“A child’s right is infinitely more important than the right to a child” and there is “an invisible moral frontier which technological progress must bow to”. This is the warning given by the Belgian Bishops Conference about the bill of law about in vitro fertilisation, which is to be voted on by the Senate soon. Anonymous embryo donation, insemination with a dead man’s sperm; pre-implantation diagnosis for the selection of healthy embryos and opening to the so-called "therapeutic baby”, i.e. the birth of a baby from a selected embryo so that the cells from its umbilical chord can be used to treat a sibling: these, explain the bishops in a note, are the main points of the bill of law, to which they reply that "all that is technically possible does not automatically become morally admissible”. Although they say they are happy about scientific progress, the bishops insist that "there is an invisible moral frontier which it must bow to: man’s dignity”. In this bill of law, go on the bishops, "the embryo is not considered an end but is treated as a means to fulfil the wish of having a child” of “married or unmarried, heterosexual or gay couples, as well as single women”. Before the risk of "manufacturing biological orphans", the bishops repeat that “a child’s right is infinitely more important than the right to a child”.
