Sermon Illustrations on Medical Ethics — page 2

Reinventing Man: Biotechnology and the Human Future

If you have been watching the Olympics, you cannot help but be awed by the strength, speed, and skill of Olympic athletes. Take Michael Phelps, the phenomenal American swimmer who took gold in event after event. Or Dara Torres, a 41-year-old American swimmer who bested much younger athletes, winning a silver medal.

These men and women have spent years training, strengthening, and perfecting their skills and their bodies. As much as we applaud their accomplishments, we marvel at their effort.

Now, imagine not long from now, watching an Olympic games featuring athletes who never had to train like Phelps and Torres have. Instead, their skills and physique were planned before their birth, enhanced through nanotechnology. The games would be called the “Bio-Olympics,” in which competitors have artificially enhanced features, like superhuman strength and speed.

Sound like science-fiction? It’s not. Not long ago the President’s Council on Bioethics wrote about such a possibility.

We talk often on “BreakPoint” about bioethics, especially when it comes to cloning, embryo-destructive research, genetic engineering, and so forth. But science is bringing even greater ethical dilemmas right to our front doors now.

As my friend Nigel Cameron points out in the latest issue of BreakPoint WorldView magazine, science is moving beyond improving or fixing humanity, to remaking humanity.

Thanks to genetic, robotic, information, and nano technologies — collectively known by the ironic acronym GRIN — mankind is poised for what some call “engineered evolution.” Nigel warns that the very technologies that can “help us restore function to the disabled and fight disease, can also be used to bring in the ‘Brave New World’ — in which what it means to be human, made in the image of God, is fundamentally lost.”

Not only will the results of this “evolution” be unprecedented, but so will the speed at which it happens. “Pain vaccines,” “memory pills,” and “gene doping,” which may turn even the scrawniest kid into a Hercules, are being tested as I speak.

But who will enjoy the fruits of such enhancements? As Nigel writes, developments in “blending human nature and machine nature through such means as the implanting of brain chips for memory, skills, or communication ... could compound both the intelligence and the wealth of a small segment of society.” This could lead “to a new feudalism, in which power of all kinds is concentrated in the hands of ‘enhanced’ persons.”

This raises unimaginable ethical problems, and Christians must be engaged in the debate. As Nigel writes, “At the heart of the agenda for the 21st century lies the need to build a policy framework in which ethical principles set the ground-rules for our use of these new powers.” We must, he says, “secure human nature from commodification.”

I could not agree more. Humans and human nature are not commodities to be manipulated, bought, and sold. In the rush to “make life better and easier” by “improving” the human body, we cannot allow human life to become less human.

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Deadly Intentions

Job 3:20

The poison peddled by the euthanasia movement here in the United States continues to take its toll. Assisted suicide was legalized in Oregon in the 1990s, and pro-death advocates are now pushing hard to make it legal in the state of Washington, where Initiative 1000 would allow any competent adult suffering from a terminal illness to make a written request for medication that the patient may self-administer to end his or her life.

The average reader would interpret Initiative 1000 as helping terminal patients commit suicide, plain and simple. But the euthanasia movement has tried to mask that plain truth with soothing euphemisms. Rather than acknowledging that the initiative promotes assisted suicide, the text states the “request” will allow the patient to end their life “in a humane and dignified manner.” Then, in a classic example of double speak, the text goes on to state, “Actions taken in accordance with this chapter do not, for any purpose, constitute suicide, assisted suicide, mercy killing, or homicide, under the law. State reports shall not refer to practice under this chapter as ‘suicide’ or ‘assisted suicide.’” Funny, these “actions” sound just like the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of suicide: “the act or an instance of taking one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally especially by a person of years of discretion and of sound mind.”

If passed in November 2008, Initiative 1000 will transform the legal landscape of the state of Washington. The change would parallel Oregon’s decade-long acceptance of assisted suicide, a practice that has given rise to a myriad of problems. According to a fact sheet from National Right to Life, Oregon “conducts no independent reviews of assisted suicide deaths.” Further, physicians who prescribe lethal drugs “only file required reports about 80.2% of the time.” Incredibly, in “76.1% of these cases, physicians said that they had not perceived their act as the ending of life.”

Not surprisingly, stories of abuse abound.

In 1998, an Oregonian psychologist decided that 85-year-old Kate Cheney was “cognitively impaired” because she suffered from dementia and, therefore, was not qualified to pursue assisted suicide. Her family then found another psychologist who authorized the suicide. That psychologist did so despite noting the undue influence of Cheney’s family on the decision and that Cheney was so mentally impaired she could not remember basic information about her cancer diagnosis.

