Posted on 02/25/2006 7:02:18 PM PST by cpforlife.org
Human Embryo Is a Child, Says Bishop Sgreccia
Promotes Bioethics Congress of Pontifical Academy for Life
VATICAN CITY, FEB. 24, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The embryo, even if it is not being nurtured in a maternal uterus, is a child, said the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Bishop Elio Sgreccia said this in a press conference regarding the upcoming congress "The Human Embryo Prior to Implantation: Scientific Aspects and Bioethical Considerations," organized by the Pontifical organization in the Vatican on Feb. 27-28.
"In any case, the embryo is a child: a boy or a girl, that has a special relationship with his parents and, for those who are believers, also has a special relationship with God," said Bishop Sgreccia in the Vatican press office.
The meeting brings together in the New Hall of the Synod 350 experts, among whom are scientists, doctors, researchers, theologians and bioethicists.
The human embryo maintains its status as a child, clarified Bishop Sgreccia, even when it is manipulated or destroyed, thus becoming a "crucial" question "both for anthropology as well as ethics."
The bishop, who was accompanied by scientists, explained that the congress will also pose the question: "Does the position that the Catholic Church has assumed have scientific arguments and, therefore, from the ethical point of view, can it be defended today?"
"We believe we have sufficient and valid arguments and we want to propose them," he said.
An individual
Professor Adriano Bompiani, gynecologist and director of the International Scientific Institute of Rome's Sacred Heart Catholic University, explained that knowledge of the phases of development of the embryo enables one to offer an ethical response to what happens in the maternal womb.
In the first embryonic cells biology attests the existence of an activity, of individuality, to the point that it goes so far as to propose the definition of a statute for the embryo even before its implantation in the uterus, protecting it from manipulations, especially from all kinds of destructive experimentation, explained the scientist.
Professor Kevin Fitzgerald, associate professor of Genetics at the Oncological Department of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., added that, implicitly, the congress poses another question: "Can we legitimately prevent a disease by selecting out those individuals who have the genetic basis for the disease?"
"This question echoes back to the eugenics movements of a century ago when we faced this same general idea," he replied.
He continued: "The practice of prenatal screening establishes the principle that parents may choose the qualities of their children, and choose them on the basis of genetic knowledge.
"This new principle, in conjunction with the cultural norm just mentioned, may already be shifting parental and societal attitudes toward prospective children: from simple acceptance to judgment and control, from seeing a child as an unconditionally welcome gift to seeing him as a conditionally acceptable product."
You're morbid, joking or not.
Confessing nothing, unless you get too close....
Really, come closer. Closer. Let me whisper in your ear. I promise to not harm you. Come closer, closer...that's it.
http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/kisc/kisc_04whenlifebegins1.html
I'll stand with Bruce Carlson with his definition. It is still operable today in Embryology despite what "political correctness" and abortion politics mandates. To wit: human life begins upon the fusion of a human sperm to a human ovum.
F
Put in a link instead of showing the picture in the post, please. Some of us may have children in the room. Some of us have miscarried unborn babies we still mourn for and don't need this horror.
Mrs VS
"Is the official teaching of the Catholic church now different?"
The Early Church Fathers and Abortion:
http://www.all.org/article.php?id=10118&search=ensoulment
Wow, that image is tough to deal with on many levels. We lost one to a miscarriage at 12 weeks and just to think that's what my child ended up looking like made my stomach turn.
I apologize if I offended anyone by posting the image, but that's what it looks like. That's the 8 week old 'clump of tissue', the 'tumor'. It's reality. It's truth.
Yep, the entire usage of a word was altered from the common, aeon-long definition (even if not in current-day English) to account for a recent, comparatively rare, event - artificial insemination and all types of extracorporeal generation of life.
The natural should trump the artificial and manipulated for terminology. New phenomenon, new term.
Regardless of the definition of pregnancy - nothing is changed as to the nature of the embyro.
But -- I don't think the *AMA* did the redefining - creeping usage followed by law, as usual.
But, I wonder whether anyone else has noticed that the same success is not happening with the definition of "embryo" and "blastocyst." There are stutters and starts, but (I believe largely due to the internet) the knowledge that the embryo is the embryo and that a blastocyst is one stage of the embryo is widely known.
Non-sequitor, there. There is no such thing as an "unfertilized embryo." The embryo begins at fertilization. Before fertilization there is an oocyte.
Yes, that is what an 8 to 10 week fetus looks like after a D&C. I had a D&C after my baby died in utero at 10 weeks. I prefer to remember her whole.
The topic of discussion was actually human embryos at the stage when they are, in form, a ball of cells. They are still human beings of course, but your picture is not relevant.
Mrs VS
If it's irrelevant the solution is simple. Stop whining and ignore it.
(I believe largely due to the internet)
Indeed! The net is the great equalizer to the pro-abort MSM
Great sites like http://www.lifeethics.org are helping bury the lies of choice.
The compassion of a fellow pro-lifer is always appreciated.
Mrs VS
(Blush)
But, I learned most of what I know about using the internet from Dianne Irving, Ph.D., Doris Gordon (Both at http://www.l4l.org/library/index.html ), and Jim Robinson.
Be good - you're being cruel to a woman who miscarried. As I did, once.
We can't choose who is human and must never choose to end the life of any human at any age or stage of life.
But, please, let us choose what we want to see.
Actually, it is possibly an important question as to which was the change in an aeon-long definition.
During the patrisic era, the understanding of 'conception' was analogized to a seed being planted in the fertile soil of the womb. One speaks traditionally of a woman conceiving, and applies the usage from the moment of implantion--a sign of which is the cessation of menses. One does not speak of the woman conceiving if egg and sperm join, but the embryo fails to implant and leaves her body, because the (very common) event is unobserved.
While I think the Latin church's conclusions on the matter are generally sound, I think they have been arrived at in too facile a manner, by accepting a medical redefinition of conception as fertilization--either conception = fertilization, or conception = implantation, was really a redefinition, since no distinction between the two was known until the application of microsopy to reproduction--without fully considering the patristic and Scriptural testimonies as the Fathers, evangelists, apostles and prophets understood them.
Under the new circumstances, may it be that a distinction like the formed/unformed (rightly rejected by St. Basil the Great as applied to children gestating in the womb) might rightly be applied to pre-implantation/implanted? That abortion (meaning of an implanted embryo or fetus) is murder, but that the destruction of an un-implanted embryo is a lesser sin? (It is the case that most embryos don't implant (!), and while it may be God's will to create many, many human beings who never have the chance of finding grace in Christ because they died as little spheres of 8 or 16 genetically distinctive human cells, more of them indeed than human beings who have walked the earth, it seems odd indeed to my still-passionate sinful human mind. So odd, indeed--as the Psalmist tells us, He does not wish to destroy the works of His hand--that the fact may matter to our moral understanding of the matter.)
If an unfertilized embryo is a human being than every woman is committing an abortion with her monthly menstrual period. >>>
there is no such thing as an unfertilized embryo. An embryo is a newly-formed baby. Egg and sperm are 23 chromosome cells, all other cells in the human body have 46 chromosomes and when the egg and sperm meet at fertilization, a new 46 chromosome baby (embryo) is created. Eggs are not human life nor is sperm. A girl is born with about 400,000 oocytes/eggs, they are not babies. It's only when the egg and sperm join does a baby get created.
I think nuts reproduce the same way.
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