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Bioethic information and analysis newsletter

Following Letter

N°89 - May 2007

The Supreme Court bans partial-birth abortion

On 18 April 2007, the United States Supreme Court upheld, by 5 votes to 4, the law banning partial-birth abortion throughout the United States (Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act), federal law adopted in October 2003 by both chambers of Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 5. All the lower jurisdictions held by abortion supporters had invalidated this law because of the omission of an exception if the health of the women is threatened; in 2000, for the same reason, the Supreme Court had also invalidated a similar law in Nebraska. With this recent ruling it is the first time since the “Roe v. Wade” decision allowing abortion in 1973 that the Court has curbed abortion on a national level.

Partial-birth abortion
This method of late-term abortion, beyond 12 weeks, also called “dilation and extraction”, consists initially in extracting the legs and torso of the foetus then surgically removing the contents of the infant’s cranium to facilitate the passage of the head. This permits the killing of the infant before its complete birth, which also means that its provoked death is not considered as a homicide.
Approximately 10% of the 1.2 million abortions carried out each year in the United States take place beyond the third month of pregnancy, and this technique concerns several thousand of them.

Discussions on abortion
Admittedly, this victory for the pro-life movement is modest. The Supreme Court decision only allows the elimination of but one of the numerous methods of abortion: no baby will be saved by this decision because many other methods of aborting late-term foetuses exist. Nevertheless, the judgement recognises that “the government has a legitimate, substantial interest in preserving and promoting foetal life”. This is the first time in 34 years that the Court has authorised a restriction on abortion and, as Cardinal Rigali, Chairman of the Committee of American Bishops for Pro-Life Activities concludes : “The Court is taking a clearer and more unobstructed look at the tragic reality of abortion, and speaking about that reality more candidly, than it has in many years. We hope today's decision marks the beginning of a new dialogue on abortion, in which fair-minded consideration will be given to the genuine interests of unborn children and their mothers, to the need for an ethically sound medical profession, and to society's desperate need for a foundation of respect for all human life”.

The “Roe v. Wade” judgement controversy
Abortion was legalised in the United States by the “Roe v. Wade” judgement in 1973. The two women behind this decision, Norma McCorvey and Sandra Cano declared in June 2005, before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary that “lawyers had used their distress to lead a struggle that was not theirs” ; moreover they never had abortions and today call for the banning of abortion. Their lawyers today have insisted in particular on the fact that recent scientific knowledge on abortion and its consequences require a new examination, but the Supreme Court has refused up to this time to re-examine its position. Similarly, Dr Bernard Nathanson, one of the investigators for the pro-abortion lobby Naral, explains how in the 70s, he manipulated public opinion with false figures : “we knew that illegal abortions caused the death of 200 to 250 women each year, to the media we claimed 10,000”. Today, Dr Nathanson marches on the side of anti-abortion demonstrators.

Allow each State to legislate ?
Without renouncing its “Roe v. Wade” decision, the Supreme Court could allow each State to enact its own legislation on abortion. Risking an appeal before the Supreme Court, Louisiana and South Dakota approved a law in 2006 prohibiting abortion except in cases of danger to the life of the mother. Georgia, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Indiana and Kentucky could also prohibit or make abortions more difficult.

Innovative therapies
On 25 April 2007, European MPs approved a regulation harmonising marketing authorisation (MA) procedures for innovative therapies: from now on, products resulting from gene and cell therapies as well as those resulting from tissue therapy will have a single legal framework. These therapies are based on complex and very innovative manufacturing processes, which have the aim of modifying structural, physiological and genetic properties of cells and tissue and should cause a significant evolution in medical practice. The text will come into force in summer 2008 at the latest.

Harmonise MA procedures
The European Commission will issue a common marketing authorisation based on the European Medicines Agency’s scientific evaluation, which will exempt national procedures in each Member State and should facilitate the research, development and the authorisation of products resulting from innovative therapies and improving the patient’s access to them.

Rejection of ethical amendments
Some fundamental ethical amendments were rejected. They demanded the formal prohibition of the marketing of the human body, products that modify the human germinal line (which contain the genetic material of each individual) and medicines resulting from cells of embryos or foetuses, even derived from human-animal hybrids or chimera. The rapporteur of the document, the Slovak Miroslav Mikolasik and the chairman of the Commission on Judicial Affairs, Giuseppe Gargani, had demanded, without success, that stem cells be excluded from the regulation.
Once again, the alliance of socialists and liberals, putting the rights of the patient before better treatment and the advance of science, approved the text despite the opposition of ecologists and those from the pro-life movement denouncing experimentation on the human embryo.

In the name of the principle of subsidiarity
The only safeguard proposed is the freedom for the countries opposed to this research to prohibit the marketing of these products within their territory. MP Adamos Adamou summarises : “This report raises serious ethical questions, however its aim is not to harmonise ethical norms but to respect national jurisdiction of Member States over the use of morally sensitive products. The principle of subsidiarity forms the basis of any decision on this subject ; countries can thus decide which types of products can be sold within their borders and which others should be banned”.

In Great Britain, the government authorised on May 17 the creation of hybrid human-animal embryos for research. The law authorises a duration of life of 14 days for these embryos and prohibits their implantation in the uterus. In 2004, this country was the first in Europe to authorise the creation of human embryos for research.

The creation of sick hybrid clones
A team of biologists from King’s College of the University of London had demanded six months ago from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) the authorisation to create these embryos through cloning by introducing somatic human cell nuclei to rabbit, pig or cow enucleated oocytes. This hybrid would thus not be a chimera resulting from the fusion of two cells or of two embryos but the fruit of inter-species cloning. The stated objective is to understand certain incurable genetic illnesses such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. The cells would be taken from sick patients and would thus carry the gene responsible for the disease.

The “Cybrid”
This embryo, called “cybrid” (by fusing the works “cytoplasm” and “hybrid”) would not be completely human. In effect, the DNA in the nucleus of the cell would be human, but the mitochondrial DNA of the cytoplasm would be animal. For Stephen Minger, researcher at King’s College, the authorisation of the creation of human-animal hybrids will offer scientists of the whole world incomparable and unlimited biological material for the analysis of a disease, to consider therapeutic molecules and test them on a broad scale of human subjects. Professor Marc Peschanski believes that “hybrids represent an interesting alternative”, even if he recognises that the objective of this creation is not treatment but medical research. “To say that cell therapy will be done from hybrids is a red herring which is not realistic.”

Ethical Tsunami
This research raises great ethical questions.

In France, the bioethics law of 6 August 2004 prohibits the creation of human embryos through cloning as well as any creation of embryos for research. For Jean-Claude Ameisen, chairman of the Ethics Committee of Inerm (National Institute of Health and Medical Research), “the experiments under consideration in Great Britain could on the face of it resolve certain ethical problems connected to therapy-aimed cloning”. They would avoid “notably the resource to oocyte donation which can present health risks to the woman. However, for the people who reject the creation of a human embryo with the only goal of destroying it for research, it adds an ethical problem: that of the status, both human and animal, of such embryos”.

Mr Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Academy for life, strongly denounced the creation of embryos composed of human and animal genetic material. “The creation of a human-animal hybrid is a boundary which had been prohibited, until today, and by all, in the field of biotechnology.” “And this precisely because human dignity is compromised and offended, and because we can then create monstrosities through these fertilisations.”
Mr Sgreccia recalls that “the creation of a human-animal being represents a violation of nature – a most serious violation” and requires a total moral condemnation.
For him, “there is no need for this decision” : “if we seek stem cells that can treat Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease […] there are adult stem cells, umbilical cord cells and human cells to be able to face – with confidence – these frontiers”.