We must continue to work courageously for a ban on IVF procedures

Today's BBC story says it all:

"Women whose frozen embryos were due to be destroyed in the next few weeks have had the threat lifted. The time limit on storing embryos is due to rise from five years to 10 from October. But some women faced losing their embryos in the remaining weeks before the change comes in, as they breached the five-year rule. Ministers have ruled that these 'out of time' embryos need not now be destroyed."

Amidst all the challenges faced by the pro-life movement, we must continue to work openly and courageously for a ban on IVF procedures which has led to such a travesty of justice for these tiny human beings - who "need not now be destroyed" by virtue of a decision of government ministers!

Opposing in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) does not imply denying babies, conceived by IVF, their humanity. However, it's vital to oppose IVF as a way of conceiving children since it turns human beings into commodities to be brought to birth or discarded at will.

In addition, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) put it in Donum Vitae:

"In consequence of the fact that they have been produced in vitro, those embryos which art not transferred into the body of the mother and are called 'spare' are exposed to an absurd fate, with no possibility of their being offered safe means of survival which can be licitly pursued."

Since the birth to the first IVF child over thirty years ago – more than two million embryos have been discarded, or frozen, or selectively aborted, or miscarried or used in destructive experiments. (2,137,924 human embryos were created by specialists while assisting couples in the UK to have babies between 1991 and 2005, according to BioNews. During this period, the HFEA informs us that the total of live babies born through IVF procedures was 109,469.)

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