In 2007, two nurses in Oregon gave Wendy Melcher a lethal overdose. Though this was illegal (Oregon only allows physicians to prescribe lethal drugs), one of the nurses said she provided the overdose “because she believed [Melcher] to be in uncontrollable pain.” However, the nurse had never noted such pain prior to the day she administered the overdose.

Recently, 64-year-old Barbara Wagner was suffering from cancer, but the Oregon Heath Plan would not cover a $4000 a month drug that could have helped her. Instead it offered to pay for comfort care, including assisted suicide through drugs that would cost the state far less money than those requested by Ms. Wagner. As the only state that -- in the words of The Oregonian newspaper -- “both allows assisted suicide and tries to ration health care,” the state’s motivations in this case are highly suspect.

The truth is that the euthanasia movement’s ultimate goal is death on demand for everyone. “A dignified death for the terminally ill” is just the first step toward this goal. Philip Nitschke, a well known pro-euthanasia leader and president of Exit International in Australia, said in a 2001 interview, “My personal position is that if we believe that there is a right to life, then we must accept that people have a right to dispose of that life whenever they want.” Nitschke’s view is typical of pro-death advocates. Their belief in a right to commit suicide is based on a hyper-individualism that sees every person as completely autonomous. They ignore any duties a person has to society or to their family as well as the wider social impact of such low regard for human life.

Wesley J. Smith points out in a National Review article, “[Nitschke] has not limited his ‘death counseling’ to the terminally ill. A case in point involved Nancy Crick who made headlines when she announced on Australian television that she would commit assisted suicide because she had terminal cancer. When her autopsy showed she was cancer free, however, Nitschke admitted that he and Crick had known all along that she wasn’t dying. Nevertheless, he deemed that medical fact ‘irrelevant’ because she wanted to die.”

Acceptance of euthanasia in select cases leads inevitably to an ever-expanding circle of those considered “killable.” In 30 years of unpunished (and eventually legalized) assisted suicide in the Netherlands, Smith reports, the circle of accepted killings has been broadened to include the depressed, the disabled and infants born with birth defects. Once a society accepts the right to commit suicide to prevent suffering, the right to kill to prevent suffering follows.

The euthanasia movement’s callous disregard for life needs to be unmasked. Behind euphemisms like “death with dignity” and “end of life choices” lies an insidious assault on the sanctity of human life. Euthanasia advocates view “choice” as the ultimate virtue and “freedom of choice” as the ultimate freedom. Stripped of its gloss, however, their position is that unless one has the freedom to kill himself, he isn’t really free. That’s a perverse view of freedom and a sad view of life.

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Ken Connor is chairman of the CENTER FOR A JUST SOCIETY based in Washington D.C., online at www.centerforajustsociety.org.

We Call It Religious Freedom: Others Call It 'Silly Prejudice'

It seems one man’s religious freedom is another man’s “ridiculous prejudice.”

One government official fumed that Catholic doctors were refusing to perform abortions — abortions that were perfectly legal. He wrote in a memo: “After all, these scruples are in most cases nothing but ridiculous prejudices ... One is tempted to ask: where does state authority come in these cases, or else, is the state, perhaps, not anxious to assert its authority in this particular instance?”

Well, Nazi Germany was seldom hesitant to assert its authority, even over religion and individual conscience. As described in the June/July issue of First Things, the government official I just quoted was a Nazi bureaucrat who was none-too-happy that doctors in Italy’s Lake District — a heavily Catholic region — wouldn’t perform abortions. The Nazis, you see, had legalized abortions “in countries occupied by the Germany army.” Refusal to participate in government-sanctioned procedures drew his ire.

Fast forward to today, where there is heavy debate over whether medical professionals can be exempted from performing services that violate their religious beliefs.

The comparison is fair. And disturbing. But the problem isn’t restricted to medical practice.

Just last week, the New Hampshire legislature voted down a gay “marriage” bill because the governor had the audacity to insert language that would protect clergy and religious organizations from being forced to participate in gay “marriage” ceremonies or from providing marriage-related services.

As reported in the Concord Monitor, one New Hampshire legislator opposed what he called the “totally unnecessary and harmful amendment” because it “entrenches homophobia in statute.”

So, one man’s religious freedom, it seems, is another man’s homophobia — or silly prejudice, as the Nazi official called it.

Another legislator was quoted as saying, “It is puzzling to me, why we would allow some to discriminate and others not.”

