CSDC 235

The desire to be a mother or a father does not justify any “right to children”, whereas the rights of the unborn child are evident. The unborn child must be guaranteed the best possible conditions of existence through the stability of a family founded on marriage, through the complementarities of the two persons, father and mother⁵³⁰ Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2378.. The rapid development of research and its technological application in the area of reproduction poses new and delicate questions that involve society and the norms that regulate human social life. It must be repeated that the ethical unacceptability of all reproductive techniques — such as the donation of sperm or ova, surrogate motherhood, heterologous artificial fertilization — that make use of the uterus of another woman or of gametes of persons other than the married couple, injuring the right of the child to be born of one father and one mother who are father and mother both from a biological and from a legal point of view. Equally unacceptable are methods that separate the unitive act from the procreative act by making use of laboratory techniques, such as homologous artificial insemination or fertilization, such that the child comes about more as the result of an act of technology than as the natural fruit of a human act in which there is a full and total giving of the couple⁵³¹ Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Donum Vitae (22 February 1987), II, 2, 3, 5: AAS 80AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 80 (1988) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1988), 88-89, 92-94; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2376-2377.. Avoiding recourse to different forms of so-called “assisted procreation” that replace the marriage act means respecting — both in the parents and in the children that they intend to generate — the integral dignity of the human person⁵³² Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Donum Vitae (22 February 1987), II, 7: AAS 80AAS — Acta Apostolicae Sedis (official gazette of the Holy See)Volume 80 (1988) at vatican.va — scanned PDF (1988), 95-96.. On the other hand, those methods that are meant to lend assistance to the conjugal act or to the attainment of its effects are legitimate⁵³³ Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2375..