14 DAY TRIAL // The Pope and the Holy See expressed their dissatisfaction and critics of human stem cell research – which uses viable embryos for harvesting cells – cloning and “designing babies,” saying that they found these acts immoral and repulsive. The Vatican has been a long-term opponent of these fields of medical research, saying that they tint the sanctity of life, and, as such, should be banned.
The church also condemned birth control pills, the morning-after pill, as well as intrauterine devices (IUD), saying that everything that prevented a human life from occurring fell into the same line as abortion and was therefore a grave sin. In-vitro fertilization was also harshly criticized, as the document argued that the cells used were not just blocks, to be moved around and fitted together according to someone's will.
“Designer babies” – a term used to describe an infant that was conceived artificially, with purposefully modified genetic traits – are a sign of cowardice on the part of the parents, the Vatican says, because couples avoid facing any challenges that their babies might provide them with, and choose the easy way out, in knowing beforehand what their babies will look like, what color their eyes will be and so on.
The paper firmly states that a person's life begins immediately after the fertilization of the female egg and, as such, can never be reduced to a simple definition, such as “an undifferentiated group of cells.” Attempts to define when an embryo can be considered human are raging in various parts of the world, as local authorities are trying to come up with a good definition of what life is, before knowing how to regulate stem cell research – to look at it like science or like murder.
Out of all the documents released by the Holy See over the last two decades, the "Dignitas Personae, an Instruction of Certain Bioethical Questions" is the harshest and aims at setting the church on a unified position in issues regarding bioengineering and medicine.