Maybe he is wondering, as the Nazi official did, “where state authority comes in this case.”

As I write in the upcoming June issue of Christianity Today — which I urge you to read — totalitarianism thrives when the state succeeds in what Hannah Arendt called the “atomization of society.” Arendt, a political theorist who fled Nazi Germany, described how totalitarian states seek to create a mass of individuals isolated from the very structures that have held civilized societies together for eons. Once individuals are alienated from families or from their faith communities or civic groups, they stand alone before the power of the state.

Is the United States teetering on the edge of totalitarianism? No.

But, should we Christians be concerned when the government seeks to strip health care workers of their right of conscience? Should we sniff out danger when a state fails to protect the religious rights of clergy, or wedding planners, or photographers who choose not to participate in same-sex marriage ceremonies? Or when a new administration considers whether or not to force faith-based groups to cease what it considers “discriminatory” hiring practices?

Should we be concerned? Yes, we should.

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Making (Exotic) Babies: Human Life, Made To Order

Job 15:35

What’s the difference between a pet Burmese Python and a human baby? Nothing. Or everything. It depends on your worldview.

Americans have a thing for the exotic, no matter how costly it may prove to other people. For instance, the Florida Everglades are home to, among other species, Nile crocodiles, green anacondas, and most famously, tens of thousands of Burmese pythons.

As words like “Nile” and “Burmese” suggest, none of these species are native to Florida or even to this continent. Their presence in the Everglades, and the damage they’re causing to that fragile ecosystem, is the result of people indulging their desire for exotic pets and then dumping them when they become inconvenient.

As bad as this sort of self-indulgence is when we’re talking reptiles, it’s infinitely worse when the exotic commodity is people.

A recent listing on Craigslist ran this header: “50K+ Compensation: East Indian/South Asian looking Egg Donor Needed.” The listing included a photo of the kind of egg donor the solicitor had in mind: a beautiful woman of Asian origin, the kind that tend to do well in Miss World and Miss Universe pageants.

The people behind the listing, who describe themselves as “a well respected [sic] boutique egg donation and surrogacy agency in Southern California,” didn’t stop at the merely superficial.

In addition to having an “attractive” and “exotic” “East Indian look,” the egg donor must be intelligent as well, with at least a 3.5 GPA and a 2150 on the SAT, which would place her in the 97th percentile.

In other words, this woman, this donor, must be statistically-improbable. In exchange for being this improbable, the egg donor would not only be well-compensated, she would “change someone’s life in a way that is truly the world’s greatest gift.”

Funny, I thought gifts were free.

This solicitation isn’t unprecedented. In 1999, ads in the newspapers of elite universities offered $50,000 to “athletic” women who were at least 5’10” and had scored 1400 or better on their SATs. Little wonder that, since then, stories about Ivy League grads being offered big money for their eggs has been a recurring item in the news.

None of which changes the fact that we’re talking about not only buying life, but life made-to-order, or at least as close as we can for now.

Our culture has already decided the principle moral question of whether it is okay to treat our children as a customized consumer experience. And as I recently said on BreakPoint, advances in genetics, like CRISPR gene editing, offer the promise of allowing us to custom order children straight from the factory, as it were, rather than limit ourselves to what’s available at the dealership.

The desire for customizable “exotic-looking” children is the product of the same worldview that prompts people to buy exotic pets: As Westerners we think of ourselves primarily as consumers, with inherent rights to any and all goods in a global marketplace.

This consumer view of the world extends beyond the shopping mall and Amazon.com. It now includes the conceiving, birthing, choosing, and raising of children. Unable, too busy, or too stressed to spend nine months being pregnant? Hire a surrogate, preferably an “East Asian/South Asian” one who’ll do the job for less.

Want a hedge to protect your parental investment? Buy eggs from attractive, accomplished women.

This is where our obsession with restriction-free choice and personal autonomy leads. Babies become products, things to be desired, acquired, and even discarded when they do not meet our tastes and desires.

A culture like this makes a swamp full of pythons and crocodiles look reassuring by comparison.

To better understand this evil, I invite you to check out the powerful documentary from the Center for Bioethics and Culture entitled “Eggsploitation.”

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RESOURCES

Eggsploitation, documentary

http://www.eggsploitation.com/about.htm

50K+ Compensation: East Indian/South Asian looking Egg Donor Needed

Craigslist Philadelphia | March 9, 2016

http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/etc/5484476382.html

Frankie Has Two Mommies: Redefining Humanity

A letter recently published in the prestigious journal Nature told readers about a technique that could potentially “prevent a number of incurable genetic diseases.” But, as is often the case, exploiting the potential comes at a cost — like redefining what it means to be human.

