ABSTRACT
Opinions questioning the ‘moral importance’ of birth in favour of a legal protection which becomes effective already in an early phase of the developing process argue in many ways inconsistently – as can be demonstrated, for example, by their refusal of ectogenesis. Apparently birth means something like a definite initiation into human society. But this also means that, although it is a natural event that produces this legal step, it is not only a step of nature but also a process of legal attribution and thus a value judgment. In contrast to this, the crucial question is the extent to which it is permissible to instrumentalise the embryo in the interest of a third person, for example, a physician performing research. The production of chimerae or hybrid beings using human genetic material seems to me to be not only a question of individual human dignity, but also a question of the way the human species sees itself, so to speak of the ‘dignity of humankind’.
