Spanish bishops warn that law on medical research an attack on life and dignity of human person

Madrid, Spain, Oct 24, 2006 / 22:00 pm

The bishops of Spain warned legislators this week that a proposed law on embryonic medical research “conflicts with the basic principles of ethics” and that voting for the measure without substantial modifications would place them “in objective disagreement with Catholic teaching.”

In a statement issued by the executive committee of the Bishops’ Conference of Spain, the bishops said they hoped common sense would prevail against “economic and ideological pressures.”

The spokesman for the bishops’ conference, Father Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, told reporters the document calls on lawmakers to “take a good look at what this is really about.” 

“We’re dealing with a measure that is against life.  No congressman who sees this could vote for passage,” he said.

The statement warns that the proposed law would allow for an increase in the practice of donating human eggs.  “The marketing of something so personal is of great concern to the bishops,” Father Martinez continued, “and is likely to result in pressure and psychological consequences for women.”  

“It’s clear that women would feel increasingly under pressure from something that is presented to them as an altruistic act when in reality it is a sham,” he warned.

The bishops also said, if left unmodified, the measure would open the door to “new abuses against the dignity of the human person.”  Embryos would not be recognized as such until the 14th day after conception and would allow them to be treated “as mere objects of research.”  The law would also open to door to the cloning of embryos for use in research and use deceiving and ambiguous terms to refer to cloned human embryos.

The bishops called such a tactic an “objective deception.  “To not call cloned embryos what they really are” is to open to the legal door “to the poorly-termed therapeutic cloning,” they said.