The letter bore the innocuous sounding title “Pronuclear Transfer in Human Embryos to Prevent Transmission of Mitochondrial DNA Disease.”

Mitochondria are important parts of the cell because, among other things, they produce a chemical called ATP. And ATP provides usable energy for the cell. Mitochondria have their own DNA, which is passed from mother to child.

Illnesses associated with mitochondrial defects are serious and incurable. They include, to name but a few, heart, kidney and liver disease, diabetes, and dementia.

The researchers’ method of preventing these diseases was to first use in vitro fertilization to produce human zygotes. A zygote is a single cell that forms when a sperm cell and an egg fuse. These zygotes had defective mitochondrial DNA, which they inherited from the mother.

They then repeated the process, only this time using a female donor without the defect. This left them with two sets of zygotes — one healthy, one not.

What the researchers basically did was replace the defective mitochondria in one zygote with the healthy mitochondria of the other. The result, the letter declares, was “a seemingly healthy cell with the genetic identity” of the first couple, “and the mitochondria of the second woman.”

In other words, it produced a child who, genetically speaking, really does have two mommies.

Gerald Nadal, a molecular biologist, asked the question we should all be asking: “What have we done to ourselves?” Instead of being begotten, “children are manufactured in In Vitro Fertilization clinics...the composite of two mothers and one father.”

This “Frankenstein’s baby” came about, Nadal says, “through the destruction of two humans...[and] is a composite of its two destroyed progenitors.”

Our laudable desire to reduce suffering has led us to sacrifice our human dignity and identity.

C.S. Lewis wouldn’t be surprised. In The Abolition of Man, he warned that “the conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men....The power of Man to make himself what he pleases means...the power of some men to make other men what they please.”

In the name of reducing suffering we have indeed opened a door to “the abolition of Man.” We are on our way to making human life customizable like a new sofa.

And instead of having intrinsic value as men and women made in the image of God, our worth will be a function of how we conform to someone else’s expectations.

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A Life Unworthy of Life?

Job 3:20

The Nazi regime under the leadership of Adolf Hitler employed a policy known as Lebensunwertes Leben, which translated means “Life unworthy of life.” The practice gave the Nazi’s the right to designate segments of the population that in the eyes of the state had no right to live.

People with physical disabilities were the first to be euthanized under the policy. The mentally ill were the next to receive the designation. Eventually anyone deemed a threat to the Nazis and their stated goals were labeled Lebensunwertes Leben. The final horror of the policy was the holocaust of the Jews.

Considering the status of the unborn in the so-called developed nations of the world, it would seem one aspect of the Nazi policy of Lebensunwertes Leben is experiencing a revival.

While no country yet forces the abortion of unborn children with disabilities, the practice, while voluntary, is widely accepted by physicians and individuals alike.

For example, when a doctor recently informed a Canadian couple that the unborn child their surrogate mother was carrying was likely to be born with Down syndrome, they insisted on an abortion, according to the National Post.

The surrogate resisted and sought to take the pregnancy to term. Her decision, according to the terms of the surrogacy contract, would release the couple from any responsibility for the child. The surrogate eventually relented and had the abortion, in part because she already had two children.

The child in Canada was a victim of a growing trend toward the acceptance that some unborn children are simply unworthy to be born.

A variety of studies in the United States have found that when there is a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, 84 to 91 percent of those unborn babies suffer the fate of abortion. A 2004 study in England found that more than 90 percent of prenatal Down syndrome diagnoses ended with abortion.

When you consider that in America the vast majority of abortions take place as a matter of convenience, it should come as no surprise that unborn children diagnosed with probable abnormalities are overwhelmingly aborted.

If a normal and healthy life that is not “planned” or “wanted” can be deemed as Lebensunwertes Leben, then for certain a life viewed as “less than perfect” is going to be easy to label as unworthy to live.

There are concerns among some ethicists that the right to abortion on demand could become the expectation of abortion of the imperfect. In other words, parents might be stigmatized for choosing to give life to a child with birth defects.

The Nazis, of course, moved well beyond the termination of unborn “undesirables.” The policy of Lebensunwertes Leben included anyone that was considered problematic for the state. As a result, anyone deemed unworthy of life by the state were euthanized.

Of course developed nations are not forcibly euthanizing people. However, the idea of people determining their own death is catching on around the world.

