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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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 Health Care Action Alert We have a pro-life statesman in Washington. And he’s a Democrat.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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Why burden persons in the “vegetative” state and their families by
keeping them “alive” by force feeding them through various kinds of
tubes?
On February 8 the Chicago Tribune interviewed elderly Catholics who
were horrified at the thought of lingering unconsciousness. "My
pleasure is in being part of the human race," said one of them. "If
that's gone, if I can't interact with other people, even if they could
give me nutrition and keep me hydrated, I'm not interested in being
preserved." This reaction is quite common and reflects the views, I
think, of most ordinary men and women. I believe that most ordinary
persons think that it is ridiculous to keep persons in the “persistent
vegetative state” alive by “force feeding” them through various kinds
of tubes. They believe that doing so is futile and in addition imposes
horrible burdens on those kept “alive” in this way and on their
families. I fully appreciate why so many people think this way. I did
so for many years myself. I will tell you why I did in a future piece
for the Culture of Life Foundation. In this one I will summarize recent
scientific studies that bear on some of the reasons why I changed my
mind.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Working at home last week, I heard my son’s voice penetrating the
French doors of my office shouting, “You IDIOT!” I gently called out,
“Son, please come here.” Knowing he’s not allowed to call his sister
an idiot, he dutifully and somewhat nervously entered my office. I got
down on my knees to look him in the eyes at his own height, took his
little hands lightly in my own, and said to my three year old boy:
“Son, did you call your sister an idiot?” He looked at me with his
perfectly round eyes perched atop two perfectly round cheeks and
centered in his perfectly round head, and said with solemn confidence,
“No.” I said, “You didn’t just shout ‘idiot’ to her in the kitchen?”
Unblinking, he repeated his confident denial. With my disciplinary
back to the wall, I decided to repeat firmly the family’s negative
norm—“No call Maymay,” (his sister, Mary) “an idiot… Yes, daddy?”
“Yes, daddy,” he replied. And I excused him.
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by William E. May, Ph. D., Senior Fellow
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Introduction
Here I intend to present the Bishops’ teaching in Part Two of the
Pastoral Letter, which they call “Marriage in the Order of the New
Creation: The Sacrament of Marriage,” from the perspective of a
husband, father, and grandfather. I want to do so because I have now
been married more than fifty-one years to a wonderful, loving wife, and
God has blessed us with seven loving children, four boys and three
girls. Six of them are now married to great daughters- and sons-in-law
whom God has blessed with fifteen children and in doing so has blessed
us with fifteen grandchildren, ten girls and five boys ranging in age
from twenty to seven months. I think this puts me into a position to
appreciate the message our Bishops want to communicate in this fine
document.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Pro-Abortion Health Care Bill is Not Dead.
Three troubling facts you should know about:
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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We recently welcomed Thomas Athanasius into the world, our sixth child
and third son. As with our other two boys, we had to decide whether to
circumcise him. We’ve never found the question easy to resolve. The
opinions of family and acquaintances on the issue tend to be shallow.
Websites can be unreasonably prejudiced in favor or against. Even the
views of doctors we’ve found to mirror the biases of the community.
The following reflections are my attempt ethically to work through the
question. I offer them to our readers for whatever they’re worth.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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This Pastoral Letter of November, 2009, presents Church teaching on marriage and family life in light of the documents of Vatican Council II, the encyclicals, apostolic exhortations, and other writings of Pope John Paul II, in particular in his celebrated Wednesday “catecheses” on the “theology of the body,” and the writings of Pope Benedict XVI.
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by Genevieve Pollock
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WEST CONSHOHOCKEN, Pennsylvania, JAN. 28, 2010 (Zenit.org).- More
marriages and families these days are affected by control and trust
issues, says Richard Fitzgibbons, but through the sacraments and
practice of virtue these problems can be overcome.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow
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Meilaender takes these topics up in chapters 4 and 5, of his Bioethics:
A Primer for Christians. I will devote more space to the first issue.
CHAPTER 4, GENETIC ADVANCE (pp. 38-47)
Summary and Comment
Meilaender’s principal concern in this chapter centers on a new kind of
medical therapy aimed at curing persons suffering from or genetically
disposed to different genetically caused diseases such as Down
Syndrome, sickle-cell anemia, diabetes, and many, many others. After
describing how some of these diseases are caused genetically,
Meilaender then examines the basic forms of genetic therapy: germ cell
therapy and somatic cell therapy. Modifications of germ cells (i.e.,
the cells proper to males and females, sperm and ova respectively, that
when united become a newly conceived human person) are passed on to
future generations whereas modifications of somatic cells (=equals the
cells found in different parts of an individual’s body, e.g., in one’s
brain, pancreas, liver, colon, etc.) are not and affect only the
individual whose somatic cells are modified (39-41). Meilaender
repudiates germ cell therapy, judging its supposed great benefit—the
overcoming of disease not just in one person but in future
generations--to be its “greatest danger…[which] C. S. Lewis memorably
characterized as the ‘abolition of man.’” By this Meilaender and Lewis
mean that the risks of such therapy and the harmful effects it might
have on our children and grandchildren are not known to man but only to
God—and we are not God and ought not “play” God. On the other hand, the
moral questions raised by somatic cell therapy do not call for “the no
that should be spoken to germ cell modification but for caution and a
willingness to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable aims of
therapy” (42-43).
