Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the Group No. 3 amendments to Bill C-13. I have spoken to all of the other groups, I believe, and I am taking an active interest in this bill. At this time I would like especially to commend my colleague from Yellowhead for his tremendous efforts on this very opaque bill that involves of course great questions of moral import as well as areas of science which normally are not the purview of members of Parliament. I would also like to commend my hon. friend opposite from Mississauga South for his efforts and the many constructive amendments which he has brought forward.
Let me turn, then, to the motions before us and say that first there are Motions Nos. 28, 29 and 30, all of which jointly and separately seek to eliminate the prohibition in the bill against paid surrogacy. It is my view, and in fact it was the unanimous view of all five parties at the Standing Committee on Health's review of the original draft of Bill C-13, that legislation ought indeed to prohibit paid surrogacy. There is a very broad consensus on that point in this place and indeed among expert witnesses who have appeared before parliamentary committees on this question.
Why is that the broad consensus? Because there is something fundamentally offensive with the notion that the act of human reproduction can and should be commodified, that it can and should become a market service, that to compel somebody, through financial incentive, to bear someone else's child in a sense cheapens the invaluable act of motherhood upon which a price cannot be placed. Of course paid surrogacy would likely lead to many abuses, where low income women would be, in a sense, financially exploited for the rental of their wombs. It seems to me that this would open the doors. Were we to permit it and pass these amendments in Motions Nos. 28, 29 and 30, it would be denigrating the inherent dignity of women and the reproductive process. For those reasons, I will oppose these three motions.
I also would like to specifically note that Motion No. 29 seeks payment for legal services in arranging surrogacy, et cetera. It seems to me that we ought not to be concerned about lawyers' fees in commodification of the process of human reproduction; rather, we should be concerned about human dignity, both of women and of nascent human life itself.
I also will support Motions Nos. 32, 33 and 36 in the name of the member for Mississauga South, which seek to prohibit the purchase of fetuses or fetal tissue or fetal parts and which add a prohibition on the sale of fetuses or fetal tissue. Similarly, Motion No. 39 would prohibit the transfer of ownership of embryos or reproductive materials, thereby supporting the goal of preventing commodification around assisted human reproduction.
The notion that we can and should be able to buy and sell human beings, living or deceased, or the parts of their bodies, reflects a fundamental philosophical error in terms of our understanding of what man is. Human beings are different in kind from all other living species. Human beings are different because they possess an inviolable dignity which is not granted by the state or a court and which cannot be traded on any market.
It is an inviolable dignity understood in theological terms expressed by all of the great religions as human beings created in the image and likeness of God, and understood in secular philosophical terms as the only rational being which possesses a special and inherent dignity which cannot be violated.
Regardless from which theological or philosophical perspective one comes, except for a brutally cold Huxleyan and utilitarian perspective, it is in my view impermissible to see the human body as a commodity to be chopped up and sold on the market to the highest bidder, which the bill currently permits with respect to embryos, fetal parts, et cetera.
I will support Motion No. 44 as a provision that adoption of embryos should be restricted, except as provided in the regulations, that is to say that we should carefully govern the transfer of the ownership of embryos as currently worded in the bill. The biological parents would theoretically be permitted to transfer ownership of their child, which is the embryo. It is the successful result of the reproduction of their genetic material and it is a nascent human being.
I believe that this nascent human being, by virtue of being a human being, is created within a family, meaning by and within the relationship of a mother and a father. It is therefore wrong and impermissible to trade or exchange its ownership to a biological laboratory which wishes to experiment on and/or destroy that nascent human life. This would create greater regulatory oversight of embryonic adoption.
I am strongly in support of the principle of embryonic adoption where the idea is to give that embryo the opportunity to realize its potential as a full human being through implantation into the womb of a mother who is infertile and who seeks a fertilized embryo. There have been hundreds of cases of successful embryonic adoption and implantation in the United States, not paid surrogacy but embryonic adoption, which vitiates the argument put forth by the Minister of Health that so-called surplus embryos created ostensibly for reproductive purposes will be thrown in the trash if they are not used by researchers. The cases in the United States make it plainly clear that there is an alternative to destroying these embryos and that alternative is embryonic adoption, properly governed and regulated.
I will also oppose Motions Nos. 46, 49, 51, and 95, which again seek to liberalize the bill with respect to surrogacy and again to commodify the reproductive process.
In closing, I am hopeful that all members have taken very seriously the time of debate that we have had on these amendments and will vote with their conscience tonight. I hope that all members will vote in a free vote. In particular, I call for members to look closely at my motion, Motion No. 17 in Group No. 2, which seeks to ban the odious practice of embryonic stem cell research and to assert thereby the inalienable dignity of innocent human life.