Euthanasia is legal in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, while physician-assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland. In the United States physician-assisted suicide has been deemed legal in Oregon, Washington and Montana.

In the same way ethicists fear abortion could morph from a right into an expectation, some are concerned the same could occur with euthanasia. Some experts in ethics are concerned that the right to die could become the expectation to die.

Those who are terminally ill could feel societal pressure to simply end their lives. Why drain financial resources and put family members through emotional turmoil when you can have a doctor help you painlessly end it all?

Once the expectation to die is accepted for the terminally ill, can the same be far behind for the aged? After all, one of the arguments for physician assisted suicide is “quality of life.”

If a person’s quality of life is diminished for any reason, then euthanasia could be justified. And some would argue that quality of life does diminish with age.

The idea of life unworthy of life is certainly a slippery slope. Who determines if a live is worthy to live? The state? The individual? If an imperfect, innocent life can be deemed unworthy to live, then any life can be threatened with the same designation.

The Nazis sought to force Lebensunwertes Leben on German society. However, in developed countries around the world the concept of “life unworthy of life” is slowly but surely being embraced. The Nazis, it seems, were just ahead of their time.

Infanticide: the Deadly Logic of Abortion In Court

Mark 9:37

In April 2005, Katrina Effert, age nineteen, secretly gave birth to a baby boy in the downstairs bathroom. She then strangled the child, wrapped him in towels, and dropped him over the backyard fence behind a neighbor’s shed.

After repeatedly lying to police and trying to pin the crime on a man she hooked up with nine months earlier, Effert finally confessed to killing the child, whom she named Rodney.

In 2006 and again in 2009 juries convicted her of second-degree murder with a minimum of ten years in prison. Earlier this month the same judge who presided over Effert’s trial in 2009 changed the conviction to infanticide and sentenced her to a three-year suspended sentence with probation.

In England since 1922 and in Canada since 1948, infanticide has been separated from murder. Women who killed their newborns were often domestic servants who hid their pregnancies and destroyed the evidence for fear of being fired.

Juries were unwilling to convict those women of murder since it carried the death penalty. Therefore, a new crime with a lesser penalty was created using the dubious assumption that only a mentally disturbed and, thus, morally irresponsible woman would kill her own child. Mental illness, remember, is the way that secular societies replace the judgmental “sin” word.

According to an article in Canada’s National Post, when Justice Joanne Veit gave instructions to the jury in 2009, she told them that if they determined that Efferts was “disturbed” — a word that has no clear legal or psychological definition — they had to find her guilty of infanticide. The jury nonetheless returned a verdict of murder.

Now whether or not Veit should have overturned the jury’s decision can be debated. What can’t be debated was the judge’s chilling rationale. Veit linked her leniency and Effert’s crime to abortion.

Canada, you see, has no restrictions on abortion. If Effert had had an abortion the day before she delivered, all would be well — legally at least. Instead she gave birth.

As reported in the Calgary Herald, Veit wrote that the lack of a Canadian abortion law shows that “many Canadians ... generally understand, accept and sympathize with” hard-pressed mothers, “especially mothers without support.” So, such sympathy makes infanticide permissible?

Commentator Mark Steyn correctly states that the judge is, in essence, justifying “fourth-trimester abortion.” He goes on: “So a superior court judge in a relatively civilized jurisdiction is happy to extend the principles underlying legalized abortion in order to mitigate the killing of a legal person — that’s to say, someone who has managed to make it to the post-fetal stage.”

As Dr. Al Mohler puts it, “The willingness to kill within the womb leads logically to a willingness to kill outside the womb.” Of course it does — and don’t let abortion supporters deny it. Princeton Professor Peter Singer has made that argument for years as a justification for killing infants.

At least this case in Canada exposes where the evil logic of abortion leads. It is totally morally unsustainable.

But it’s clear that despite the fact that more and more Americans at least are turning pro-life, the battle is far from over. We, that is, the Church, have a lot of work to do to uphold the dignity — and the sacredness — of every human life, from conception to natural death.

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What Roe Has Wrought: 'After-Birth' Abortion

Should a newborn be allowed to live? This very question is the subject of an article by two Australian-based ethicists that appears in the latest Journal of Medical Ethics (JME), an international publication based in Britain.

The question, of course, is not difficult to answer. In the biblical worldview, a baby should be allowed to live because human life originates with God. Human life is precious, sacred and, as the Bible asserts, made in the image of God.

The authors have a very different take. In their article titled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?,” Alberto Giubilini of Melbourne’s Monash University and Francesca Minerva of the University of Melbourne argue the only reason an infant should be allowed to live is if the parents deem it so.

