After the open letter to the nation criticizing the law on abortion on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of its ratification in 1967, the presidents of the Episcopal Conferences of England and Wales and Scotland, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Cardinal Keith O’Brien jointly condemned the new legislation on embryos and artificial insemination. In a letter to the “Times” the two cardinals wrote that the attempt to abolish from the new law the clause which protects “the child’s right to have a father” subordinates the natural rights of a child to the couple’s desires. The amendment, which will be discussed these days by the House of Lords, allows clinics practising IVF to ignore the future child’s right to know his father when processing artificial insemination requests. In this way, homosexual women couple are accepted as the future parents of a child. The law was equally criticized by the Anglican Bishop of York John Sentamu, who claimed that “individualism today allows the right of a future parent to prevail over the child’s well-being”. The bill, which will be discussed in the next months by the two Houses also envisages hybrid embryos, half-human and half-animal for research purposes and amendments will be introduced to modify the law on abortion.
