A glance at all the human rights instruments in the world shows that there is at least one common thread. In order to observe and follow it, we should examine some of the following instances.
The United Nations Millennium Declaration of 2000 states in Article 2 of Chapter I that world leaders have a responsibility to uphold human dignity and a duty to protect the most vulnerable, especially “the children of the world, to whom the future belongs”.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), introduced in its 25th year, states most clearly that the human person has dignity and worth and that such dignity and worth is inherent and not conditional upon sex, race or any other category or criterion.
The convention quotes the earlier Declaration on the Rights of the Child, specifically where it calls for special safeguards and appropriate legal protection to be afforded to the child, “before as well as after birth”. This principle continues in Article 6 of the convention, where it says that a child has the inherent right to life. It adds that a child shall have the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.
Let us not accept to freeze our young. No one deserves to be frozen
The next instrument worth looking at is the European Convention on Human Rights. In Article 2 it reaffirms the right to life. Although it makes some exceptions to the right to life, none of these include embryo freezing or abortion.
This is confirmed by a 52-page analysis of the right to life in the European Convention carried out by Gregor Puppinck of the European Centre for Law and Justice and published in the Irish Journal of Legal Studies.
The common aim behind Article 2 of the convention, as well as all those quoted, is that laws exist to serve humanity.
In order to do so in the best possible way, they must protect human beings from hostile external forces, including those perpetrated by other human beings. The common philosophy binding all these legal points is precisely the very natural urge to protect and defend fellow human beings.
Quoting laws and arguing legal points may well seem cold and clinical. However, laws are the instruments which organise day-to-day life.
In the present case of the proposed amendments to the Embryo Protection Act, a law which protects embryos from being frozen and which protects them from a myriad of other unsavoury activities, would, if amended according to the current proposals, result in a law which spectacularly fails to uphold and safeguard inherent human dignity and worth.
It does not take an expert in any field to answer the question whether freezing a very young human being respects his orher dignity.
Freezing one or more embryos, besides being a violation of that person’s inherent dignity, is also wrong on another level. If one thinks about what things are normally frozen, one normally thinks of meat and fish. Is it respectful to treat unique and distinct human beings in a way one normally stores meat and fish for eventual cooking?
The dilemmas which couples who have frozen embryos go through is well documented. In a study carried out in the US by Robert Nachtigall, a reproductive endocrinologist, 58 couples were interviewed. One woman, who preferred to remain anonymous, said: “I have six in the bank. They call to me. I hate to talk about it. But they call to me.”
A headcount performed in 2002 in the US estimated that there were around 400,000 frozen embryos. Today, 13 years later, they have risen to a million.
Janis Elspas and her husband are a couple who have 14 embryos frozen in liquid nitrogen somewhere in California. The decision of what to do with their frozen embryos is a problem they find very difficult to make, given the choice between bearing the children, donating them to another infertile couple, donating them to scientific research (resulting in their death), letting them thaw (and therefore die), and finally, to keep them in a frozen limbo.
Sometime after having undergone IVF treatment in 2001, Celine Dion said: “This frozen embryo that is in New York is my child waiting to be brought to life.”
The unnaturalness of the procedure of embryo freezing is reflected in the countless and contradictory lines of thought adopted by different couples, legal experts and courts.
Nachtigall said that manycouples seemed to feel a parental obligation to protect their embryos. This makes sense as it is consonant with the inherent human dignity of each and every one of us, whichin turn should compel us, to have the utmost respect for anotherperson’s human dignity, irrespective of that person’s age and stateof development.
We are all each other’s keepers. For the love of each other and for the love of humanity, let us not accept to freeze our young. No one deserves to be frozen.
Ramon Bonett Sladden is a final year law student and a member of Pro-Life Network.