Introduction:

This book will provide a reference for pro-life activists, students, legislators, teachers, clergy and interested individuals about the range of activities and procedures that make up what we have referred to generally as the Early Life Issues, that is those surrounding artificial procreation; the creation and manipulation of human beings at the embryonic stage of life. The subject is immense and is one of the fastest growing scientific fields of our day. Effectively to defend the fullness of the pro-life position, familiarity with the basic concepts is necessary and not difficult.

The term, new reproductive technologies (NRT) refers to all methods of artificial procreation either sexually by the joining of ova and sperm or asexually by various methods that have become known collectively as “cloning”.

Outside the immediate realm of NRT but closely related to them, recent developments have given us the intricate world of embryonic research, experimental cloning and genetic manipulation. In the pure research areas, medical and other experimentation is performed on living human embryos, usually those left over (often called “spare”) after various artificial fertilization techniques and stored cryogenically; or so-called “fresh embryos”: those created either sexually or by cloning for the purpose of experimentation.

In the second category is included all kinds of manipulation of human life at the embryonic stage for eugenic or other purposes, germ-line alteration, and selection/diagnosis techniques.

The two areas of study together make up the Early Life Issues (ELI). The second area, that of pure research, has created an entire new field in the biotechnology industry which is lobbying heavily for the use of live human beings at the embryonic stage of life. Often the research proposed is purely experimental and does not pertain to fertility. In some cases, the research does not even aim at finding cures for diseases and represents the end-result of the aims of the eugenics movement to manipulate and “improve” the human species.

When studying the Early Life Issues, a firm grasp on the basics of the pro-life philosophy is essential. Without understanding the twin premises – that a human being in the fullness of his moral status exists at the earliest moments of the single-cell stage; and that human beings may not be killed, experimented upon, donated or in any way treated as chattel – the pro-life position on ELI cannot be grasped or defended effectively. This book, therefore, will outline the philosophical problems presented by those who advocate for creating and using embryonic human beings for research and provide the means for making effective counter arguments.

The text is divided into five parts:

Part I gives an explanation and description of the various activities that form the subject of the Early Life Issues, including artificial procreation techniques and purely experimental research.

Part II, on the ethics of the Early Life Issues, examines the nature of the ethics problem of our times. It offers a brief description of the philosophical movements that have shaped the current situation and offers a short course in making the pro-life case against embryo experimentation and new reproductive technologies in general.

Part III will give an overview of the current situation in Canada, a brief history of the pro-life effort surrounding the current legislation.

Part IV gives a brief overview of the situation around the world.

Part V gives a list of resources where further information and/or indepth studies can be found both online and in print.

Appendices include:

• glossaries of relevant biotechnological and philosophical terms,
• the full text of the Vatican’s document “Donum Vitae” that presents much of the argument made in this text,
• Campaign Life Coalition’s document on Canada’s reproductive technologies legislation, “A Final Critique of C-13”.