{"id":50,"date":"2017-02-11T19:25:28","date_gmt":"2017-02-11T19:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/religionandhealing\/?p=50"},"modified":"2017-02-12T22:35:21","modified_gmt":"2017-02-12T22:35:21","slug":"unit-3-natural-law-and-reproductive-ethics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/religionandhealing\/2017\/02\/11\/unit-3-natural-law-and-reproductive-ethics\/","title":{"rendered":"Unit 3: Natural Law and Reproductive Ethics (Ayman Elmasri)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith\u2019s passage on the \u201cRespect for Human Life\u201d (1987), dubbed Donum Vitae<\/i>, Latin for \u201cthe gift (or donation) of life,\u201d offers the Roman Catholic Church\u2019s outlook on a number of biomedical issues. I thought it was important to put the \u201cRespect for Human Life\u201d document into perspective in order to understand it fully. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) is the oldest congregation of the Roman Curia, which is the \u201cadministrative apparatus of the Holy See and central body through which the [Pope] conducts the affairs of the universal Catholic Church.\u201d<\/span>1<\/sup><\/span> In modern times, it acts to defend the church and the Catholic doctrine from heresy. Interestingly, this institution was formerly the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, otherwise known as the \u00a0 <\/span>Roman Inquisition, which persecuted Galileo and Copernicus for their scientific theories on heliocentrism.<\/span>1 <\/sup><\/span>A new document by the CDF was released in 2008, dubbed the Dignitas Personae<\/i> (personal dignity or worth), and voices its perspective on \u201cselective reduction, prenatal diagnosis, preimplantation diagnosis, in vitro fertilization, cryopreservation, embryo transfer, genetic engineering, [and] embryo donation.\u201d The new document highlights continued opposition to contraception and abortion, and specifically mentions female condoms and the morning-after pill.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

Though the Moses\u2019 first book, Genesis, seems to give humans \u201cdominion over the Earth,\u201d the Vatican wants to propose limitations on that dominion and even discusses at length the negotiations it\u00a0seems to have with the realm of science and technology as both provenance of new possibilities, but also a potential source of sinful overindulgence. The document highlights the central value of human life and the human body, and underscores it as a principle\u00a0of the both the church and the paper. This rationale is used to take positions on reproductive technologies, such as being against prenatal testing if it will lead to abortion, but allowing it if it leads to \u201ctherapeutic, medical, or surgical\u201d assistance to the fetus\/embryo; or being against artificial fertilization from a donor and surrogate motherhood because both break the holy sanctity of marriage. The paper also highlights a similar tenant to the medical Hippocratic oath, to \u201cdo no harm.\u201d The passages suggest that to try to heal and to better is permissible (reminiscent of the \u201cGood Samaritan\u201d doctrine in law and medicine, which discourages inaction by \u201creducing liability if unintended consequences result from one\u2019s help\u201d).<\/span>3<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

When reading Donum Vitae<\/i>, I had an enduring question on my mind\u2014does any of this matter, and how much? Since several of the Pope\u2019s rulings don\u2019t make it to the United States, there must be an extent to which the Church\u2019s sway does not hold. As we can see from the first two chapters of Genesis, the Christian holy scripture is a dated one, and needs constant reinterpretation when faced with issues such as men having the same number of ribs as women (it was a belief that men were one rib short since Adam used one to create Eve).\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Though the Catholic Church\u2019s outlook is critical for understanding the behavior of a large segment of the population, I hesitate to let it play such a large role by itself holding a degree of responsibility. Religious authorities largely play a game of interpretation. This same church decries homosexuality as a result of Leviticus 18:22 in the Bible, but then\u00a0seemingly\u00a0fails<\/span>\u00a0to take notice of the condemnation of tattoos in Leviticus 19:28 on the following page. It is for this reason that I have a hard time finding the value of religiously ethical intervention in a multi-religious society as in the United States. This passage was incredibly well-written, especially considering it was probably originally written in Italian or Latin, and very articulately enumerates the logic behind its stances. <\/span><\/p>\n

(As an aside, the fluent and eloquent way that it was written honestly surprised me. I have spent a good amount of time debating religion and religious politics, and the people\u00a0 <\/span>with whom I debated were usually not well-read in scripture or very knowledgeable in general, outside the buzzword hot topic cliches such as homosexuality and abortion. I have never read primary literature from the Catholic Church, and have enjoyed seeing an academic level defense).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The author Ball highlights that children were once a means of legitimizing a marriage, likely because it is a physical manifestation of a marriage, whereas love and virginity are emotions and abstractions. However, in 17th century France, the family institution went from a private matter to a moral and spiritual institution, and the \u201cchild\u201d became a focal point for contemporary philosophy and legislative scrutiny. Rousseau is heavily quoted, as citing the family unit as a \u201cprototype for the [country]\u201d. Rosseau continues to be used to communicate a progressive scorn for the state\u2019s\u00a0 <\/span>patriarchal involvement in family dynamics and politics, painting the government as an oppressive tyrant into the daily lives of its subjects. This central dogma of \u201cvolont\u00e9e g\u00e9n\u00e9rale,<\/i>\u201d or general will (of the people), propels much of Ball\u2019s argument that has been largely weighted on Renaissance philosophy. A theme common throughout Ball\u2019s passage is that of \u201cNatural Law,\u201d and a focus that despite ART\u2019s, the will of nature should be kept in mind. When examined closely, Rosseau took a shaky, muddily unclear position that didn’t seem to sway the argument in either direction\u2014but perhaps that was the point.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In 1994, the French Parliament voted to allow all technology to \u201cenable procreation outside the natural process\u201d as a remedy for infertility, and limited this to heterosexual couples who have been married for two years, and bans post-mortem and post-menopausal insemination. The French legislators against ART\u2019s in during the creation of this law feared a sudden explosion in its use, leading to a \u201c[destabilization] of the entire French social system.\u201d As of 2012, 1 in 100 babies born in France are in vitro, <\/i>and its society has yet to crumble. <\/i> \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The unescapable value of the CDF\u2019s Donum Vitae<\/i> is that ethics is not black and white as Ball seems to suggest, but rather fifty shades of gray. Ball\u2019s stress on Renaissance-era thinking pushes one to believe that in events of gray, one should err on the side of the people. The current ethics boards of fields outside of reproductive technologies are fairly arbitrary. Members of these committees are assembled\u2026somehow\u2026by someone, who likely has their own interests and moral code. These committee members subsequently rule on practice and protocol in scores of disciplines\u2014medicine, research, the workspace, the court of law, politics. There is value in an independent body to have its own opinion during changing times of science. Many of our parents or grandparents are still uneasy or outright against accepted norms of modern (youth) culture, such as interracial and homosexual relationships; I state this because as our elders appear to \u2018behind the times,\u2019 we will also likely do the same to the next generation. The next topic of social debate might be marrying an AI program, and I patiently await the opinions of the Pontiff and Rousseau (reincarnate). <\/span><\/p>\n

Questions<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n