“The right of the child is infinitely superior to the right to have a child” and there exists “an invisible moral frontier which technological progress cannot overstep”: that’s the warning of the Belgian Bishops’ Conference in commenting on the bill on medically assisted childbirth that will shortly be voted on by the country’s Senate. Anonymous donation of embryos; insemination with the sperm of a dead man; pre-implant diagnosis for the selection of healthy embryos and opening to so-called “neonatal medicine”, i.e. the birth of a child from a selected embryo so that the cells of its umbilical cord may be used for the treatment of a congenitally ill brother or sister: these, explain the bishops in a statement, are the main points of the bill, to which they reply that “everything that is technically possible does not become ipso facto morally admissible”. While expressing satisfaction at scientific progress, the Belgian bishops stress that “there exists an invisible moral frontier” which scientific progress cannot overstep: namely the moral frontier of the dignity of man. In this bill, say the bishops, “the embryo is not considered as an end, but is treated as a means to satisfy the desire for a child”, whether on the part of married or unmarried, heterosexual or homosexual couples, or even of single women”. Faced by the risk of “fabricating biological orphans”, the bishops stress that “the right of the child is infinitely superior to the right to have a child”.
