 205-06. Planned Parenthood recognized in its amicus brief for Roe v. Wade that criminal abortion laws could be applied to the IUD because of its potential to prevent implantation. PPFA its physician group (APPP) Amicus brief on page 44 cited Cybil Meloy, and also said that prosecutors had not used state anti-abortion laws to outlaw the use of IUD's.
Abraham Stone, M.D., "Research in Contraception: A Review and Preview," presented at the Third International Conference of Planned Parenthood, Bombay, India Report of the Proceedings, November 24-29, 1952, no copyright, Family Planning Association of India, 101.
A Survey of Research on Reproduction Related to Birth and Population Control (as of January 1, 1963) US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, page 27.
Memo to Dr. Drill from Dr. Saunders, re: "Effects of Drugs on Mating in Rats," 12/9/54, Gregory Pincus Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; Abraham Stone, The Control of Fertility, Scientific American, April, 1954, vol. 190., no. 4, 31-33.
Bent Boving, "Implantation Mechanisms," in Mechanisms Concerned with Conception, ed. C. G. Hartman (New York: Pergamon Press, 1963), 386. Boving acknowledged (p. 321): "... the greatest pregnancy wastage, in fact, by far the highest death rate of the entire human life span, is during the week before and including the beginning of implantation, and the next greatest is in the week immediately following."
Proceedings of the Second International Conference, Intra-Uterine Contraception, held October 2-3, 1964, New York City, ed. Sheldon Segal, et al.., International Series, Excerpta Medica Foundation, No. 86, page 212.
ACOG Terminology Bulletin, Terms Used in Reference to the Fetus, Chicago, American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, No. 1, September 1965.
Dr. Richard Sosnowski, head of the Southern Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists "The Pursuit of Excellence: Have We Apprehended and Comprehended It?" American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, vol. 150. No. 2 (September 15, 1984) 117.
Not to mention tubal pregnancies.
Wow. Great post.
"There's no controversy---both are correct. The embryo is fully human from conception, and pregnancy starts with implantation. If technology existed to extract the embryo prior to implantation and support it with nutrients and so forth, at the end of nine months, you'd have a baby."
I'd say pregnancy starts with fertilization - that unimplanted embryo is already putting out HCG - sending the message: here I come, keep making progesterone and get everything ready for me! It changes the mother's body even before implantation.
Mrs VS
This is where anti-Catholics start saying, "Do you require a funeral for a period?"
If only God knows whether a short-lived conception occured, then God can concern himself with that. I don't believe He places any burden on the mother. Which is not to say that possible abortifacients become acceptable, only that there is no burden in natural events.
Mrs VS
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