Vatican opens conference on ethics of IVF

A senior Vatican official today said there was no moral justification for discriminating between embryos used in in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedures, setting the tone for a Vatican conference on the ethical treatment of embryos before they are implanted.

Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, who heads the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Life, said the theory that an embryo created in a laboratory was merely a “pre-embryo” – and thus not worthy of legal protection and the right to life as an already implanted embryo – was morally wrong.

“We must make it very clear that the discrimination between implanted embryos and embryos prior to implantation is a theory without any grounds, without any justification,” Sgreccia said.

Sgreccia has said the Vatican is hosting the conference to review whether current scientific data support the Vatican’s hard-line position on in-vitro fertilisation and its belief that life begins at conception and deserves full legal protection from then on.