The signatures collected in Portugal to press for a referendum on medically assisted conception are already estimated to be over 75,000. That’s the threshold needed to oblige the Assembly of the Republic to discuss the proposal, reports the Portuguese Catholic press agency Ecclesia, explaining that “this could be the first referendum called on the initiative of the people in the history of our democracy”. The initiative refers in particular to four bills on assisted fertility discussed and approved by the Assembly of the Republic last November, before passing to the scrutiny of the Commission of Health. The text is now under discussion and being voted on, article by article. This process will be followed by the vote in the plenary of the Assembly and the sending of the legislation to the President of the Republic for his endorsement. Isilda Pegado, President of the Federation of the associations for the defence of life and the pro-referendum Committee, explains that the collection of signatures was “a great victory of democracy, because the referendum is a belated addition to the civil rights in our country”. Electors will be asked to reply to the following questions: “Do you agree with a law that permits the creation of human embryos, in excess of the number of those that have to be transferred to the mother immediately and only once? Do you agree with a law that permits a child to be conceived without a biological father and mother being united by a stable relationship? Do you agree that the law should admit recourse to surrogate motherhood, permitting the gestation in the uterus by a mother whose child is not biologically hers?”. In this regard Monsignor Antonio Montes Moreira, vice-president of the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference and bishop of Bragança-Miranda, emphasized that “the bill that is about to be voted on must take account of two fundamental principles: the end does not justify the means and not everything that is technically possible is ethically acceptable”. In this light, he said, “two instruments contained in the text being put to the vote must be rejected: heterologous fertilization outside marriage and the recourse to embryos for therapeutic purposes, with their consequent destruction”.