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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BAXTER, et al. v. STATE OF MONTANA
Justice WILLIAM LEAPHART
Filed December 31, 2009
In late December, Montana became the third state (behind Washington and
Oregon) to permit physician assisted suicide to terminally ill
patients. The State Supreme Court in Baxter et al. v. State of Montana
was considering an appeal of a ruling from a lower district court dated
December 2008 finding in Montana’s Constitution a “right” of the
terminally ill to kill themselves with the assistance of physicians
(implying that the doctors assisting them were to be shielded from
prosecution under the state’s homicide laws). Interestingly, the court
declined to rule on the question of the constitutionality of assisted
suicide claiming to follow the judicial principle that courts should
refrain from deciding cases at the level of the Constitution when an
issue could be resolved by appeal to existing law. Having said this,
Montana’s Supreme Court ruled that existing Montana law permits doctors
without fear of prosecution to prescribe medications to terminally ill
patients who wish to kill themselves.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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By now the whole world (and several worlds beyond) has heard the news
that because of the upset election in Massachusetts yesterday, the
Senate Democrats have lost their supermajority. This is indeed
extraordinary news, especially for critics of universal health care.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow of Ethics
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STATUS QUESTIONIS
As you know, the U.S. Senate on December 24 passed its version of
universal health care (H.R. 3590: the “Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act”). Unfortunately, the bill passed with a robust
abortion mandate at its center. Defenders of the unborn had put their
political hopes in ‘pro-life’ Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who was
threatening to oppose the bill unless Senate leadership included a
Stupak-like amendment excluding all federal abortion funding. Under
pressure from the White House and Senate leadership, Nelson broke at
the eleventh hour and vowed his support for the bill as amended by
Harry Reid’s “Manager’s Amendment.” The bill passed in a perfect party
line vote without a single Republican supporting it.
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by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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“First, the family must be remade as an expression of communion.”
Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., The Difference God Makes: A Catholic Vision of Faith, Communion, and Culture (2009), 23.
The Archbishop of Chicago, Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., has written
a wonderful book containing (among many other good things) some highly
useful ideas for speaking about the family in America. Marriage and the
family are not featured topics in the book; communion with God and
among all human beings is its theme. Cardinal George explores this
theme widely throughout the book as it applies, for example, to members
of the Catholic Church, to interfaith dialogue, to all members of the
human family. Yet he notes in Chapter One how our work to transform
culture -- in order to “remake ourselves” in the “paradigm of the
heavenly communio” -- needs to begin with our remaking the “family ….as
an expression of communio.” (23) In Chapters Two and Three, he offers
ways of approaching and evangelizing American culture in particular,
which I would like to consider from the point of view of this family
project. I should note here that Cardinal George’s work is
theologically rich, and important for anyone who wishes to join him in
pursuing John Paul II’s project to “evangelize culture.” I can only
hope in this essay to draw out a few of its implications for the
culture of the family.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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This is the subject of Chapter 3 of Meilaender’s Bioethics: A Primer
for Christians (2nd ed. 2005). I devote one essay to this matter
because in my judgment the chapter, while excellent in many respects,
includes a defense of abortion in some very limited circumstances—when
necessary to save the mother’s life and when the pregnancy results from
forcible or incestuous sexual relations. Not only do I disagree with
Meilaender here I also think that his defense of abortion in these
circumstances is not compatible with his own basic convictions as
expressed in other parts of the same chapter.
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by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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Every presidential administration in Washington DC does some things that appear stupid in hindsight. It gets caught up in the moment, pandering to this or that political constituency, or reacting too precipitously to some big or newsworthy event. In our 24-hour-news-cycle world, and especially if we’re sophisticated news consumers, we simply discount the importance of poor presidential decisions and move on, even as we might grow incrementally more cynical over time about government in general.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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This is the second part of a two-part series on the U.S. Bishops’ newdocument on reproductive technology, Life-Giving Love in an Age ofTechnology, issued on November 17(www.usccb.org/LifeGivingLove/lifegivinglovedocument.pdf ). In thefirst essay I discussed the document’s ethical framework for analyzingparticular forms of reproductive assistance. In this essay I reviewthe document’s ethical teaching on the following forms: using gametedonors, surrogate motherhood, homologous artificial insemination, invitro fertilization, and cloning. Each consideration is brief. Ifinterest is expressed, I’d be happy to develop one or another of thearguments in a future blast.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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Health Care
Action Alert!
Pro-life amendment killed
- By now you have probably heard that yesterday Senator Barbara Boxer offered a motion to table (i.e., eliminate chances of voting on) the Pro-life Nelson Amendment, which would have excluded federal funding for abortion in the Senate Health Care Bill.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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“I want to have children with you.” These are the opening words of the
U.S. Bishops’ new document on reproductive technology, Life-Giving Love
in an Age of Technology,
issued on November 17
(www.usccb.org/LifeGivingLove/lifegivinglovedocument.pdf ). The
document is addressed specifically to married couples suffering from
infertility and considering their options. It attempts to balance a
sincere empathy for their bitter experience of loss with clear guidance
on ethically legitimate alternatives: “The Church has compassion for
couples suffering from infertility and wants to be of real
help to them.” The text acknowledges the temptation they can
experience to cut a ‘faustian bargain’ in order to secure the object of
their desperate desires. And it encourages them to hope in God even in
the face of human disappointment. Specifically, it asks whether
certain forms of assisted reproduction are consistent with the
flourishing of marriage and with the duties we owe to nascent human
life. In the words of the statement: “Some solutions offer real hope
for restoring a couple’s natural, healthy ability to have children.
