Italian bishops’ leader warns of link between artificial reproduction, eugenics mentality

June 03, 2009

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa, president of the Italian episcopal conference, warns in an interview with L’Osservatore Romano that certain legal interpretations of Law 40-- the 2004 Italian law on following in vitro fertilization-- favor a eugenic mentality.

In a 2004 analysis of Law 40, Sandro Magister notes that

Law 40 does not coincide with the prescriptions of the Church, which is against any form of unnatural procreation. But it does establish some important limits: one may not produce a child "in vitro" with sperm obtained from outside the couple; one may not produce more embryos than will be implanted, and three at the most; one may not conduct diagnoses on an embryo prior to implantation; one may not produce children at an advanced age or after the death of the donor; one may not clone human beings, and so on.

Law 40, Cardinal Bagnasco says, was “imperfect.” Recent interpretations that permit the implantation of an unlimited human embryos, he warns, raise the “serious question” of the fate of the embryos not implanted and also foster a “eugenic mentality”-- presumably because of the increased likelihood of “selective reduction” (i.e., abortion of some of the implanted embryos) that would result.

 

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Further information:

• Intervista al presidente della Conferenza episcopale italiana cardinale Angelo Bagnasco: Modelli credibili per riscoprire valori solidi (L’Osservatore Romano)
• Sandro Magister: From Madrid to Rome: The Secularist Offensive and the Church's Fears (Chiesa)
• Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Instruction Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions (2008)