Ibel Galvez Midterm
Dear esteemed Members of the Sasquatch Committee on Ethics,
I am honored to speak to you today regarding some propositions and urgencies concerning some very controversial legislation placed here before us today. We are tasked with the decision to vote on the use of certain new reproductive technologies and tests. As ethics committee members, it is our responsibility and sole duty to protect our close-knit small town values and represent the people of our great town of Sasquatch, Connecticut.
Before I address the very specific and nuanced technologies to which I refer, I want to remind you all that we must protect the dignity of procreation and human life by leaving them in God’s hands as much as we can. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the clinical setting of a hospital that we end up forgetting what we are truly considering here at Sasquatch Mercy Hospital: life and death. Real people, real bodies and real lives are affected by technological reproductive interventions. We must consider that any “intervention of the human body affects not only the tissues, the organs and their functions, but also involves the person himself…”(144, Donum Vitae).
Here in my proposal I stay true to the values and truths presented in the holy Catholic church’s decree: Donum Vitae. This precious document humbles us and reminds us that we walk the fine line of “going beyond the limits of reasonable dominion over nature” (Gen 1:28 as cited in Donum Vitae 141) when we tamper with the natural world by using too many technological interventions in a beautiful, natural, God-given miracle like reproduction. If we begin to make excessive exceptions for the use of these technologies, then we have ignored God’s decree of trusting in Him and His will.
For reasons unbeknownst to me, Sasquatch Mercy has recently dropped its affiliation with the Sasquatch Catholic church. Surely, our community is ever changing, and we have new members of different faiths, but we are all a God fearin’ folk here in Sasquatch. Whether we are Jewish, Christian, or Islamic, we all uphold conservative values that place God and His will as first and foremost in our minds and hearts. To best serve the people we represent, we- as members of the Committee on Ethics- must consider the core values these faiths have in common when it comes to the question of reproductive technologies. However, because our hospital has historically served members of the Catholic Church and receives generous donations from the Church and its members, we must place those values as first and foremost. As you all know, Sasquatch Mercy is in no position to turn away or discourage any financial support. We need all the help we can get if the hospital is to continue providing free care for the under-insured residents of our town.
Let’s take a moment to review each of the reproductive technologies that we are currently considering in an effort to regard each intervention as we rightfully should.
In the case of providing abortion services for underinsured patients, the hospital should not provide these services, save for the case in which both the baby and mother’s lives are threatened by the pregnancy, i.e. in the case of ectopic pregnancy. Here, both the mother and her baby are at risk and would not survive such this specific unsafe gestational circumstance. All other cases should not be subsidized by Sasquatch Mercy Hospital. In subsidizing abortions (aside from those that would save both the mother and her child), the hospital would essentially place an unwarranted stamp of approval on abortions. Considering that a majority of the nurses and physicians at Mercy Hospital abide by Catholic morality, they will be relieved to know that abortions will only be performed in those rare, absolutely necessary circumstances. Due to the rarity of those aforementioned pregnancies, those staff who still feel uncomfortable with performing the procedure will be allowed a temporary transfer into a different hospital department, if they happen to be at work on the day of said rare procedure. We shall not allow any other type of abortion procedure on the sole basis that as faithful Catholics we cannot support infringement on the dignity of human reproduction as God has so blessed us with.
The human embryo should be treated with utmost respect, as human beings must be respected from the very first moment in which they exist: from the time at which they are conceived (Donum Vitae 147). Prenatal testing, including amniocentesis will be allowed at Sasquatch Mercy Hospital only in the case that the tests are done without excessive, predetermined knowledge that said test(s) will more than likely harm the human embryo (Donum Vitae 150). Additionally, the tests are not to be conducted for the aim of aborting the embryo if an abnormality is discovered.
The question of whether or not to perform amniocentesis tests has come up, as there is a chance of miscarriage, however, recent technological advancements allow doctors to perform these tests while monitoring the baby in order to ensure a safer procedure. Doctors are no longer blindly poking around in the amniotic fluid without knowing whether they will harm the child. According to Rayna Rapp, in her book Testing Women, Testing The Fetus, when sonograms were finally employed in combination with “experimentally invasive techniques of the womb” they became safer and “miscarriage rates attributable to these procedures dropped dramatically” (Rapp 29). So, with the use of sonograms we may provide amniocentesis tests here at Sasquatch Mercy.
