Contact: Dan Becker, President, Georgia Right to Life, 770-339-6880, danielbecker@grtl.org

LAWRENCEVILLE, GA, Dec. 16 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Catholic Church released a new document on Friday that reaffirms its opposition to anti-life bioethics practices like human cloning and embryonic stem cell research. "The Dignity of a Person" provides more clarity on the Catholic teachings as they relate to bioethics. It confirms that: research involving the creation and/or destruction of human embryos is always "gravely illicit."

The document fully supports research using adult stem cells. It opposes human cloning for both reproduction and therapeutic reasons.

The teachings of the Catholic Church are that human life begins at conception (fertilization) and that persons (human beings) should not be created by scientists in a lab setting.

Dan Becker, President of Georgia Right to Life commended the Vatican on the issuance of this instruction. "This document is a reaffirmation of where, we, at Georgia Right to Life, are concentrating our efforts now and into the future: the personhood of every innocent human life from fertilization to natural death. Our intent and our approach have always fundamentally been to recognize the personhood of all human beings," said Becker.

The document "Dignitas Personae" is available on the website at www.grtl.org.

Georgia Right to Life is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-sectarian organization of diverse and caring people united to engage in actions that will restore respect and effective legal protection for all human beings from the moment of fertilization until natural death.