Nicholas Wood, International Herald Tribune, February 25, 2005
Bishops in Croatia assail fertility method
They tell Catholics IVF is 'serious crime'
ZAGREB, Croatia After two years of trying for a second child, Ana-Maria Cividini-Makar and her husband, Boris, successfully had a baby boy in August last year.
.
By Christmas, the joy of the couple - both practicing Catholics - was somewhat dulled. Croatia's Catholic Church issued statements declaring the procedure they had used to help conceive their son as immoral.
.
The declarations, made in a booklet distributed over the holiday season by the Croatian Bishops Conference, criticized the use of artificial insemination and in-vitro fertilization, or IVF, as ethnically questionable and "disturbing both the dignity and the sense of marriage."
.
On Feb. 4, churchmen went further, saying at a news conference held to help explain the booklet that couples seeking IVF treatment were committing "a serious crime" in the eyes of the church.
.
The statements were made as the government in this heavily Catholic country considered a proposed law on medically assisted reproduction that could allow the donation of eggs and embryos to parents, and in some cases to single mothers who suffer from infertility.
.
Since 80 percent of Croatia's four million people claim that they are practicing Catholics, the church's intervention has prompted intense debate, and the conservative government, which originally had planned to introduce the law in Parliament last September, has put it on indefinite hold.
.
Since Croatia declared independence in 1991, the Catholic Church has played a leading role in trying to define national identity. As memories of the bloody struggle for independence recede, however, the church has come into increased conflict with many who hold a more liberal vision of Croatian society.
.
In the past year alone, the church has been involved in quarrels over the offer of free yoga lessons for schoolteachers (the Bishops Conference said teachers who attended yoga classes might bring "heretical" ideas into the classroom), shopping on Sunday and religious education in schools.
.
The Croatian bishops' main criticism of medically assisted reproduction focuses on in-vitro fertilization and the way in which several embryos are created. While some may be implanted in the womb, the remainder are frozen for possible use later. Once a couple decides they are no longer needed, they can be destroyed.
.
The Bishops Conference statement earlier this month considered that if 15,000 children in Croatia had been born by medically assisted reproduction, "then we should seriously think about the fate of 285,000 brothers and sisters who died, killed or frozen. That is why such medically assisted reproduction presents a serious crime against conceived human lives and their dignity."
.
The booklet given over Christmas, titled "A child, a gift or an object?" also stated that research showed "that children conceived with techniques of medically assisted reproduction suffer from significantly more health problems, disorders and diseases," as well as psychological problems.
.
Medical experts here criticized the statement about the number of embryos destroyed as misleading (most medical centers here have not destroyed any embryos and are awaiting the new legislation before they do so). The claim that children conceived by such methods would suffer more health problems is false, doctors here said. However, parents' groups say both declarations have had significant impact among Croatia's Catholics.
.
"I felt insulted," said Cividini-Makar, referring to the booklet and adding that she was worried about how friends and neighbors might react to the knowledge that her son was born with the help of artificial insemination. "It is not like we did something dirty," she said.
.
"A woman who wants to have a baby will do everything she can to have one," said Karmen Rivoseki-Simic, a member of Parents in Action, a support network in Croatia. "She does not need any more obstacles than she already has."
International Herald Tribune, 25.2.05.
Odgovori s citatom
