CathCommSA

Catholic Communications Adelaide

Tel: 08 8210 8117

Fax: 08 8232 3740

Email: cathcomm@adelaide.catholic.org.au

News Release

For immediate release Thursday, 23 May 2002

HANDS OFF STATE LAWS ON FROZEN EMBRYOS,
SAYS BIOETHICS EXPERT

The Director of the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute in South Australia Dr John Fleming has praised the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference for its letter to Prime Minister John Howard opposing the destructive research on frozen embryos.

Dr Fleming has also called on the Federal Government to adopt a “hands off” approach to States which already have laws restricting destructive embryonic research.

“They should leave States such as South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia alone,” he said.

“States with more restrictive laws on embryonic research should be allowed to keep them. We already have principled laws, we protect human embryos from destructive research so don’t impose any national decision on us.”

Dr Fleming said States should be free to be more restrictive in this area if they choose to do so.

“New South Wales and Queensland have never bothered to regulate in the area of reproductive technology so anything goes for those States and anything the Commonwealth imposes on them will be an improvement,” he said.

“But for those of us who have bothered to have regulations - that is South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia - why should we have imposed upon us a regime which allowed the destructive research we have prevented?

“Why can’t our morally more sensitive position be allowed to stand?”

In its letter to the Prime Minister John Howard, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference expressed deep concerns with the decision to allow destructive research on embryonic human beings.

This follows a Council of Australian Governments (COAG) decision in April to legislate for a more permissive regime of farming and harvesting human embryonic stem calls from “surplus frozen embryos”.

The bishops expressed deep concern that the Prime Minister “crossed a line that’s never been crossed in Australia before”.

See media release from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and a copy of the letter sent to the Prime Minister by the conference which were faxed separately yesterday.

For further information, contact Dr John Fleming on 8297 0022

or Catholic Communications Director Joan Atkinson on 0438 72 76 77