Others pose serious moral problems by failing to respect the dignity of
the couple’s marital relationship, of their sexuality, or of the child.”
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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In this Part I summarize Chapters 5 though 8 and offer reflections and comments on this very important book.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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This book is so important and rich in content that I will devote two
reports to it. In Part I, I will summarize chapters 1 through 4; in
Part II I will summarize chapter 5 through 8 and offer brief
reflections.
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by Denise M. Burke, Vice President of Legal Affairs, Americans United for Life
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As debate rages over healthcare legislation currently under
consideration in Congress and, specifically, whether abortion should be
taxpayer-funded under the guise of “healthcare reform,” it would be
easy to overlook an important and very inauspicious milestone: the
20th anniversary of the federal “Freedom of Choice” Act (FOCA).
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by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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The Catholic Church in the United States and globally, can ordinarily
count on praise for its services to and teachings about the poor, and
jeers for its interventions about sex, marriage and abortion. Now, it
appears as though the Church can kiss even this limited approval
goodbye. The Archdiocese of Washington DC has announced that its
charitable institutions will no longer be able to partner with the
District of Columbia’s (DC) government due to the absence of conscience
protection for religious actors in DC’s proposed “Religious Freedom
[sic] and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009.” This bill
would redefine marriage as the “legally recognized union of 2
people…regardless of gender.” The bill fails to protect individual
religious persons or enterprises who serve the public, from cooperating
with same sex marriages. It also has the effect of requiring Catholic
institutions to provide the same benefits to employees who enter a
same-sex union, as those provided to an employee with an opposite-sex
marriage. The accreditations and/or licenses of Catholic educational
institutions, and professionals are also at stake.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Progress on research creating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs):
I have written several times on the blockbuster breakthrough in stem
cell research known as direct reprogramming, a technique for converting
(“inducing”) common body cells (“somatic cells”) into pluripotent stem
cells or iPSCs. In November 2007 the team of Shinya Yamanaka of
Japan’s University of Kyoto first published on the successful
production of human iPSCs [1]. By injecting four select proteins
delivered on the back of retroviruses into a skin cell, they were able
to reprogram the highly differentiated skin cell back into the state of
a pluripotent stem cell. Amidst the well-deserved enthusiasm generated
by the success, questions were raised at once about the retroviral
delivery system. Because the viruses tended to incorporate themselves
into the new cell’s DNA, the technique risked tumor formation if ever
used in clinical trials with humans. Finding a harmless delivery
system for the reprogramming proteins became the new challenge.
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by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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“Jon and Kate plus Eight.” “Kate plus Eight.” “Jon and the Other Kate.”
If there was ever a time we wanted to shield our eyes from supermarket
tabloids, this must be it. Yet, while their story is topping the pop
culture charts, it seems fitting to look more closely at it in order to
acknowledge not only the emotional wreckage involved, but also the
light it sheds on the travesty we call our divorce laws.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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Introduction
Contraception is usually considered an issue of sexual ethics rather
than one proper to bioethics. But contraception is quite relevant to
respect for human life. Contraception is not itself a sexual act but
rather accompanies a sexual act. Obviously one can engage in sex and
not contracept; copulating couples who contracept engage in two acts:
they choose to copulate and they choose to contracept. Here I will
argue that contraception is an anti-life kind of act and leads to the
“culture of death.”
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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My apologies for writing again on health care. There are many other
issues worth addressing (e.g., mandatory H1N1 vaccinations, ethical
advances and declines in stem cell research, the state of the economy,
war in Afghanistan, etc.), but this one is of critical importance at
the moment. The debate will soon be history. If we lose, which seems
increasingly likely, defenders of the unborn will be fighting a fiercer
rear-guard battle than ever before. The President’s party is resolute
on pushing through the largest pro-abortion legislative reform in U.S.
history (Roe v. Wade was not an act of the legislature). And it
appears it will be successful. Here’s a brief update to keep you at
real-time in the national discussion.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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Rita Joseph, Human Rights and the Unborn Child. Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. 2009. xviii+357 pp. $148.00.
Reviewed by William E. May, Ph.D., Emeritus Michael J. McGivney
Professor of Moral Theology, Pontifical John Paul II Institute for
Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America
and Senior Fellow, Culture of Life Foundation.
Rita Joseph [1] has been closely involved with UN Commissions and
Committees and participates as a member of the Australian delegation
in Working Group sessions negotiating human rights languages. This
involvement convinced her that the claim voiced today that the rights
of the unborn child are not protected by key UN documents is false.
This book provides the evidence needed to show how false that claim is.
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by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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This is the last in my series of columns on out of wedlock births. By
now you know that 4 in 10 U.S. births are nonmarital; this rises to 7
in 10 for African-American Women, and 5 in 10 for Hispanic women, our
fastest growing minority population. Women in their 20s and 30s account
for the lion’s share of the trend. [1] Reactions to our predicament
are suitably alarmist, but still terribly predictable. The National
Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy will push for both more abstinence,
and higher rates of contraceptive usage among the unmarried. They will
call for less complacency and more parental involvement.[2] Planned
Parenthood took the occasion to bash abstinence programs while
abstinence programs linked the rise to the fact that 68% of public
schools employ contraceptive instruction, which has a 4 to 1 funding
advantage over abstinence in the United States. [3]
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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I would like to update CLF readers on the status of the abortion
provision in the U.S. health care debate. President Obama and high
ranking Democrats in both Houses (e.g., Rep. Nancy Pelosi [D-CA], Sen.
