“Desire for a child – desired child – designer baby”

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Medical development noticeable in births © Patrick Pleul

Parenthood can now be separated from partnership: Women can freeze eggs. Homosexual men can hire a surrogate mother abroad. Procreation no longer even requires sex. All topics of the "Week for Life.

When the world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born in England in 1978, it was a sensation. People were fascinated and frightened at the same time by the possibilities of medicine. In the meantime, this has become completely normal: from 1997 to 2014, in Germany alone, 233.749 children born with the help of reproductive medicine.

Human beings as products of laboratory technology?

New procedures are constantly being developed that were previously unthinkable. Preimplantation diagnostics (PGD) allows embryos to be tested for genetic defects even before they are implanted in the womb. Simple blood tests on pregnant women make it possible to detect hereditary diseases. Gay and lesbian couples become parents through surrogacy, sperm, egg or embryo donation. And on the horizon, new genetic engineering methods are on the horizon that could be used to specifically alter the genetic makeup of human beings.

And each time, new ethical, legal and social ies are raised: Are humans increasingly becoming the product of laboratory technology?

What to do when biological and legal parenthood fall apart? And to what extent are new diagnostic methods for detecting hereditary diseases justified? Starting this Saturday, the nationwide "Week for Life" of the two major churches will also deal with these ies. It stands until 6. May under the motto "Kinderwunsch – Wunschkind – Designerbaby" and will be opened in Kassel.

Increasing demand for reproductive medicine

One thing is certain: the demand for reproductive medicine is increasing. According to the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, almost one in ten couples between the ages of 25 and 59 in Germany is involuntarily childless. This is also due to the fact that women are deciding to have children later and later – and female fertility declines significantly in the course of the third decade of life.

Reproductive technologies have long been a global phenomenon – with huge profit margins. Countries with liberal legal regulations benefit particularly. In India, for example, there are several hundred baby clinics where surrogate mothers carry off offspring for European and American couples. The German Embryo Protection Act, on the other hand, is considered to be extremely restrictive and is thus – in view of worldwide medical tourism – particularly under prere.

For example, surrogacy is still prohibited in the Federal Republic of Germany – also to prevent the exploitation of poor women as surrogate mothers and to guarantee the right of every child to know its parents. But in 2014, the Federal Supreme Court set the course in a different direction in a very special case: Two homosexual men from Berlin had both been recognized in the U.S. as fathers of a child carried by a surrogate mother – conceived with the sperm of one of the two fathers and the egg of an anonymous female donor. The Federal Court of Justice ruled that dual paternity should be upheld for the good of the child, even under German law. Last weekend, however, the Higher Regional Court of Braunschweig opposed the Karlsruhe judges in another case and a "deliberate circumvention of national laws".

Effects on the legal system

The case shows that new techniques are having a significant impact on the legal system: The classic family – woman and man, married, with biological children – is now only one possibility among many. "Our laws are written for two parents married to each other. They urgently need to be adapted to the new realities," declared Federal Constitutional Judge Gabriele Britz last year at the German Jurists' Day.

In this debate, the churches see themselves as advocates of humanity, the image of God and the unavailability of the human being. Science makes new technical procedures possible, emphasizes the Mainz Catholic moral theologian Johannes Reiter. But they do not provide any orientation with regard to ethical boundaries and questions of human dignity. "If we know what we can do technically, we still don't know what we should do morally.Children," Reiter summarizes the position of the churches, "are a gift of love and not the product of laboratory technology.

The USA after the Trump election © Alba Vigaray

Many do not want to believe that the populist Donald Trump is the new president of the USA. Dr. Gregor Scherzinger is a theologian at the Institute for Social Ethics at the University of Lucerne. He closely followed the race for president in the U.S.

Interviewer: The nightmare of many has come true: Donald Trump becomes the new US president. How could this happen?

Dr. Gregor Scherzinger (Theologian, University of Lucerne): This is a question that many people are asking themselves after the result became known, whether in the USA or abroad. One has to ask oneself: What was missed in politics, economy and society?? Where could one have taken countermeasures to stop this "Trump" phenomenon? It has not only been on the table for two years, but has its prehistory. That begins at the latest with the Tea Party during Obama's first term in office. Even then, the goal was to stop this movement, the central government, to shrink, to lower taxes. Already these supporters were found mainly among white Americans. Half of them disguise themselves as part of the Christian conservative movement, the so-called "religious right". Even then, the identity of this movement was marked by the story of a loss, white Christian America was lost. The release of abortion or same-sex marriage have confirmed this story in the eyes of these people.

Interviewer: Trump embodies a demographic that is actually on the decline, namely white males. Not even half of the voters this time were still white with a Christian background. Doesn't that sound a bit like the world gone wrong??