Giubilini and Minerva believe the criteria that allow an unborn baby to be aborted should also be applied to an infant that has been born. Studies have shown that in developed countries, like the United States, the primary reasons given for abortion range from poverty to simply not wanting an additional child. Simply put, in the developed nations of the world babies are aborted more than 90 percent of the time as a matter of convenience.

“If a disease has not been detected during the pregnancy, if something went wrong during the delivery, or if economical, social or psychological circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden on someone, then people should be given the chance of not being forced to do something they cannot afford,” the authors write.

The authors assert there is no difference between an infant and an unborn child -- they use the precise but sterile medical term “fetus.” Both are essentially non-persons, they say, and as such, neither has an inherent right to life.

They write: “If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.”

According to Giubilini and Minerva, in order to qualify as a person an individual must have formed an “aim” that he or she is conscious of and able to pursue and/or achieve. An unborn child and infant both lack the aforementioned, according to the authors, and thus only qualify as potential persons.

The argument put forth by Giubilini and Minerva is not new. Ever since medical science has proved that the pre-born baby is indeed alive, abortion proponents grasped for any reason to “validate” abortion. Now they argue that while the “fetus” might be alive, it is not a person, and thus can be aborted. But pro-choicers normally have stopped that assertion at the baby’s birth.

What Giubilini and Minerva do is take the current abortion debate to its next logical step and apply it to infants. If an infant, like a pre-born baby, is not self-aware and is not conscious of an “aim” in life then it is not a person and can be killed for any reason or for no reason, they say.

The authors have chosen to describe their practice as “after-birth abortion.” Though they admit the term comes across as oxymoronic, it was obviously chosen to make a barbaric practice appear more palatable.

Perhaps the most stunning argument by Giubilini and Minerva centers on adoption. The authors address the question: Why not simply allow the baby to be adopted? Their answer is shocking.

“Consider the interests of the mother who might suffer psychological distress from giving her child up for adoption,” argue the authors. “ ... [A]fter-birth abortion should be considered a permissible option for women who would be damaged by giving up their newborns for adoption.”

In the worldview of Giubilini and Minerva, a woman’s potential psychological distress outweighs the right to life of an infant. While that is shocking, I have heard the same argument put forth by abortion advocates concerning pregnancy.

It is going to be interesting to see how abortion supporters deal with the recent journal article. The authors use the exact same arguments to justify infanticide that abortion advocates use in defense of killing pre-born children. After all, what is the moral difference between killing a full-term baby minutes before delivery -- allowed under Roe V. Wade and subsequent decisions -- and killing it after delivery?

If personhood requires a measure of consciousness, an aim or a function, then what do we do with those who are mentally challenged? What about the physically handicapped? How about those who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease? Will all these be classified as non-persons and become disposable?

Ideas have consequences.

It is amazing how a woman’s “right to choose” to terminate the life of her pre-born child has impacted our world. Abortion started out as being permissible primarily in the early stages of pregnancy and then progressed to justify the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion. Now it is even being applied to the lives of infants. Where will it go next?

Pro-choice logic dictates that many of the same arguments used to defend abortion -- particularly late-term abortion -- can apply to newborns. When society embraced abortion-on-demand, it rejected the idea of absolute moral truth. Now we are adrift in a sea or moral relativism where so-called intellectuals believe killing a perfectly healthy infant is permissible. God have mercy on us.

Stem Cell Breakthrough: A Scientific and Ethical Leap Forward

Thirteen years ago, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese pharmacologist and researcher, made a social call to a friend’s fertility clinic. His friend invited him to look at some human embryos through a microscope.

What Yamanaka saw set him on a path that culminated in a Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology. And in the process has won him praise from the pro-life community.

As Yamanaka later told The New York Times, “when I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters ... I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”

The search for “another way” took eight years, but eventually Yamanaka and his colleagues at Kyoto University discovered a way to turn “adult skin cells into the equivalent of human embryonic stem cells without using an actual embryo.”

Using methods first developed with laboratory mice, Yamanaka and company “reprogrammed” the adult skin cells by adding “genes called master regulators to the skin cells’ chromosomes. These genes can change the cell’s behavior by turning other genes on and off.”

When the findings were announced five years ago, the moral implications were, if anything, even clearer than the scientific ones. The New York Times, in a bit of understatement, said that his research offered a “possible way around the thorny moral issues that have slowed the study of stem cells.” What the Times thought about the destruction of embryos was, of course, left unsaid.

