On the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, December 12, 2008 the Vatican issued a formal teaching on bioethical issues, including a restatement of, and rationale for, the Catholic Church's opposition to in vitro fertilization, human cloning, genetic testing on embryos before implantation and embryonic stem cell research.
For a concise description of the 32 page document, Dignitas Personae (The Dignity of the Person), read the article in the 12/13/08 edition of the New York Times. To read the entire document, click here.
Here are some snippets from the NYT article:
[Dignitas Personae] bans the morning-after pill, the intrauterine device and the pill RU-486, saying these can result in what amount to abortions.
The Vatican document reiterates that the church is opposed to research on stem cells derived from embryos. But it does not oppose research on stem cells derived from adults; blood from umbilical cords; or fetuses “who have died of natural causes.”
The document does not prohibit the use of vaccines developed using “cell lines of illicit origin” if children’s health is at stake. But it says that “everyone has the duty” to inform health care providers of personal objections to such vaccines.
The church also objects to freezing embryos, arguing that doing so exposes them to potential damage and manipulation, and that it raises the problem of what to do with frozen embryos that are not implanted. There are at least 400,000 of these in the United States alone.
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