The Catholic Weekly 10 April 2022

PMpushed 3-parent IVF ¾ Marilyn Rodrigues SUNDAY 10 April, 2022 CatholicWeekly The www.catholicweekly.com.au THE CHURCH. ALL OF IT SCHOOL IDENTITY: WHY IT MATTERS THE FALL OF KIRILL P17 $2 In life’s big uncertainty, volunteers stand bywomen SEVEN NIGHTS a fortnight Lynn goes to sleepwith hermo- bile phone next to her bed, ful- ly charged and volume turned high. When it rings, the person on the other end of the line is usually a woman who is feel- ing worried or hurting in some way. The retired public servant is one of around 30 volunteers at Pregnancy Help Sydney, a 24- hour, seven days a week sup- port line for women who are pregnant or have had an abor- tion, their partners, and their families. “Sometimes it’s a two or three minute call, sometimes a lot longer, but the offer is always there for them to call back, and if you have built a rapport with them some do, but usually we don’t know the outcome of the conversation,” Lynn says. “After that I do a bit of amen- tal debrief and then try and go back to sleep, which is either easy or a bit harder depending on what the call was like. But if a woman called up crying you feel good when you know they’ve felt a bit stronger as a re- sult of speakingwith you. CONTINUED ON PAGE 4 ¾ Marilyn Rodrigues P10 AUSTRALIA HAS legalised highly risky genetic interven- tion on humans in a life-and- death conscience vote in Feder- al Parliament that went largely under the radar last week. Key parts of the country’s cloning act were swept aside on 30March to allow for exper- imental techniques aimed at preventing women from pass- ing mitochondrial disease to their children. The IVF-assisted technology raised objections on ethical and scientific grounds as it enables the creation of human embryos specifically for the harvesting of healthy genetic material, and for the implantation of genetic material from more than two people to a human embryo. Such lines have never been crossed in this country or across most of theworld before. A conscience vote was al- lowedon theBill, whichpassed the lower house in December after three days of passionate debate on the bill in Febru- ary. Both Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt were the chief pro- ponents of the bill and Opposi- tion Leader Anthony Albanese voted in favour. It passed the Senate 37-17 after a number of amendments bySenatorDeborahO’Neill and SenatorMatthewCanavanwere voted down, and an ammend- ment to remove one of the two techniques involved, which re- quires creating an embryo for later destruction. Senator Kristina Keneally was one who spoke passion- ately against the bill saying that creating embryos for the pur- pose of harvesting anddestroy- ing them “is a moral Rubicon I cannot cross”. “Even the cross-partisan Senate report acknowledged that the creation and deliber- ate destruction of viable hu- man embryos for reproductive purposes is a new moral ques- tion that deserves significant community consultation and consideration,” she said. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2