Others were not as reticent: the Vatican followed his work closely and publicized it. Cardinal Justin Rigali, the chairman of the Vatican’s Pro-Life Committee, preached a homily in which he told the story of Yamanaka peering into the microscope. According to Rigali, “God can use a helpless embryo to change a human heart.” The National Right to Life Committee urged that Yamanaka be awarded the Nobel Prize.

Between 2009 and 2012, Yamanaka won three prestigious scientific prizes. Each of them cited the ethical, as well as scientific, impact of his work.

Then on October 8, he won the “big one,” the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine, which he shares with John Gurdon of Great Britain.

As William Saletan of Slate magazine pointed out, the announcement completely omitted any reference to the moral and ethical implications of Yamanaka’s work. They merely cited him for developing “new tools” with which to fight diseases.

As Saletan also noted, much of the mainstream media followed the Nobel committee’s leading: The New York Times, which commented, albeit somewhat begrudgingly, on the implications five years ago, completely omitted any such reference this time.

If I were of a more suspicious bent, I might suspect that some people would rather ignore the obvious, and look silly in the process, than acknowledge that pro-life objections to embryonic stem-cell research stand on firm scientific, as well as moral, grounds.

Even when the Nobel laureate himself has acknowledged the moral considerations that motivated the research, they insist on ignoring the connection.

Well, consider this a shout from the housetops: Saletan is right when he says that Yamanaka deserves an additional Nobel in ethics for tearing “down the wall between preserving embryos and saving lives.”

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Of Mice and Men - and the Abolition of Both

A new medical discovery might pose ethical challenges we’ve never faced before.

Almost one year ago, molecular biologist Katsuhiko Hayashi at Kyoto University did something that may forever change the way we think about human life. But at the time, he had little idea just how significant his discovery was.

Publishing his results in the academic journal, “Science,” Hayashi says he assumed they would be of interest mainly to his fellow biologists. So imagine his surprise when he began receiving emails from infertile women, all very interested in his work. One woman in England offered to fly to his laboratory in Japan, hoping he could help her conceive a child. “That is my only wish,” she pleaded. Hayashi was also contacted by the editor of a gay and lesbian magazine looking for details.

So what did he discover, exactly? The journal “Nature,” picking up the story this summer, reports that Hayashi used the skin cells of a mouse to create “primordial germ cells,” or “PGCs.” For those of us non-biologists, that may not mean much — until we read that he went on to mature these cells into eggs, fertilize them and implant them into a female mouse, which then gave birth to live young. Let me run that by you again: this researcher made a mouse a mommy — using nothing but its skin.

Hayashi then went on to create sperm in the same way, and successfully birthed more mouse pups, these being the descendants of their father’s skin.

According to “Nature,” if these processes could be replicated in humans, infertile individuals could become parents. But, wait, there’s more! This technology would allow anyone to produce either male or female sex cells, meaning (theoretically) that women could become biological fathers, and men biological mothers. Thus the interest in the LGBT community.

“What’s the big deal?” somebody might say. “If people — especially infertile couples — want kids, what’s wrong with Hayashi’s research making it possible for them?”

Well, we might reply that it’s not natural to manufacture a child from skin. But then again, neither is installing metal joints or doing a blood transfusion — but we do these things routinely. Isn’t medical science all about cheating nature’s grim prognoses and making the impossible possible? Why should this be forbidden?

Well, I think C. S. Lewis would have responded with another question: “Is there anything that should be forbidden?” That’s precisely the challenge he issued in his famous essay, “The Abolition of Man,” and to which academics of his day had no answer.

As part of mankind’s conquest of nature, Lewis argued, we’ve conquered our own belief in moral absolutes. After all, the materialist would say, such beliefs are also part of nature. They’ve evolved to help us survive. But now that they’ve outlived their usefulness, we’re free to rise above them. The problem, as Lewis pointed out, is that we have no higher level to which we can rise. When we give up saying, “I ought,” the only thing we can still say is, “I want.”

“Man’s conquest of Nature,” Lewis writes, “turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man.”

What ultimately sets us apart from the rodents in Hayashi’s laboratory is not our technology or power to cheat nature. It’s our ability to say “no” to things we want to do, but maybe shouldn’t do. It’s the intuition that the way our parents brought us into this world is good. It’s the love that values children for their own sake and not because they fulfill our dreams and wishes.

Which is why, in our rush to bypass making babies the truly human way, we’ll likely miss how much we’ve begun to look like the laboratory animals.

