A situation of ethical limbo and preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

In my previous paper I argued that if in vitro fertilization (IVF) is legal and practiced there is no moral ground to object to legalization of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). My opponent raises an objection that my paper “fails to address the ethical argumentation of one key opponent of IVF – the Catholic Church”. In this reply I show that her/his thesis that embryos created during IVF are in ‘ethical limbo’ and “fall outside the moral universe of Christian ethics” does not undermine my argumentation and masks the serious problem Catholics have with the moral status of early embryos. I start with a short info about the context of my previous paper, since it is relevant for this discussion and, as my opponent notices, I am “a bioethicist in a country where the statements of the Catholic Church have significant impact on medico-ethical policy.”[1] In 2012 the Bioethics Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences produced an Opinion calling for the regulation of PGD (now it is not regulated but practiced). Some members of the Committee objected to the Opinion invoking their pro-life views. If their position were accepted by the legislator, PGD would be illegal, although IVF, prenatal diagnosis and the termination of pregnancy in some rare cases (e.g. when there is a great probability that a future child will suffer from an irreversible and serious disease) are legal. This could lead to absurd situations when an embryo implanted during the IVF procedure could be legally aborted, because of genetic illness that could have been tested during PGD. I assumed that this legal solution would be hard to swallow for everyone, no matter which moral views she or he subscribes to. So I proposed a universal argument claiming that if IVF is legal and practiced there is no moral ground to object legalization of PGD.[2] My critic cites Dignitas Personae (DP), the key document of the Catholic Church on bioethics published in 2008. It claims that “the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved.”[3] In my opponent’s opinion I miss “this nuance in the Church’s writings” that early embryos are in a situation of ‘ethical limbo’ (the phrase of my opponent), “their ontological status is so removed from the natural order that they fall outside the moral universe of Christian ethics” and “the absurd existential state