DYSKUSJA O METODZIE 'IN VITRO' JAKO SPÓR NIEWŁAŚCIWIE PROWADZONY
THE DISCUSSION ON THE 'IN VITRO' METHOD AS AN IMPROPERLY HANDLED DISPUTE

Summary/Abstract: The public debate on the admissibility of the in vitro method is a dispute handled in an inappropriate manner. This is due to the methods of defining problems, of argumentation, the language used by the participants in the dispute, the changes of the discourse planes and the simplification of the image of the discussion in the press. The objectors to the method (mainly the Catholic Church) belittle the sufferings of the infertile people, undermine the right to have children, consider the issues of the post- -implantation embryo death and embryo selection as well as the fact that fertilisation takes place outside the mother’s body crucial. The supporters of the method regard the capability to give birth to a child as the most important. The objectors to the method use the argument of fear. They use epithets that negatively evaluate the parents who decide on the in vitro method and by stigmatising children born thanks to it, they create false alternatives, redefine terms, apply descriptions that regulate meanings, pernicious conjunctions and hyperbolic generalisations. The supporters of the method’s legalisation make attempts at depriving the objectors of the right to dialogue and create the image of the Church which conducts a crusade against the weaker, which is benighted and eager for power over the consciences of all people. No common ground is sought in this discussion, although it is possible: the fate of surplus embryos is an important ethical and medical problem for both parties to the dispute and a number of drafters of the Act on in vitro. The utterances occurring in the media transform the discussion on in vitro into a dispute between the Church and the State, which makes the moral debate a substitute political dispute. Trans. M. Czarnecka

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