In-vitro fertilization treatments will be allowed only in infertile married couples. Catholic decree, Jewish Halakhic law, and Sharia law allow the usage of IVF with varying particularities, but the consensus is that in a married infertile couple, IVF treatment is permissible (Kahn 2). Sharia law establishes that as long as the procedure does not breach the sanctity of the couple’s marriage (i.e. placing another man’s sperm into the married woman would breach the terms of marriage), IVF is allowed. Shirin Garmaroudi Naef writes, “Fertilizing the ovum of a woman with the sperm of her husband outside of her body and implanting it in the wife’s womb is not forbidden in Islam, and the resulting child is the legal offspring of the married couple” (Naef in Inhorn and Tremayne 166). In Halakhic law the issues with IVF stem from protecting and promoting kinship relations which can be complicated by whether the gestational mother is Jewish or whether donated sperm is from male belonging a particular sect of Judaism (Broyde 316). Thus, in order to appease these three religious modes of thought, IVF therapies will solely be allowed in married couples who require it due to infertility, when the procedure consists of the sperm and ovum combined out of the woman’s body.
In accordance with Catholic morality prenatal testing should be confined to the specific use of preserving, protecting, and anticipating potential treatments and procedures the human embryo may require to aid in after birth. Consequently, Embryo donation should not be allowed at the hospital. The human embryo should be treated with utmost respect, as human beings must be respected from the very first moment in which they exist from the moment of conception (Donum Vitae 147). The embryo is human from the moment of conception because of the simple fact that that embryo will develop into a human, and human alone. Therefore, we consider the embryo as human and deserving of utmost care and protection. The use of embryos for scientific research is not in line with respect towards the human embryo.
Spiritual counseling essential for those dealing with loss, sickness, an emotional distress caused by health issues. Here at Sasquatch Mercy Hospital we take pride in our ability to not only attend to our patient’s physical needs, but also to their emotional and spiritual needs. It is so important for us to keep our faith strong in the midst of life’s trials and tribulations and keep faith in God’s divine will. As a community open to those off all walks of life and faiths, we should open our hearts and provide safe spaces in which patients can get in touch with their own spirituality. We will open our spiritual counseling to members of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths so that each person is able to consult God in his or her own way during their time of need. But, each clergy representative of each religious background shall only be called upon by the request of the patient. Otherwise, these clergymen should give the patient, their family, and attending physician family ample space by not intervening in the patient’s chosen medical care. To ensure this, we will place clergy offices in the back office rooms located on the Sasquatch Mercy’s lobby floor.
My dear friends; brothers and sisters of the board, please remember that “science without conscience can only lead to man’s ruin” (143, Donum Vitae) and it is up to us, and us alone, to uphold this sacred value. Please vote with God’s divine will in your minds, heart, and spirit.
Thank you,
Rev. John Doe
Sources Consulted
Michael J. Broyde, “Modern Reproductive Technologies and Jewish Law,” In Michael J. Broyde and Michael Ausubel editors, Marriage, Sex and the Family in Judaism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), pp. 295-328.
Donum Vitae In Shanon, Thomas A. and Lisa Sowle Cahill, Religion and Artificial Reproduction: An Inquiry into the Vatican “Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Reproduction.” (Crossroad, 1988).
Susan Martha Kahn, Reproducing Jews: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception in Israel (Duke University Press, 2000)
Shirin Garamoudi Naef, “Gestational Surrogacy in Iran,” In Marcia C. Inhorn and Soraya Tremayne editors, Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (Berghahn Books, 2012).
Rayna Rapp, Testing Women, Testing the Fetus (Routledge, 2000)
I will comment- part 2
I will comment on yours!
Rev. John Doe,
You provide a compelling proposal but it is my duty as your publicity manager to provide you with some constructive criticism on how to better your argument. It is obvious that you truly care about the spiritual wellbeing of your patients here in Sasquatch, but in this you leave out the major component that our community is changing. I fear that you will receive some backlash from our new community members due to your lack of welcoming them into our hospital and providing them with the answers for which they seek.