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Are Heart Transplants Moral?

Theologian Robert Clouse had heart transplant. Some believers told him it was God's will for him to die. Transplant gave him renewed appreciation for life and spiritual things. Tough questions - is donor really dead? U.S. policy examined.

Why Avoiding Suffering At All Cost Undermines Compassion and Medicine

Is pain good or bad?

This was the question asked recently by physician and author Matthew Loftus in an essay entitled “Arcs of Life” published in The New Atlantis. Loftus makes the case that the contemporary obsession with avoiding pain has led to an increasing acceptance of doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia, even for infants and for those suffering with mental distress. Our approach to pain amounts to, as Loftus puts it, “Eliminating suffering by killing the sufferer.” The appeal is made mostly to our collective commitment to autonomy:

The euthanasia regime begins with a pitch to the smartest among us. Wouldn’t you like to go out before the party winds down, before age and decrepitude shatter the autonomy and strength you cherish so deeply?

So much of life in the modern world is shaped by secularism, which assumes, among other things, that the only way to be fully human is by experiencing our best life now. Or, to paraphrase a poem by William Ernest Henley, to be the masters of our own fate, the captains of our own soul.

This commitment, Loftus suggests, is the primary reason that the medical community has embraced something that has become known as the “The Baconian Project.” This view, first espoused by 16th-century scientist and philosopher Francis Bacon, argues that the primary goal of medicine is to minimize human suffering. Medical technology should pursue that end, and compassion is redefined as whatever reduces or prevents pain and suffering. This includes, if it serves that end, terminating the life of a baby in utero or assisting a suffering elderly person to end his or her life.

However, argues Loftus, the zeal to create a pain-free utopia undermines three things for which it strives.

First, autonomy is undermined. Abortion obviously ends the decision-making potential of children in utero who may, if given the chance, choose to live. In fact, survivors of abortion, such as Colson Center National Conference speaker Gianna Jessen, consistently tell us that they want to live. Autonomy at the end of life is also increasingly compromised for certain members of a population, often in the name of preserving it, wherever assisted suicide has been embraced. The “right to die” inevitably becomes a duty to die in order to ease the burden of one’s suffering on others.

Second, the commitment to alleviate pain is undermined when it becomes an end rather than a means of medicine. Abortion is a clear example of this. Loftus writes:

Long before the third trimester, a fetus will withdraw from an instrument and release stress hormones in response to medical procedures in the womb. Reactions like these are often chalked up to simple reflexes that you might see if you managed to tickle a baby in utero. And yet if fetal surgery that is meant to save the life of the child is performed, anesthesia is given without fail — but if you’re killing the child at the same gestational age, medical authorities assure us that the procedure is painless. Don’t believe your lying eyes when you see that baby try to move away from the forceps.

Third, the commitment to eliminate pain at any cost, though often sold in the name of compassion, ultimately undermines compassion. The sheer numbers of those killed by abortion and euthanasia suggest that what we often call a commitment to compassion is in reality a commitment to convenience. In Canada, 10,000 people were euthanized in 2021 alone. Nearly a million unborn children are killed in the United States every year.

The only real solution, Loftus argues, is to commit instead to a different vision of human life; that life begins and ends in a natural arc and possesses incalculable value throughout. We also must reckon with dependency; that we are all born dependent, will die dependent, and will remain dependent on others throughout our lives. Acknowledging this reality leads to true compassion. Ignoring it leads to killing the suffering instead of caring for them.

We should recognize that pain and suffering are neither synonymous, nor are accurate metrics of value. We have the technology to manage physical pain, and God has tasked us with providing comfort to those who are dying or living with pain. When we do, we act like Jesus. Indeed, it may be that this caring for people through the suffering will be the Church’s most powerful witness of Christ to the world in the days ahead.

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The Most Valuable Days of His Life

Job 3:20

Working with the dying is a regular part of Dr. Edmund Pellegrino's medical practice. He has, at times, been asked to “assist” a patient in dying. Pellegrino's response to one such request is typical: After the patient expressed his wish, Ed sought to meet the real needs behind the request.

First, he gave the patient control over their pain relief. This patient was also feeling guilty, clinically depressed, and concerned about being a burden to others. Pellegrino treated the depression and brought in a pastoral counselor to address the guilt. He then gathered the patient's family to help them see how their response to this man's illness was aggravating his sense of unworthiness.

Once those needs were met, the patient thanked Pellegrino for not responding to his earlier request to die. “The most valuable days of my life have been the last days I have spent,” he said.