Evangelicals, Catholics back bioethics law
OTTAWA, ON—Evangelicals and Roman Catholics in Canada agree on one thing at least: caution and regulation when it comes to the use of reproductive technologies.
In a hearing before the Supreme Court of Canada on April 24, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops jointly submitted a written argument in support of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, a piece of legislation passed in 2004 that bans practices such as human cloning, buying and selling eggs, paying a mother to carry a child, or altering human DNA.
In a case between the Attorney General of Quebec and the Attorney General of Canada, Quebec is challenging the Act, arguing for the right to make its own regulations regarding the use of reproductive technologies.
Quebec doesn't dispute the things the Act outlaws. Rather, it takes issue with the regulatory sections of the Act. Quebec argues that practices the Act regulates—surrogate motherhood, the donation of eggs or sperm, the use of reproductive material to aid conception or the use of embryos for research—are medical issues rather than matters of criminal law. As such, they would fall under the jurisdiction of each province.
The provinces of New Brunswick, Alberta and Saskatchewan also intervened in the case, supporting Quebec's position.
Don Hutchinson, vice-president and general legal counsel for the EFC, is concerned that this challenge—which also calls into question the penalty section of the Act—threatens the legislation as a whole.
Hutchinson believes reproductive technologies are matters of human life and dignity that ought to be governed by a single standard upheld by the federal government. The sections of the Act are interconnected, and the legislation would become seriously flawed if some sections were carved out from the whole, he says. "For example, if the challenged penalty sections are struck down, it would be illegal to engage in cloning, but there would be no penalty if you do."
Together the EFC and the CCCB speak for nearly half of the population of Canada, says Hutchinson. "Two different religious communities—albeit sharing the same Christian faith—are holding a common position based on the Scriptures and the law and seeking to present that in unity. That's a very important thing when your arguments are a statement that this is the position on the dignity of human life generally held in Canadian society. That would be a hard argument to make if we didn't agree."
Most stringent in the world
While the Act isn't perfect, it's the most stringent set of laws on assisted human reproduction passed by any nation in the world, says Hutchinson. "It shows the greatest respect for human life of any legislation in this field anywhere."
The EFC has been paying close attention and participating in hearings ever since Canada struck a royal commission in 1989 to examine the ethics of reproductive technology.
In 2004 Bill C-13, the Assisted Human Reproduction Act was passed, based on the Baird Commission's recommendations.
The Act prohibits:
• cloning humans;
• creating or growing human embryos for
any purpose other than the creation of
a child;
• cloning stem cells;
• using any procedure to select the sex of
a fetus;
• making changes to human DNA that would
pass from one generation to the next;
• buying or selling sperm, eggs or other
reproductive material;
• paying a woman to be surrogate mother.
The Act allows, but regulates:
• voluntarily acting as a surrogate mother;
• using embryos, eggs or sperm to assist in
conception;
• fertilizing an embryo outside a womb
• freezing one's reproductive material for
later use
• donating sperm or eggs.
Property or gifts?
Jennie McLaurin, an American health expert who teaches bioethics at Regent College, says kudos to Canada for agreeing on a piece of legislation as comprehensive and responsible as the Assisted Human Reproduction Act. The U.S. has nothing like it.
"It's good to recognize explicitly that the way a child comes into being is a national issue and is a community issue," McLaurin says. "It paves the way to recognize things like whether child can be for sale or whether eggs can be for sale."
"This law is good. It doesn't actually say you shouldn't use assisted reproduction, but that when you do it shouldn't be a business venture and it shouldn't be something that manipulates the products of the embryo for use other than the development of a human being.
"What are children for? Are people gifts or are they property? When we look at laws around surrogacy and cloning and sex selection we get very close to looking at people as property and not as gift. And then it's not all that different from going backwards several hundred years to slavery."
McLaurin believes the Christian community has a public role to play as technologies advance in helping society sort out what practices recognize the dignity of human beings and what don't.
"We have a responsibility to be well-informed on what assisted reproduction is, what it means, what are the current possibilities, the possible repercussions and the theological concerns," she says. Then the Church needs to share it's understanding with the wider society.
It will likely be four to six months before the Supreme Court rules on the case.
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