from a Zenit interview

What is the difference with techniques of artificial insemination? The fundamental problem here is that a human being, a child, is considered as a "product," as something that in some way belongs to me and which I can program, select, manipulate ... and destroy. But this isn't right for human beings: It can be so for machines, it can be so -- in some cases -- for animals, but never for man. He is too important to be able to be "fabricated." That's why we say that the only appropriate place to give origin to a human being is the act of love of the parents.

This certainly does not mean that the dignity of children conceived in vitro, as those who might proceed from violence, is less than that of children of a married couple. And it is precisely because of their great dignity, that these ways of "calling them into existence" are inadequate.

Moreover, not to be forgotten is the great quantity of lives that are lost along the way, and the innumerable frozen embryos that at present fill the storerooms of assisted fertilization clinics. And this reason is not only valid for people of faith, but for all those who want to protect human life in society in all its forms.

ZENIT: How much is this influenced by the ideology of maternity and paternity as a right and not as a gift?

Father Requena: In today's society the perception of a child has changed very much. For a long time a child was considered a gift. This view is very united to a religious conception of existence, which sees parents as collaborators of God, and in a certain sense as his ministers in the task of looking after and educating the children. In any case, the child was certainly not seen as a right, as some now consider it, because it cannot be so. No person has the "right" to possess another: One can possess a house, a car, but never a person. This is why slavery is an evil, because no man can be the "owner" of another. If it was affirmed that there is a right to a child, one would be saying that someone -- the community -- has the duty, the obligation, to give me that, and one would also be saying to the child that he is the "product" of a right of his parents. But this implies taking away from the child his dignity of person, and the right to be conceived through an act of love.