You make a great case about abortion, one that the Catholic Church would highly align with. I think your proposal for how to deal with abortions is well thought out and convincing. One thing that was not mentioned in your abortion argument, though, was about people who would seek abortions that would not need subsidized care. Although most of our citizens do indeed receive subsidized care, there will be requests by those patients willing to pay the full price to have the procedure done. I am sure that some of the doctors in our community would not mind executing these procedures if they were getting paid fully. We must acknowledge this fact and make it a main goal to be clear to our doctors that under no circumstance, other than when the life of the mother and baby are in question, should abortions take place.
Your argument for prenatal testing is a bit unclear, you say that prenatal testing will be allowed but that these “tests are not to be conducted for the aim of aborting the embryo if an abnormality is discovered”. I think this is an interesting thought because the aim of prenatal testing is finding abnormalities within the fetus. I think that ignoring this fact is ignorant and will come of to our community members as such; we cannot ignore that the knowledge of whether the fetus has an abnormality will dramatically change the course of the pregnancy, possibly making the woman want to go through abortion- an act we hope our community members never contemplate. You are right in this statement if you are quoting Rabbi Moshe but there are other Rabbis who believe differently. Rabbi Eliezar Yehuda Waldenberg “allows first trimester abortion of a fetus that would be born with a deformity that would cause it to suffer, and termination of a fetus with a lethal fetal defect such as Tay Sachs up to the seventh month of gestation” (Eliezer). These are contradictions that are not just present in Jewish law but that mirror the contradictions that are present in the hearts and minds of all of our community members, regardless of religion or ethnicity.
Moving forward, you say that the human embryo must be respected and that patients will not be allowed to donate their extra embryos to science. Although the Catholic Church strongly believes that these embryos are uniquely human- you must confront the issue head on. You must provide another alternative. Because you don’t offer an alternative our community members might not know all of their options and all of our patients should be encouraged to make informed decisions. I encourage you to find a better alternative given that you do not. This alternative approach needs to address the needs of all of our community members that may see the use of their embryos as justified and religiously acceptable.
The last tweak I might offer you to bring your argument full circle is just to read over and fix the small amount of typos that are present. There are a few in the beginning but one large typo I found in the end was “Spiritual counseling essential for those dealing with loss, sickness, an emotional distress caused by health issues-” this should read “Spiritual counseling IS essential for those dealing with loss, sickness, AND emotional distress caused by health issues.” The correction of these typos will provide your argument with more authority and agency.
I wish you the best of luck with this proposal! Feel free to contact me again if you would like me to read over your proposal before you submit it to the committee. We can look over it and discuss the effects this might have on your public persona as the main Catholic priest in this neighborhood.
Sincerely,
Your publicity manager
Sources Cited
1. Tzitz Eliezer, Volume 13:102
Hello Ibel,
After reading your proposal, I agree to support your propositions. You presented a clear and concise argument, while defending various religious and ethical counterarguments. Your proposal decided to stand by its foundation associated with Catholic traditions. This was evident in every decision you made. You acknowledged “ the generous donations from the Church and its members… as first and foremost.” This placed a hierarchical level to the hospitals goal.
On the other hand, I feel as if this proposal goes against the reason the hospital changed into a non-denomination. This decision was to include a more diverse group of people. The proposal deters, to an extent, the people you wished to supply health care for. In addition, I think a discussion with more perspective from the diverse local community (Jewish, Muslim, and African American and white). You did cite some local religious and cultural points of view, but I felt more could have been included. I discussion of these points of views can further reinforce your hospitals goal.
Also, I encourage you to think of counter arguments for your expanded proposal. For example, you stated, “both the mother and her baby are at risk and would not survive such this specific unsafe gestational circumstance” would be the only exception to the rules. One can counter this argument by say explaining if abortion clinics aren’t made available people seek drastic solutions to abort the fetus. This place the mother and her child in a dangerous position because of your decisions, which goes against your commitment to “protect our close- knit small town.” Other than these points, I think you did a great job covering all the questions that might arise. Finally, you had a few grammatical errors throughout the essay. I thought “Catholic Church” should be capitalized.
Dear Garrett and Dominique,
I already shared my comments with Ibel before I was able to recover your comments. So just a couple of things for you. Pretty good recommendations overall.
Dominique, I am pretty sure you do not go in and read Tzitz Eliezer. So where is the quote from? You need to cite where you found it, not the source that is itself cited in a secondary source.
Garrett, you just need to work a little on grammar and phrasing.
Otherwise, good work.