Vatican publishes ‘Keys to Bioethics: A Manual for Youth’
July 20, 2022
» Continue to this story on Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life
CWN Editor's Note: The Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life has released Keys to Bioethics: A Manual for Youth, a free e-book prepared by the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation.
“With this Manual we wish to offer young people around the world a practical and up-to-date tool to answer some of the questions that clutter their minds when faced with the great challenges generated by scientific and technological progress,” said Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the Dicastery’s prefect.
The Manual states that human life begins at fertilization and that IUDs, RU-486, and the morning-after pill can induce abortions—and that the regular birth control pill can have an abortifacient effect. Other topics covered include the contraceptive mentality, genetic screening, reproductive technology, eugenics, stem-cell research, euthanasia, organ donation, and gender.
Discussing gender identity, the Manual states that “in fact, there is no way to change one’s sex. To try to do so is to mutilate the body and to create a lie within the human person, who may be altered to look like the other sex but can never truly be the other sex.”
The Manual is also critical of homosexual parenting: “Recent research has shown that a loving mother and father in a stable relationship are essential to the healthy development of children. The desire of homosexual couples to override the biological constraint on their ability to have children is not a sufficient reason to place children in a same-sex household.”
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