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july 2008 What in life is sacred?Is sacredness found in the potential, or the actuality of being human, or the responsibility we have to find new ways to help one another ñ for example in fighting diseases or overcoming childlessness? Or, impossibly it seems, is it all three? Despite the recent safe passage of the human fertilisation and embryology bill through the House of Commons many people are left agonising over questions of morality linked to reproductive rights and scientific research. Allan Smith can understand why
Irecall sitting in a seminar in Kings College London on Christian ethics and human cloning, where I heard that in vitro fertilization (IVF) was unacceptable to a truly Christian understanding, because it lacked the dignity that was appropriate to the creation of a new life.
The speaker was, of course, unaware that my wife and I had some months previously been through our fourth round of IVF. It had been made clear to us that the only way we were likely to have children of our own would be through some form of medical intervention. The process had meant a huge commitment for us. After wrestling with our own understanding of the ethics, it was not simply the finance but the whole emotional rollercoaster. Your lives are put on hold as you enter a cycle of treatment, there are drugs to inject, scans to conduct. All plans are set aside as everything has to take second place to the treatment. And the result is far from guaranteed. It might seem undignified to some, but uncommitted it cannot be.
Then there is the moment of embryo transfer. For a few moments you get to see the small clump of cells that could (just could) develop into a human child, your child. It was only when I heard people like us being dismissed as non-Christian that I fully realised how deeply I was grieving for the loss of those potential children. To this day I don’t know how I contained my anger at such a crass, judgemental statement.
This article is continued in the July 08 edition of Reform.
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