Legal experts are expressing their concerns over the decision of the European Court of Human Rights this month that Italy’s law against eugenic screening of embryos conceived by in vitro fertilization must be overturned. The Strasbourg-based court said that Italy’s prohibition of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) was “incoherent” in the face of existing laws allowing abortion for eugenic purposes. It awarded a couple who had chosen to abort their child, who was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, 15,000 Euros.
Italian commentators have pointed out that the court’s ruling shows a predisposition to accept eugenic abortion as the default legal position. The court, said Rome-based biologist and ethicist Enzo Pennetta, revealed its presumptive bias by ruling that the conflict must be resolved by changing the IVF law to coincide with the abortion law, not the other way around.