Claire McCaskill [D-MO], Rep. Ron Klein [D-FL], Sen. Arlin Specter
[D-PA]) have been recently quoted as stating that no federal tax
dollars will be used to fund abortion under universal healthcare. The
most highly publicized statement came from the President in his address
to the joint session of congress on Sept. 9th: “One more
misunderstanding I want to clear up – under our plan, no federal
dollars will be used to fund abortions.” I felt genuinely optimistic
when I heard these words. It seemed implausible to me that despite the
President’s proclivities to stretch the truth he would bold-facedly lie
to the American people during an internationally televised speech. It
shortly became clear that the President’s statement was false. Its
falsity however is cleverly disguised. To remove the disguise, I need
to review a couple provisions from the health care bill being debated
in the House of Representatives.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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One of the issues most heatedly debated by Catholic bioethicists
addressed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recent
document on bioethical issues, Dignitas personae, concerned the
morality of prenatally adopting abandoned frozen embryos. Some Catholic
bioethicists had argued that such prenatal adoption is intrinsically
evil and can never rightly be practiced, whereas others had concluded
that it is not and can rightly be practiced.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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Introduction. This first part of a two-part essay addresses the matters
identified in the title above. Part II will examine the thought of
leading proponents of the “new biology’s” eugenic program.
Historical background
Definition and status during 19th, early 20th, and late 20th centuries
Eugenics is based on the belief that it is possible to improve the
human species by means such as discouraging reproduction by persons
having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesired traits
(negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to
have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics). Among early
advocates of eugenics in the 19th century were Francis Dalton and
Charles Darwin in England, and Margaret Sanger in the United States. A
strong opponent of eugenics in the early 20th century was Gilbert Keith
Chesterton, whose Eugenics and Other Evils unmasked this movement’s
inhuman philosophy. Hitler’s program of eugenics brought the movement
into disrepute in the middle of the 20th century.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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“It is better to be fit than unfit.” Who could disagree? Health is
good and desirable, sickness is bad and repugnant. Pursuing the former
and avoiding the latter are eminently worthwhile goals. But merely
stating them in the form of goals leaves us in an overly abstract
position. Some goals are so basic and common-sensical that they
literally cannot be criticized. Concreteness and hence criticizability
enters in when we begin considering practical means to achieving our
goals: “the devil’s in the details.” This is why so many things said
in a State of the Union Address are unobjectionable: “Everyone deserves
access to healthcare!” “We’re after an economy where all who want a
good job can find one!” “I’m committed to lowering the out of wedlock
birthrate!” “Nothing will stand between my administration and equality
for all!” The devil indeed is in the details. Constructing a
euphemism therefore involves among other things placing rhetorical
emphasis for controversial ideas on readily acceptable values:
pro-choice, planned parenthood, therapeutic medicine, hereditary
improvement techniques. Eugenics is a fertile ground for the use of
euphemisms.
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by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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Given that Dr. Jack Kevorkian, Karen Anne Quinlan and Terri Schiavo are
no longer making daily headlines, it’s a little surprising that the
subject of “eugenics” is back in the news. This time, it’s coming to us
via the national debate about proposed federal health care legislation,
as well as the news of the Obama administration’s “end of life
counseling” materials for veterans. Written by an assisted suicide
advocate, the booklet at issue includes, in the words of commentator
Jim Towey, “guilt-inducing scenarios such as ‘I can no longer
contribute to my family's well being,’ ‘I am a severe financial burden
on my family’ and my situation ‘causes severe emotional burden for my
family.’ ” [1] The booklet seems to suggest, in other words, that
illness, disability or financial distress might make life not worth
living.
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by Jessica Sage, Staff Counsel, Americans United for Life
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Brenda Vise, a 38-year old pharmaceutical representative, died on
September 12, 2001. Holly Patterson, an 18-year old student, died on
September 17, 2003. Chanelle Bryant, 22-years old, died on January 14,
2004. Vivian Tran, also 22 years old, died on December 29, 2003.
Orianne Shevin, a 34-year old attorney and mother of two, died on June
14, 2005.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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Introduction
At the conclusion of the presentation I made when the Culture of Life
Foundation gave me the first annual award named after me in September
2008, I offered a “Suggested Strategy for Helping Adversaries
Understand Culture of Life Arguments.” Here I will recapitulate and
develop that strategy. Before doing so, however, I think it important
to point out why excellent arguments developed by those who propose the
“culture of life” are not able to persuade advocates of the “culture of
death” to change their minds.
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by Helen Alvaré, J.D. and E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D.
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The Church has identified herself as an “expert in humanity”
[1]. But who has the temerity to claim
to be an expert in the female half of humanity? The complete identity of the female—call it
the nature of ‘femaleness’—is hidden in the complex body-soul unity which
constitutes the human person. And so an
understanding of the female body is one key to unlock this complex reality. But an understanding of the body is not
enough to understand the person. Although
human persons are always bodily and human bodies always personal, persons are
not reducible to their bodies. They are their
bodies, but they are more than their bodies, because the animating principle
that makes their bodies to be living
bodies is a non-material soul. But
is there such thing as a properly “female soul”? Can spirit per se be engendered? These
are weighty questions.
