A human embryo is an individual human being. Every human person began life as an embryo, and that life continues uninterrupted until death. Human rights derive from the nature of the human person, and respect for the human person implies respect for these rights. Human rights are, at the same time, constitutive elements of civil society and its order. The uncontrolled application of techniques of assisted human reproduction, as well as undermining the fundamental rights of the individual, risks causing unforeseeable and damaging consequences for civil society.

The recent report made to Government by the Commission for Assisted Human Reproduction raises many important issues, and it is our intention to respond more fully to this report in due course. For the moment we wish to refer particularly to that most basic of all rights, namely the right to life, which is not qualified by considerations of race, sex, religion or age.

The Bishops wish to state quite categorically that the recommendation of the Commission that “the embryo formed by IVF should not attract legal protection until placed in the human body” is unacceptable. No commission report can change the reality that the right to life belongs to all, irrespective of race, sex, religion or age.

This is not simply a matter of Catholic teaching. It concerns the common good of our society. While it is a responsibility in which all citizens have a share it is the specific responsibility of government, one which cannot be delegated to any other agency or commission. The common good is not simply the good of the state, or the good of the majority; it must take into account the good of all, collectively and individually, including human embryos.

Advances in genetics and embryology serve to confirm that every human embryo is an individual human being. There is certainly no scientific or philosophical basis for distinguishing between an embryo in the womb, and one in a glass dish or in frozen storage. The recommendation of the Commission that “the embryo formed by IVF should not attract legal protection until placed in the human body” appears, therefore, to have a purely utilitarian and pragmatic motivation, namely to ensure that embryos are available for research, and to allow for the selective disposal of those embryos which do not measure up to certain standards. The notion that “the end justifies the means,” if accepted in principle, has implications which extend far beyond the issue of assisted human reproduction.

The Bishops urge legislators to continue to afford legal protection to all embryos, irrespective of age or location. The Bishops note that such a decision would have implications for other recommendations contained in the CAHR report. It would preclude simply allowing embryos to perish or using them for research.

“All human beings, from their mothers’ womb, belong to God who searches them and knows them and knits them together with his own hands, who gazes on them when they are tiny shapeless embryos and already sees in them the adults of tomorrow whose days are numbered and whose vocation is even now written in the “the book of life”.  – Evangelium Vitae, 20

Note: Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) is an Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul II and was published on 25 March 1995.