DEACON FOR LIFE

Were there to be no support in the whole history of ethical and moral thought, were there no acknowledged confirmation from medical science, were the history of legal opinion to the contrary, we would still have to conclude on the basis of God's Holy Word that the unborn child is a person in the sight of God. He is protected by the sanctity of life graciously given to each individual by the Creator, Who alone places His image upon man and grants them any right to life which they have.

Friday, July 6, 2007

“I don't believe the numbers”

An interview with director of program that promotes adoption of frozen embryos

Researchers from Johns Hopkins and Duke universities recently surveyed 1,000 couples who have created live offspring -- embryos -- now held in a kind of frozen suspended animation at nine U.S. infertility centers. Nearly half of the parents reportedly would give away their embryos to labs for use as general experimental material; up to 60% would hand them over specifically for stem-cell research in the course of which their embryos would be killed, according to the survey.

Only a little more than 20% of the donor parents, according to this survey, reported in the journal Science, said they would allow their progeny to go on living by being implanted in the womb of an adoptive mother.

California Catholic Daily interviewed Nightlight Christian Adoptions executive director Ron Stoddart, who has been involved since 1997 with the "Snowflakes" program, which promotes the adoption of frozen live human embryos.

Click here for the interview: California Catholic

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"In Cordibus Jesu et Mariae"

LIFE IS SACRED

An example of the traditional magisterial teaching which indicates that it is never morally licit to intentionally kill a child through abortion in order to “save the life of its mother” comes from the teaching of Pope Pius XII:

“Every human being, even the infant in the mother's womb, has the right to life immediately from God, not from the parent or any human society or authority. Therefore, there is no man, no human authority, no science, no medical, eugenic, social, economic or moral ‘indication’ that can show or give valid juridical title for direct deliberate disposition concerning an innocent human life-which is to say, a disposition that aims at its destruction either as an end in itself or as the means of attaining another end that is perhaps in no way illicit itself. Thus, for example, to save the life of the mother is a most noble end, but the direct killing of the child as a means to this end is not licit.”