体外胚胎的处理:协议解释与利益衡量

On Disposition of Pre-embryos:Agreement Interpretation and Balancing Rule

"体外胚胎"处于胚胎形成前期,尚不属于"胚胎",对其法律属性的讨论应建立在生物学基础之上。主体说、客体说、中间过渡说均不能很好地解释体外胚胎的法律属性,宜将其作为一种"独立存在"给予特别的尊重与保护。美国处理体外胚胎将近三十年的司法实践为我们提供了多种裁判思路,如评价原始协议模式、探寻最新合意模式、利益权衡模式以及混合模式。借鉴现有裁判的同时,应从法解释学理论出发建立体外胚胎处理更具一般性的规则。形式上,作为手术知情同意书一部分的体外胚胎处理协议,不宜直接认定其效力;内容上,对处理协议的解释,应符合法的规律、社会道德与生命伦理。对于新类型案件的处理,应重视利益衡量的作用;体外胚胎的处理中,女方未来成为生物母亲的可能性应作为其中最重要的衡量因素。

Since pre-embryos stay in the early stage of embryonic development, they cannot be cataloged into embryos. The discussion of their legal status should be strictly limited to this scope. Based on this biological characteristic, the subject theory, the object theory, and the intermediate transition theory turn out to be wrong. Pre-embryos should be given special respect and protection as "sui generis". The judicial practice of U.S. in pre-embryos for more than thirty years provides us with varieties of adjudicative approaches, including the contractual approach, the contemporaneous mutual consent approach and the balancing test. In addition to referring the existing judgments, we should also use the method of legal hermeneutics to find more general rules for the disposition of pre-embryos. The pre-embryos disposition agreement, which is a part of the informed consent agreement, cannot be directly recognized as an effective agreement. The interpretation of the agreement should conform to the law, social morality as well as the bioethics. In the judgment of new cases, we should focus on the role of balancing rule. The most important factor in the tradeoffs of pre-embryos disposition is the possibility whether the woman could be a biological mother or not in the future.