To the
participants in a Congress of Perinatal Medicine
THERE IS NO MORAL JUSTIFICATION
FOR NEONATAL EUTHANASIA
On Thursday, 14 April, the Holy Father received
in audience the participants in the eleventh European Congress of Perinatal Medicine
and addressed them as follows:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
1. I
am happy to meet you on the occasion of the XI European Congress on Perinatal
Medicine. I express to you my greetings
which I extend with a deep sense of appreciation to the organizers and
spokesmen of the Symposium.
Your
presence, ladies and gentlemen, reminds me of the scientific and therapeutic
commitment which has characterized your particular branch of medicine during
these last decades. Perinatal medicine
is concerned with the specialized and persevering effort to save, protect and
promote the life and health of the unborn and newborn child and, at the same
time, the life and health of the mother.
Your branch of medicine is completely imbued with this ethos in favour of
nascent life; it was this finality that
has been responsible for the scientific progress made in it and for the
improvement in the quality of prenatal, perinatal and neonatal care.
Service of life and
maternity
2.
The broad programme of your international congress makes evident, even to the
non-professional, the moral importance, scientific value and encouraging
results of your labour. My thoughts now
turn to all those babies whom you have brought to life, notwithstanding the
difficulties of a difficult gestation, presenting them to the eyes and embrace
of their anxiously awaiting parents and family.
To
you I express my thanks together with those who have been delighted at the
birth of these new lives which they have received with deep and ever new
affection from your expert and helpful hands.
I
wish to tell you that this work at the service of life and maternity speaks of
itself before the Creator and draws down his blessing upon you, your families,
and your work.
I
also wish to be the spokesman of the voice of the Church, Mother and Teacher,
to encourage you to preserve your practice and medical art inviolate and intact
from certain social and ideological pressures, from the temptations of human
weakness and from the abuses of innovative technologies, so that your medical ethos itself, which is fostered by a
long tradition of humanity, and your consciences may be ever in conformity with
the moral norm and the paternal Will of the Creator.
3.
It is well known, alas! that into this
very delicate phase of the existence of the unborn child there has crept the
abominable temptation to terminate the innocent life, especially when it
appears to be imperfect and not completely healthy, and sometimes even for
reasons still more illogical and, at any rate, never justifying.
Timely, therefore, is the confirmation repeated in the recent
instruction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Donum Vitae: “The human being is to be respected, as a
person, from the very first moment of its existence” (P. I, n.1). It is the teaching of the Council which
states: “Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of
conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes”. (Gaudium et Spes, n. 51). This is the
Church's constant teaching and practice.
The
Instruction quoted above offers moreover valuable indications concerning the
conditions required for the lawfulness of prenatal diagnosis and for
therapeutic interventions on embryos and fetuses before their birth, while it
explicitly recalls the moral prohibition of experimentation
on fetuses and embryos.
The
degree of respect for nascent life in all its phases of development in the
mother's womb is the premise of that respect which should follow in the
neonatal stage also and especially as regards the seriously premature and the newborn suffering from malformation. It is the logic of death, innate in the
legitimization of abortion, which in some places today moves some to ask for
the legalization of neonatal euthanasia and to begin the practice of it in the
case of fetuses with a disability and of those whose neonatal existence,
because of their premature birth, appears, even when possible, to be faced with
certain difficulties and risks.
Some
claim a presumed “right to a healthy child” and they regard the so-called “quality of life” as an overriding criterion
for the acceptance of life.
Every life is sacred
It
must clearly be reaffirmed that every life is sacred and that a possible
deformity can never justify a death sentence, not even when it is the parents
themselves, in the throes of emotion and disappointed in their expectations,
who request euthanasia by means of suspension of treatment and nourishment.
Quality of life must be sought, in so far as it is possible, by
proportionate and appropriate treatment, but it presupposes life and the right
to life for everyone, without discrimination and abandonment.
The
very history of your branch of medicine, versatile and admirable for its resource
and progress, is opposed to acquiescence in programmes of death such as
abortion and neonatal euthanasia.
Those children who pass through your hands and go out from the cradles
of your nurseries and hospital wards are the very ones who will bless you
together with their parents. Moreover,
you will be blessed especially by the Lord Jesus, the Word made flesh, who
voluntarily offered himself in sacrifice for mankind, and rose on the third day
to bring life and resurrection to all humanity.
In his Name, and as a pledge of this glory and a sign of his approval for all you are doing and will do and teach in the defence of nascent life, I impart to you my blessing, while renewing my wish of peace in the risen Lord.