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by Culture of Life Foundation
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Watch Culture of Life
Foundation Executive Director, Jennifer Kimball, on YouTube
Together we can form a culture of life!
God bless,
Culture of Life Foundation
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by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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In two previous columns I suggested that a not insignificant cause of
the current rates of out of wedlock pregnancies in the US is a
breakdown of healthy relations between women and men. Past attempts to
address high rates of nonmarital pregnancies failed to note this
possible cause. To be clear, I am not suggesting that all prior
attempts to curb such pregnancies (e.g. policies in areas such as
education, job-training, sex-education, child support enforcement,
social welfare, and marriage) were wrong or illogical in themselves,
only that they were incomplete. At the same time I would have to note
that some policy responses may have actually exacerbated the situation.
Those involving large-scale birth control distribution, for example,
and abortion on request, were not only unsuccessful, but sent messages
about the meaning of male/female relationships that very likely sent
nonmarital birth rates to higher levels. [1]
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Speaking about laws that legalize abortion, Pope John Paul II states
flatly in Evangelium Vitae that “there is a grave and clear obligation
to oppose them by conscientious objection” (no. 73, emphasis in text).
It is clear from the context in the encyclical that “oppose them by
conscientious objection” refers to laws that require one wrongfully to
cooperate in doing evil. In such a case one has a “clear obligation”
to refuse, even when one’s refusal threatens considerable sacrifice.
For example, doctors, nurses, and medical students have an obligation
to refuse to participate in performing abortions or abortion training.
When following a human law means violating God’s law, we are not only
justified but have a duty to refuse to follow the law—as St. Peter
proclaims before the Sanhedrin, “We must obey God rather than men”
(Acts 5:29).
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by Helen Alvaré, J.D. and E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D.
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ETHICAL QUESTIONS A CATHOLIC SHOULD ASK
Dear Friends of a Culture of Life,
We think that significant moral
questions are raised by the universal health debate and would like to formulate several for you. Our purpose is not to draw a
one-size-fits-all conclusion about the merits of all current health
care bills. These raise complex questions and there are reasons to
support and/or oppose various pieces of different bills.
The Catholic Church has affirmed for some time a right to a minimum of
decent, humane and accessible health care.[1] This does not imply that
a nationalized health care system is a good idea, nor its establishment
a fundamental right. But it does imply that Catholics should work for
some kind of improvement or reform in the current system on behalf of
those who cannot afford adequate care.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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“Boys will be doofuses.” Kevin Ryan, in an essay with this title on
“MercatorNet” [1]
begins with a citation from Mark Penn, “the social trend guru,” in
which Penn declares: “Men are now lagging women in every major category
from lifestyle to health, from education to employment.” Ryan considers
some major causes of this phenomenon. The primary factor for this, he
thinks, is that “many, many boys are lacking what the psychologists
call ‘role models,’ most important of which is a visible, present
father.” In a short time, “the shape of the American family has
undergone radical surgery and the part most obviously cut away is Dad.
A 50 percent divorce rate, plus simple walk-away separations are well
known factors in the dismal family landscape.” (Ryan claims that this
trend began at the end of World War II. I believe he errs in this--it
began, as I will show, with the rise of feminism and widespread use of
contraceptives associated with that rise during the 1960s).
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by William E. May, Senior Fellow
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Men and Women: Diversity and Mutual Complementarity is the title of an
important and helpful book published by Libreria Vaticana Editrice in
2006 containing papers given at the Study Seminar held in Vatican City
30-31 January 2004. It contains 12 essays divided into 4 major parts. I
will try to summarize the thought of some of the major papers in two
articles.
Here I will take up the following essays: (1) Lucetta Scaraffia’s
“Socio-cultural changes in women’s lives”[1] ; (2) Vincente Aucante’s,
“Fatherhood”[2] ; (3) Maria Teresa Garutti Bellenzier’s “The identity
of women and men according to the teaching of the Church”[3] ; and
Carlo Caffarra’s “Benchmarks, problem areas and issues for debate.”[4]
In another article I will consider the contributions of Karna Swanson,
Manfred Lutz, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, and Marguerite Peeters.
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by William E. May, Senior Fellow
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In Part I we saw that a dualistic anthropology sharply distinguishes between having a living human body and being a person; this dualism is operative in the insistence of many scientists and bioethicists today to kill human embryos, who for them are not persons, in order to benefit those humans who are persons,
i.e., human beings like themselves, conscious subjects who are capable
of exercising cognitive abilities and/or minimally “communicating”
with other “conscious subjects.”
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by Joseph Bingham, 2009 AUL and Blackstone Fellow
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When the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released its new
guidelines for federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR)
on July 6, observers noted a significant change from the Institutes’
earlier proposed guidelines. Under the earlier proposals, all stem-cell
lines would have to meet certain procedural requirements to make sure
that the stem cells used were obtained ethically. Under the finalized
guidelines, stem cell-lines which have already been created with
private funding will be individually reviewed to see whether they meet
the “spirit” of the guidelines (e.g., informed consent on the
part of the original embryo donors) rather than the procedural
requirements which will be required of new lines for which funding is
sought.[1]
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by Helen M. Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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You’ve heard details from many sources, including this website, about
abortion and current health care reform proposals. You have likely read
about what it will do: abolish state limitations on abortion, and
trample conscience rights of morally or religiously opposed medical
professionals and institutions. You have also likely learned how it
will do it: the appointment by the executive branch of a type of
health care advisory committee composed of abortion advocates who will
have decision-making authority about the package of services which
will be deemed “necessary” health care and “essential benefits of
coverage.” (See E. Christian Brugger, Urgent Action Alert,
culture-of-life.org).
