Sir, - Senator Mary Henry (June 3rd) mentions the Pro-Life Campaign's opposition to her Bill on assisted human reproduction. Allow me to explain. The Pro-Life Campaign is concerned with the protection of human life from conception to natural death. Like the Medical Council, we wish to see the human embryo protected from deliberate destruction and from any form of manipulation which does not respect its humanity.
Senator Henry seems to recognise the humanity of embryos when she seeks to apply regulations pertaining to adoption. Unfortunately, however, her Bill is deficient in a number of aspects and would leave the human embryo exposed to considerable dangers and treatment incompatible with respect for its humanity. For example, her Bill accepts cryo-preservation (freezing) of human embryos. Hence we do, as she says in her letter, oppose her Bill.
The law in Germany insists that no more than three embryos can be produced and that they be implanted in the womb straight away, avoiding the problem of "surplus" human embryos following freezing and thawing.
The Medical Council ethical guidelines forbid the deliberate destruction of human embryos. As recent British experience shows, once embryo freezing is undertaken, then provision is made for the disposal of those embryos that will not be subsequently used. The Medical Council was perfectly aware of this fact when it explicitly forbade the destruction of embryos.
Writing recently in a medical journal, Dr Walsh of the J. Marion Simms IVF Clinic admitted that the vast majority of frozen embryos will not survive. Many die as a direct consequence of the freezing/thawing process; those which survive this process usually fail to implant. To persist in freezing embryos in the face of such consequences goes against the clear intention of the Medical Council guidelines, which state that all embryos must be used for normal implantation and, again, that embryos must not be deliberately destroyed.
In view of the fact that IVF is so intimately involved with the unborn, the Pro-Life Campaign believes it would be prudent to address the constitutional protection of the unborn before attempting further legal regulation of IVF. This is one of the reasons we continue to urge the Government to stop procrastinating and publish the Green Paper on abortion. - Yours, etc.,
Joe McCarroll PhD, Chairperson, Pro-Life Campaign, Gardiner Street Upper, Dublin 1.