Food for thought:
“Roughly 127,977, babies are killed each year through the process of in vitro fertilization — at least if one accepts the definition that discarding a fertilized embryo amounts to abortion and murder.
Pro-choice groups obviously don’t see it that way. More interesting, pro life groups do see it that way but rarely discuss in vitro fertilization either, perhaps because it’s a popular technique.
But a recent statement from the Vatican makes it clear that the [Pope] views embryos discarded during in vitro as being abortions.
The document – Instruction Dignitatis Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions – refers to embryos disgarded during the in vitro process as abortions.
Responding to the argument that in vitro isn’t as bad because it involves incidental murder as a side effect, rather than as the main goal, the document states, “in many cases the abandonment, destruction and loss of embryos are foreseen and willed.”
Referring to the practice of creating multiple embryos to increase the odds of one leading to a birth, the document declared:
“One is struck by the fact that, in any other area of medicine, ordinary professional ethics and the healthcare authorities themselves would never allow a medical procedure which involved such a high number of failures and fatalities. In fact, techniques of in vitro fertilization are accepted based on the presupposition that the individual embryo is not deserving of full respect in the presence of the competing desire for offspring which must be satisfied.”
(HT: Belief Net)
