Costa Rica faces international pressure to legalize IVF

December 20, 2010

Invoking UN treaties, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, whose members are selected by the Organization of American States, is threatening sanctions against Costa Rica unless the nation legalizes in-vitro fertilization, the gravely immoral procedure that results in the death or freezing of the majority of embryos conceived.

“The Public Authority must be the first to seek what benefits all by working principally as a moral force that can strengthen the freedom and the sense of responsibility of each one,” Pope Benedict told the new Costa Rican ambassador to the Holy See on December 3. “And it must do all this without diminishing the fundamental values that constitute the backbone of the person’s inviolable dignity, starting with the firm protection of human life.”

“In this regard, I am pleased to recall that the Pact of San José, which recognizes the value of human life from its conception, was signed in your country. Thus it is to be hoped that Costa Rica will not violate the rights of the nasciturus [the one to be born] with laws that legitimize in vitro fertilization and abortion.”

 

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Further information:

• Infertile Controversy over Right to Form a Family (IPS)
• Costa Rica under pressure to lift ban on in vitro fertilization (CNS)
• Pope Benedict: Address to the Ambassador of Costa Rica to the Holy See (December 3, 2010)
• Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Dignitas Personae (2008)