The European Parliament Downgrades Embryos

On September 12, MEPs adopted the report on the new rules governing the use of “substances of human origin” (SoHO) in the European Union (EU), by 483 votes for, 52 against, and 89 abstentions.

At first glance, the intention is laudable, since it facilitates the pooling of resources on a European scale to guarantee access to medical treatments for all EU citizens. But as is often the case, the devil is in the details.

The approved project mentions putting embryos on the same footing as “human substances such as blood and its components – red/white blood cells, plasma, tissues and cells – used for transfusions, therapies, transplants or medically assisted reproduction.” It is a blur that puts an embryo and a red blood cell in the same bag.

The ambiguity was quickly noted by the Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), which reacted through its secretary general, Fr. Manuel Barrios-Prieto: “The danger lies in the possibility that  such a definition may degrade the dignity and value of human life, creating an unacceptable equivalence between embryos and fetuses and simple skin cells or blood plasma.”

It is a worrying gap when the regulations adopted by the EU Parliament “will set the course for future discussion regarding prenatal human life in European transplantation and pharmaceutical law.”

Article 58 of the text approved by the Parliament in Strasbourg also poses serious ethical problems that the European bishops point out, because now “preliminary genetic tests on embryos and fetuses are authorized and even made obligatory, potentially opening the way to the selection of life and raising concerns about the compatibility with the right to self-determination for both donors and recipients.”

Since the vote on September 12, the SoHO law has served as the official position of Parliament with a view to the upcoming negotiations with the European Commission and the Council of the European Union.

In this bleak perspective, the COMECE prelates insist that the right of the various EU member states to “regulate this highly ethical issue themselves” and to “refuse to implement the new law” be ensured.

There we see that the utopia of a “supranational European community” defended by Robert Schuman – the “father of European unity” whom Pope Francis declared “venerable” in 2021 – is once again turning into a dystopia. It is a society where the human being created in the image of God has only a material and quantitative value, equal to any other commodity, usable and disposable as desired.