Artificial Insemination and Genetic Engineering

Key Idea: All life comes from and is created by God

Over the last few years medical science has advanced to such a degree that it is possible to create a baby with no fewer than 5 parents. The woman who bears the child (The surrogate mother), the woman who donates the egg, the man who donates the sperm & the couple who wanted the baby.

One technique that allows this sort of 'miracle' to happen is called Artificial Insemination (AI) when live sperm, either from a donor (AID) or from the husband (AIH), is injected into a woman's uterus at the time of ovulation. Another approach is to transfer fertile embryos into an infertile mother. This has been used for an infertile mother incapable of otherwise carrying a child. With doctors and researchers achieving powers over procreation that far outstrip traditional laws and conventional morality there are many questions to be answered. Should surrogate motherhood be allowed? Should we interfere with nature? What if the child is deformed? Does a sperm donor have any obligations or rights to the eventual offspring? Do all couples have a right to reproduce? How far can scientists go in using embryos for experimentation in order to push back the frontiers of medical knowledge? What should be done with spare embryos? Have human beings the right to play God?

A Roman Catholic View of AI

"Artificial Insemination (AI) is different from natural intercourse. As used with animals this poses no moral problem. However the Church teaches that among humans, AI violates the dignity of the person and the sanctity of marriage. It is therefore contrary to the Natural and Divine Law. In an address to Catholic doctors, Pope Pius XII condemned AI. It is condemned because a third person becoming involved in a marriage is like "mechanical adultery": the donor fathers a child (with his sperm) yet he has no responsibility to the child; and a process that isolates the sacred act of creating life from the marriage union is a violation of the marriage union (which alone is the way to create life). However, if the marriage act is preserved, then various clinical techniques designed to help create new life are not to be condemned."

Adapted from Modern Catholic Dictionary

There is disagreement among Christians whether AI should be allowed. Most Churches agree that AI is OK as it is the who not the how that is important when considering the baby. So AID is considered wrong but AIH right. For this reason surrogacy is also considered wrong. Some religious groups, however, argue that new life must be formed in an entirely natural method and it is God's choice if a couple are unable to have children by these natural means. All the churches agree that AI should only take place between married couples.

Genetic engineering & Embryo research

Doctors are also beginning to unlock the genetic code that determines life. It might well be possible in the not too distant future to eliminate deformity or disability and to choose the gender, sexuality, eye and hair colour, intelligence and personality of our babies. The debate on this hinges on the question "when does an embryo become a human being ?" For some groups this is at the moment of conception.

"The human embryo has the right to proper respect. "Test tube babies" are real babies not simple embryos to be manipulated, frozen or left to die.... Human beings are not be treated as a means to an end"

The Roman Catholic Truth Society - 1985

For other groups research that will benefit the majority of humanity in the long term is permissible, but only up to a certain limit, and under certain conditions;

"We support the recommendation that research, under license, be permitted on embryos up to 14 days old and agree that embryos should not be created just for scientific research"

Anglican report - 1994