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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First, I will present Pope Benedict’s teaching on life issues in the encyclical and then offer comments thereon.
The Pope’s Teaching
Pope Benedict XVI addresses issues related to the sanctity of human
life and human sexuality in depth in three different areas of his new
social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth).
In Chapter 2, titled “Human Development in Our Time,” the Pope begins
by saying: “One of the most striking aspects of development in the
present day is the important question of respect for life
(emphasis in original), which cannot in any way be detached from
questions concerning the development of peoples. It is an aspect which
has acquired increasing prominence in recent times, obliging us to
broaden our concept of poverty and underdevelopment to include questions connected with the acceptance of life, especially in cases where it is impeded in a variety of ways (emphasis added) (no. 28, 1). He then goes on to declare:
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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As now is widely known, Pope Benedict XVI recently issued his third
Encyclical, entitled Caritas in Veritate [1]. Most of us are familiar
with pope’s issuing encyclicals. But some of us might not be clear on
what precisely an encyclical is. In this blast I would like to
explain briefly some pertinent points about the nature and issuing of
papal encyclicals.
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by Mailee R. Smith, Staff Counsel, Americans United for Life
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This year marks the tenth “anniversary” of the Food and Drug
Administration’s (FDA) approval of the “emergency contraceptive,” Plan
B. A decade later, Plan B is not only just as unsafe, but now the drug
manufacturer is targeting our children.
The FDA first caved to abortion advocates’ demands in 1999 when it
approved the prescription status of Plan B. While touted as a drug to
prevent pregnancy, the drug manufacturer does not hide the fact that it
will prevent the implantation of an embryo.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Dear Friends,
I was one of 36 thousand pro-lifers last evening who tuned into a live
webcast sponsored by a dozen or so pro-life organizations highlighting
a MAJOR flaw in the Obama-backed Health Care bill racing through
Congress. In light of what I learned, I want to summarize for you a
few urgent points. I will do it as concisely as possible.
1. Abortion is presently not mentioned in the bill.
2. The bill does not specify what will and will not be covered.
3. The bill mandates that a Health Care Advisory Committee has the
authority to define the “essential benefits of coverage” (i.e., what
will and will not be covered)
4. The Health Advisory Committee will be a team of unelected
bureaucrats appointed by the Obama Administration, most likely by
Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human
Services.
5. President Obama during his campaign stated clearly and forcefully
that he believed “reproductive care” is a form of “essential” and
“basic” health care and assured that it would be included in his health
care plan.
6. As Governor of Kansas, Kathleen Sebelius vetoed every piece of
pro-life legislation that crossed her desk. She is an uncompromising
defender of abortion rights.
7. Obama and Sebelius will be CERTAIN to appoint an advisory
committee that supports abortion coverage in universal health care.
Therefore,
8. FEDERALLY FUNDED ABORTION WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY BECOME A MANDATED
FORM OF “ESSENTIAL HEALTH CARE” IF THE BILL PASSES IN ITS PRESENT
FORM.
9. Every tax payer will be forced to fund abortions.
10. Presently enacted restrictions on abortion at the State level will be overridden.
11. Hospitals and providers will be coerced into cooperating with abortions.
12. FOCA won’t need to be passed because its cornerstones will be included in our nationalized health care.
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by Helen Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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In my last column, I concluded that while public and private actors
have taken many different and sometimes logical approaches to reducing
out of wedlock pregnancies, they have also missed a crucial aspect of
the problem: the difficulties men and women are experiencing in their
relationships with one another, as evidenced by their unwillingness to
commit to one another, even after a baby is conceived. These
difficulties surface particularly in qualitative studies/narrative
accounts of individual and unmarried-couple single parents. They are
also logically apparent, based upon the real differences between the
meanings and consequences of decisions about sex and commitment, as
between the unmarried and the married. In other words, the very
structure of nonmarital childbearing -- i.e. sex within an
uncommitted relationship – and as compared with marital childbearing,
indicates that the process is very likely to foster (and sustain)
conflicts between men and women, and ill effects for their children.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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“By examining the genetic makeup of embryos, we can guarantee your next
child will be the sex of your choice.” (Jeffrey Steinberg, The
Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles, from website [1])
“Britain is now admired internationally for its policies and practice
in reproductive biology…[It gives] legal sanction to mixed animal–human
embryos, preimplantation genetic diagnosis and saviour siblings…China
has started to implement permissive national guidelines; the Chinese
attitude towards the embryo is not burdened with Christian views.”
(Ruth Deech, former chair of Britain’s Human Fertilization and
Embryology Authority [2])
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by Helen Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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Several columns ago, I addressed the worry that our country’s nearly
40% out of wedlock birthrate might represent some sort of tipping point
for marriage, for children’s well-being and for our society’s shared
future. I reviewed in-depth interviews with single moms which revealed
nearly bottomless wells of mistrust regarding the men who fathered
their children. The men’s behavior did not seem to merit better. This
past Father’s Day, President Obama spoke to an aspect of this mistrust:
he asked the fathers to step up to their fathering responsibilities.
