PRESENTATION TO HOUSE COMMITTEE ON STATE AFFAIRS

                              TEXAS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                                                   APRIL 12, 2007

                                         Fr. Joseph C. Howard, Jr.

(Click here for a PDF of this testimony)
 

I would like to thank the members of this Committee for allowing me to present testimony in relation to our current scientific and moral knowledge of the early human embryo specifically as regards stem cell research.

 

The interest of the Catholic Church as regards the human embryo is founded upon the dignity of the human being. Indeed, the personal dignity of every human being demands the respect, the defense, and the promotion of their rights. These rights are inherent, universal, and inviolable. No one—as an individual, group, authority, or state—can eliminate the moral rights of the human person as such rights find their source in God Himself. It must be recognized that the common outcry today which is justly made on behalf of human rights such as the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture—is false and illusory-- if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination. This takes on paramount significance in light of the scientific and moral knowledge we have today as regards the early human embryo prior to two weeks of development.

 

 Modern medical science—particularly human embryology and genetics—continues to re-affirm that the early human embryo is from the very beginning a living human being. For example, we know that the human zygote, which is the result of fertilization, possesses  from the very start a unique human genome (DNA) that is different from the mother and the father. Current fascinating biomedical technologies such as 4-D  ultrasound imaging, amniocentesis, chorionic villi sampling, electronic fetal heart monitoring, radioimmunochemistry, fetoscopy, and contact embryoscopy point to one and only one valid scientific conclusion: from the moment of inception the early human embryo is a living human being at the earliest stage of biological development. While modern biological science provides invaluable contributions to our understanding of the “substance” generated at fertilization, the issue of what constitutes a human person is not properly a biological matter—it is a moral one.

 

The proper understanding of marriage cannot be understood apart from the Natural Moral Law as illuminated and enriched by Divine Revelation. Each child has the right to be conceived and carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up within marriage: it is through the secure and recognized relationship to his parents that the child can discover  his own identity and achieve his own proper human development.Procedures such as In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and human cloning directly violate the Natural Law by refusing to respect this natural right of the child’s conception occurring through the actions proper to his parents love in sexual intercourse. One can easily see why procedures such as IVF which violate the child’s natural right lend themselves toward  the child being rendered an object who is readily manipulated leading to the involvement of the courts attempting to answer a fundamental question: who are the true parents of the child? Some medical studies have found an unexpectedly high rate of congenital malformations among babies generated through IVF and GIFT. I would suggest that we should in no manner be surprised in seeing such consequences when there exists such an action that is clearly an egregious violation of the Natural Law.

 
The dialogue of precisely what constitutes a human person is properly grounded only in moral philosophy and moral theology. This is necessarily the case because of the etymology of the word “person”, which originates  from Christianity. Indeed, a person is an individual substance of a rational nature.How would it be possible to discuss what a “person” is without making reference to Christianity which provides us with such a notion? Some philosophers today have tried to introduce a distinction between a “human being” and a “human person.”But as John Paul II stated when he addressed the Pontifical Academy of Life on February 27, 2002, the distinction made between a human being and a human person is an artificial distinction without scientific or philosophical foundation. Some  today—the noted Australian philosopher at Princeton, Professor  Peter Singer,-- are attempting to re-define the term “person” as revealed by Singer’s third new commandment: not all members of the species Homo sapiens are persons, and not all persons are members of the species Homo sapiens.Still others today reject  the classical philosophical understanding of what it means to say something is in “potency” or has “potentiality.” For example, when  we say that the early human zygote who is a human embryo is an individual substance with a rational nature, we recognize that the rational nature is in potency. The early human embryo cannot manifest rational operations due to primitive biological development anymore than a newborn infant can. But to possess a rational nature in potency means that by necessity  anything with such  “potentiality” is already in a state of actual being. To have potency necessarily means that one is already in a state of actual being—not that one will at some point in time come into being. This is critical today as related to the generation of human embryos through IVF.  It is unfortunately all too common today for philosophers and scientists to make the claim that human embryos generated by IVF are only “potential” human beings implying  that they only become actual human beings if they successfully implant into  the uterus or are brought to a live birth.Such arguments allow for Singer to make the claim that the early human embryo is comparable to a head of  lettuce!  This serious betrayal of what “potentiality” truly reflects is again grounded in an effort to re-define the classical moral vocabulary.It fails to recognize that even though the process of IVF is an unethical procedure, what is generated by IVF in a glass dish is a living human embryo who manifests potency which necessitates that he or she is presently alive. It would be absurd to even attempt to make the claim that the first child born using IVF (Louise Brown) did not exist as an actual human embryonic being  in the glass dish yet somehow was magically transformed into an actual human being once she successfully implanted into the endometrium of the uterus. Today we know with no equivocation that at the moment of fertilization, a new and unique human genome exists; furthermore, that new DNA contains in potency all of the cells, tissues, organs, and systems of the new human person. Indeed, the separation of actuality from potentiality  in any living human organism from inception until natural death can only reflect the death of that organism who was  previously alive.