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German court approves genetic screening in IVF

The German Supreme Court has allowed genetic screening of unborn children before they are implanted during in vitro fertilization. The decision is being hailed by some as a “landmark” decision for the country, and by others as a sign that “genocide” against the disabled is advancing in Germany, reports Patrick B. Craine, LifeSiteNews.com.

In a Tuesday ruling, the court sided with a Berlin gynecologist who between 2005 and 2006 screened embryos for three different couples where one partner carried a risk of hereditary diseases. The doctor implanted only those babies without disabilities and allowed the others to die.

He brought the case before the courts himself in 2006, seeking a clarification of the law, but was opposed by the state prosecutor.

Germany’s laws surrounding the use of embryos are relatively strict compared to other Western nations. A person could face up to three years in jail for using an embryo “generated outside the body” with “a purpose not aimed at its preservation.”

Judge Clemens Basdorf, however, upheld the decision of a Berlin court from May 2009, and ruled that genetic screening does not carry an intrinsic danger to the embryo. As such, he said, the practice does not violate the country’s embryo protections laws.

“Criminal liability because of abusive use of reproductive techniques does not come into consideration,” he wrote, according to The Local.

John Smeaton, director of Britain’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, responded to the ruling by pointing out that last week it was reported that a cheap blood test had been developed to test for Down’s syndrome in the unborn. “Both of these developments, in my view, represent advancements in the genocide of unborn disabled human beings,” he wrote on his blog.

Commenting on a piece in the Telegraph that was favorable to the court decision, he wrote: “Our society should not be applauding legal and scientific advancements in the targeting and killing of disabled human beings.”

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TAGS: Germany German Supreme Court genetic screening in vitro fertilization genocide

[07/09/2010]

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