Scherzinger: Yes, indeed. Four years ago, with Romney's defeat, there was already talk that this "white Christian strategy" could no longer help him win the election. Romney scored in the segment of the white and mostly Christian population exactly the numbers expected to be necessary for victory. But he lost to Obama. Moreover, with the rise of nonreligious Americans as well as Latinos and "Black Amaricans," the percentage of white Christians in the population had fallen below 50 percent. And so it was predicted that this constituency alone could not help Trump win. But he seems to have succeeded in mobilizing precisely this group of white, rural, working-class Americans even more strongly. That segment outvoted the more colorful, diverse rest of the country.

Interviewer: For us in the West, the election campaign appears to have been a real mud-slinging affair for long stretches, which has also opened up many wounds. Donald Trump doesn't seem like the ideal reconciler. Where do we go from here??

Scherzinger: There lies exactly one reason for the speechlessness and the inconceivability of a presidency under Trump. With him comes to the White House a person who campaigned on intolerance, defamation and division. After Obama's attempt to bring this divided America together, to build bridges, this is now the complete antithesis of that. And it remains uncertain, of course, whether Trump will be tempered, at least in his language, by the constraints of office, will be able to shed the hate rhetoric that was necessary to bring in those votes. I think his understanding of power has strong authoritarian overtones, and power seemed to be an end in itself for him, not least to satiate his own need for recognition. But now we will see if the traditional system of government in the U.S., which consists of this checks and balances between institutions, can also appease here. However, it must also be said that the election results gave a Republican majority in Congress. Also, the appointment of a judge to the "Supreme Court" (United States Supreme Court, note. d. Red.) is pending and will come to him. This will not help.

Interviewer: Conservative Catholics had been leaning toward Trump in the run-up, especially because of his positive stance on the protection of life. How are they going to cope now with the fact that their new president is a blatant racist it seems? At least he wants to put up a wall on the border with Mexico.

Scherzinger: Catholicism itself has come a long way to be embraced in Protestant-leaning America. For example, a ban on prayer in schools in the 1960s was seen as a victory against Catholicism and its demand for support for its schools. The situation has turned around today. Large parts of the Catholic world see themselves as equally under duress from a secularist ideology in which religion is relegated to the margins of society or out of society altogether. The right to religious freedom is also understood by the Catholic Church as a strong means to conduct politics for its own moral concepts. In part, people will cheer that with Trump there is once again the possibility of enforcing the right to life generally. However, the Catholic Church in particular is changing rapidly in the USA as well. It is becoming more Latino as younger generations of mostly white Catholics leave it. And so it must be said that ultimately what counts for the whole country also counts for the church in the U.S.: it is deeply divided.

The interview was conducted by Tobias Fricke.

According to the Pope's ambassador to Liechtenstein and Switzerland, Martin Krebs, there is polarization everywhere in the Church. But these differ according to country and situation. Some ies have less weight elsewhere.

"One reason for tensions in the Church is often the question of how to live the encounter between the Gospel and the modern world," the German Vatican diplomat told the portal katholisch.en (Wednesday). The Second Vatican Council had already taught that "this encounter is not only possible, but also necessary and beneficial – both for society and for the Church".

There are internal church disputes in all countries, "even if the concrete situations are different.

The Essen-born clergyman explained, "In very poor countries, people are less concerned with theoretical ies."There, it is "often a matter of simple, bare survival in many respects, so that other questions are dealt with more in the background. Similar problems exist everywhere, "but they do not manifest themselves in the same way everywhere".

"Also a service to other countries"

Krebs said, with regard to the topics that are particularly discussed in Europe and Germany, such as the diaconate of women or the blessing of homosexual couples, which are less in the focus elsewhere: "If, however, some local churches have the opportunity to think through and discuss such questions, then that is also a service to other countries. What the end result will be for poorer countries is "another story". Krebs, however, considers division of tasks "definitely advantageous".

Speaking about his mission as a papal diplomat, Krebs said, "It's not about presenting a church that we like because it's so beautifully compact and harmonious, but church is sent, church is mission, church goes outside. Church's outreach is important, Krebs says. But it is more important to see where one is needed. In the spirit of Pope Francis, he objected, "The Church is like a field hospital and should be dented rather than closed and comfortable clinging to its certainties."

Krebs most recently served as papal nuncio to Uruguay since 2018; he previously represented the pope in Mali and Guinea in West Africa from 2008 to 2013, then in New Zealand and the Pacific nations of Nauru, Tonga, Marshall Islands, Samoa and Fiji. Now he represents the Vatican in Bern.

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