The Vatican’s bioethics opinion: what does it mean?

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0805983.htm

Later this month, the Vatican is planning on issuing a bioethics opinion on human cloning and stem-cell research. This opinion is being created by a Vatican department known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and is meant to examine biological research and health care as it relates to Catholic ethics. These issues have not specifically been by the Vatican in previous opinions such as "Donum Vitae" ("The Gift of Life") and "Evangelium Vitae" ("The Gospel of Life") which were written in 1987 and 1995 respectively. Specific topics that are going to be discussed include the freezing of human embryos, the selective, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), research on embryonic stem cells, and attempts at human cloning.The pope said the starting point for the church's opinion is: "The two fundamental criteria for moral discernment in this field are unconditional respect for the human being as a person from the moment of conception to natural death, (and) respect for the originality of the transmission of human life through the acts proper to spouses."
This area of bioethics seems very interesting because it seems as though the Catholic Church is going to take a very different stance on many issues than many nations. For instance, abortion is legal in the U.S., it is illegal in many countries and this policy falls in line with Catholicism. However, from what I am reading about for my paper concerning the use of PGD, most nations are allowing PGD even though the Church will presumably say that PGD is unethical.
The question arises of how important the opinion of the Catholic is and how will people respond to a nation allowing for a medical procedure that a religious entity says is illegal. Surely this is not the first instance of this happening, but a though I had was that this was becoming more common with these newer topics of biological research and health care with new procedures.