Dangerous Bernas line -- with Fr. Bernas’s comments

Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:09:00 11/20/2010

Filed Under: Churches (organisations), Abortion, Advice, Medicines, Illegal drugs

MAY I thank Fr. Joaquin Bernas for clarifying separation of Church and State and what the State permits under this principle.

I must admit though that I read with dismay this line in his October 18 column: “The moment of conception is popularly understood as the moment of fertilization ... even if medical literature seems to see conception as the moment of implantation.”

This proposition might embolden women to continue using abortifacient contraceptives because, anyway, the embryo is only human according to popular understanding, but not according to medical science, which is the one that decides this question. Viewed together with his proposal for a government budget in support of “artificial methods of family planning,” it sounds like a justification for such use of taxpayer money.

However, the Oxford Medical Dictionary of 2002 defines conception thus: (in gynaecology) the start of pregnancy, when a male germ cell (sperm) fertilizes a female germ cell (ovum) in the Fallopian tube. There is also expert declarations found in: http://clinicquotes.com/site/ story.php?id=28; http://abortionabout.com/ when-does-life-begin.html. Just one example from a medical textbook: “The development of a human begins with fertilization”—Sadler, T.W., “Langman’s Medical Embryology.” The book is described as “Long respected for its scientific authority, pedagogy and clinical relevance to medical education.”

Since Father Bernas is a lawyer, he might also be interested in the US Senate report on the Human Life Statute of 1981: Physicians, biologists and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological and scientific writings. (Senate Judiciary Committee S-158, 97th Congress).

Bernas did try to explain the constitutional basis of the right to life from conception (“the safer approach”) and he wrote that the biological life begun at fertilization will not become human “if it is not already human at fertilization.”

On his suggestion to use taxpayer money for the purchase of contraceptives, kindly study the writings of important social scientists on the destructive consequences of the pill. You can find this in the Net if you Google, say, “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae.”

Also, Edward C. Green, Harvard director for AIDS Prevention, an agnostic, has clearly shown that contraceptives lead to a heightened spread of AIDS. Anti-Catholic Nobel prize winner George Akerlof has shown convincingly that the “Reproductive Technology Shock” brought about by contraceptives has led to more sex outside marriage, fatherless children and abortion.

So I do hope that Bernas would reflect on this letter and modify the “non-scientific statements.” Let me take this opportunity though to express my deep appreciation of all his positive work for human life and his columns clarifying issues that befuddle our country.
—JT U. SAGALO,
jtusagalo@gmail.com

Thank you for your comments. Let me just say two things:
1. My view is that conception in the Constitution means fertilization. Whether this is also the scientific meaning, I leave to medical science.
2. I accept the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church on contraception. I hold, however, that the state cannot impose this view on non-Catholics.
—FR. JOAQUIN G. BERNAS, S.J.