(See http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/11094.html ) He
explicitly discussed his own fatherless upbringing and the hole it left
in his life. Good for him, and for the young men there in the Rose
Garden. And good for the country too. A robust father-child bond is a
crucial piece of the puzzle of that is a healthier future for U.S.
children.
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by Patrick Nagorski, 2009 AUL Fellow
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Most Americans know that this year marks the 36th anniversary of Roe
v Wade, the controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing
abortion. However, 2009 is also the 36th anniversary of important
federal protections for healthcare providers: the Church Amendments.
For more than three decades, these Amendments have provided a
much-needed foundation for protecting the moral and ethical freedoms of
healthcare providers.
Today, these protections are
increasingly important as abortion proponents seek to weaken and,
ultimately, remove common-sense abortion laws such as informed consent
and parental involvement, as well as federal and state laws and
regulations protecting healthcare providers who do not wish to
participate in abortions or other conflict-ridden procedures.
Moreover, these protections are also implicated as Congress and the
Administration debate a government take-over of America’s healthcare
industry.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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Human Life: a precious gift from God
In his magnificent Homily, “Stand Up for Human Life,” that he gave on
the Washington Mall on October 7, 1979, Pope John Paul II eloquently
defended the intrinsic goodness of human life, including bodily life,
declaring: “Human life is not just an idea or an abstraction. Human
life is the concrete reality of a being that lives, that acts, that
grows and develops. Human life is the concrete reality of a being that
is capable of love and of service to humanity.” Moreover, he added:
“When God gives life it is forever.”
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Two weeks ago President Obama sent a memo to the members of the
President’s Council on Bioethics (PCB) [1] informing them that their
appointments were being prematurely terminated. Impatient to nominate
his own slate, Obama decided the September 2009 expiry date of their
present term was too long to wait.
An advisory commission such as the PCB serves at the pleasure of the
sitting president. Since the members whom he served notice were all
Bush appointees, Obama’s move was unsurprising. It is however a
further indication of the direction the new administration is taking
public moral discourse.
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by Helen Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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It is well-known by now that the effort to overturn California’s
Proposition 8 lost at the California Supreme Court. Proposition 8 is
the citizens’ initiative which overturned that same court’s prior
decision ‘finding” a right to same-sex “marriage” within the California
Constitution. Gay rights’ reaction to the latest court ruling has
included calls for another citizen vote on the subject in 2010.
Leading same-sex marriage proponents have not tended to support the
alternative strategy of bringing their cause before a U.S. federal
court. The U.S. Constitution gives the federal courts jurisdiction to
hear claims that state action violates federal constitutional
guarantees. In the case of same-sex marriage, plaintiffs would argue
before a federal court that state laws reserving marriage for
opposite-sex couples violates both the Due Process and Equal Protection
clauses of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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The term “bioethics” is of recent coinage. The first to use it was Van
Rensselaer of the University of Wisconsin in the late 1960’s, an
oncologist who used it in an evolutionary sense somewhat distant from
the sense it has acquired. Warren T. Reich, one of the original
professors at what was then called the “The Joseph and Rose Kennedy
Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction and Bioethics” at
Georgetown University and editor of the first edition of the 4 volume
Encyclopedia of Bioethics, credits André Hellegers, the Dutch
obstetrician/fetal physiologist/demographer who founded the Kennedy
Institute at Georgetown University as the one “who used the term to
apply to the ethics of medicine and the biological sciences in such a
way that the name caught on in academic circles and in the mind of the
public. He did this initially by seeing to it that the word bioethics
appeared in the original name of the Kennedy Institute at its founding
in 1971: The Joseph and Rose Kennedy Institute for the Study of Human
Reproduction and Bioethics” (see Reich’s essay, “How Bioethics Got Its
Name” in The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 23, 1993).
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Earlier this year, seven directors of bioethics programs at Jesuit
universities, calling themselves the Consortium of Jesuit Bioethics
Programs, published in Commonweal a critique of papal teaching on the
moral requirement to provide food and water to patients in the
so-called persistent vegetative state (PVS). [1] Their aim is to
influence the American bishops against amending the Ethical and
Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERDs) to bring
the directives in line with the March 2004 teach¬ing of Pope John Paul
II on PVS. [2] The amendment will be considered at the bishops’ June
2009 meeting.
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by Helen Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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The recent news of the nearly 40% out of wedlock birth rate in the
United States should pretty much rock our world as citizens and as
Catholics. According to the Centers for Disease Control report, this
means 1.7 million children were born to unmarried mothers in 2007, a
figure 250% greater than the number reported in 1980. The implications
for our society loom large. According to empirical data published over
the last several decades in leading sociological journals, these
children, on average, will suffer significant educational and emotional
disadvantages compared to children reared by their married parents.
They will be less able to shoulder the burdens that “next generations”
traditionally assume for the benefit of their families, communities and
their country. They are likely to repeat their parents’ behaviors. The
boys are more likely to engage in criminal behavior and the girls to
have nonmarital children. There is also the fact that American society
is becoming increasingly segregated by different marriage and family
patterns. (See Kay Hymowitz, Marriage and Caste in America, 2007). To
wit, according to the CDC report, out of wedlock birth rates for
Hispanic and African American women are more than three and two times,
respectively, the rates for non-Hispanic white women. Furthermore,
only a tiny fraction of the children of college educated women are born
outside of marriage, while very high percentages are born to women with
a high school education or less.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Even those minimally familiar with the stem cell debate are aware of
the vast disparity that presently exists between the clinical
usefulness of human adult stem cells (hASCs) and embryonic stem cells
(hESCs). Not only have hESCs, despite billions of dollars spent, not
given rise to a single clinical success (none, zero); but until
recently, there had not even been a single clinical trial using hESCs
accepted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This illustrates
the concern of that regulatory body and the wider field for the serious
problems associated with hESC therapies, the most serious of which is
tumor formation.
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by Jessica Sage, Staff Counsel, Americans United for Life
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This year marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of the National
Abortion Rights and Reproductive Rights Action League (“NARAL”) and its
headlining of a reproductive “right” to “choice.” Since its inception,
the efforts of recently-recast NARAL Pro-Choice America have resulted
in more than 46 million legal abortions in the United States—a number
that should shock the public, but is all too often drowned out by
NARAL’s noisy rhetoric of reproductive “choice.” For Americans that
value and seek to protect human life, the question is: Is life in
America better today as a result of NARAL?
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by Helen Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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One of the most respected American sociologists, Andrew Cherlin, has
recently published The Marriage-Go-Round: the State of Marriage and the
Family in America. True to his role at Johns Hopkins University, he
proposes in his new work, not only a sociologically based
characterization of the American family, but also a public policy
response. The book is as important and revealing as it is overwhelming
and discouraging to supporters of children’s welfare and the overall
strength of marriage and families.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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Cypriot born reproductive scientist Panos Zavos is up to his old
mischief, claiming this time to have cloned 14 human embryos and to
have transferred 11 of them into the wombs of four women happy to give
birth to cloned babies. This is his third public announcement in six
years claiming to have succeeded at the controversial procedure [1].
Zavos, a naturalized American citizen, has fertility clinics in
Kentucky and in Cyprus. The British Independent reports that his
present work took place at a secret laboratory in a country where
cloning is legal (it speculates somewhere in the Middle East) [2].
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by William E. May, Ph.D., Senior Fellow
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When God made man, he did not make a conscious subject aware of
itself as a self to which he then added a body as an afterthought.
Rather, when he made man, "male and female he created them," and he
blessed them, saying: "Be fertile and multiply" (Gen 1:27-28).
In other words, when God created man he created a bodily being,
made in his own image and likeness and thus endowed with the gifts of
intelligence and free choice, sexually differentiated into male and
female. And he loves specific, individual human persons, male and
female, and not humanity in general. He made them to be the kind of
beings they are (human in nature), namely, bodily persons sexually
differentiated into male and female, precisely so that they could
freely receive from him the gift of his own divine life (grace) so long
as they freely choose, with his help, to give themselves away in
love--in a sincere gift of self--and thus form a communion of persons,
ultimately the communion of saints living fully the life of the Triune
God.
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by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics
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PRO-CHOICE NOT TO PARTICIPATE IN ABORTIONS
Take Action
Most are aware that the Obama administration has taken aim at
conscience regulations passed in the waning days of the Bush
administration protecting health care workers from participating in
abortions and sterilizations. Some however might be confused as to the
precise nature of the new administration’s initiative. I want to
clarify the salient points of that initiative and invite everyone who
reads this brief to contact the White House and urge it to defend and
not weaken conscience laws in the U.S.
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by Helen Alvaré, J.D., Senior Fellow in Law
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It must be said first that the Iowa Supreme Court decision (Varnum v.
O’Brien, No. 07-1499, April 3, 2009) which invented a state
constitutional right to same sex “marriage” is very hard to read. By
this I don’t mean to say that it is intellectually complex for any
reader possessing legal training. I mean that it is hard on a rational
reader’s desire for logic and hard on a fair reader’s sense of
justice. It is hard for those who know something about U.S.
constitutional law or family law because seven out of seven of Iowa’s
Supreme Court justices summarily jettisoned or ignored much of the
accumulated wisdom in both of those fields. It is particularly hard on
those who, like me, suspect that some government leaders -- in this
case judges -- care far too much for fickle public opinion and far too
little for children. All of our suspicions are confirmed. It is hard
because the Iowa judges openly shake their collective finger at people
who won’t support same sex “marriage,” characterizing such people as
bigots and as obstacles to progress. Finally, it is hard to read the
Iowa Supreme Court’s swipe at some religions (you can guess which
ones), and its suggestion that people of faith who are on the wrong
side of this question, should remember their “place.”
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by Kellie M. Fiedorek, 2009 Legal Extern, Americans United for Life
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The President of the United States is in a unique position to
profoundly influence the nation’s debates over key social and political
issues for decades after he leaves office. He can do this because he
maintains the authority to appoint judges to the nation’s federal
courts including the U.S. Supreme Court.
Although these nominees – including those for federal district courts
and for highly-influential federal circuit courts -- must be approved
by the Senate, the President bears the responsibility to nominate men
and women he believes are qualified for these important positions. More
often than not, he also seeks to nominate individuals that share his
political and social views as well as his judicial philosophy.
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