![]() Its hypothesized outcome is the dissolving of those embryonic or fetal cells which have attached sadly to the wrong and often lethal place within the mother’s body. The columnist also argues that the use of methotrexate, a chemical often used with cancer therapy, is not morally acceptable. Thus it is morally acceptable and has been since first advanced over 40 years ago by the conservative Jesuit moralist Father John Connery. In removing the damaged tissue, the doctor, as is the case with the removal of a cancerous womb in a pregnant woman, foresees but does not intend the demise of the embryonic/fetal person. The surgical procedure he questions is tolerated because again the purpose is to remove with as little risk as possible to the mother the damaged tissue at the site where tragically the cells have attached. In light of the risk of the mother bleeding to death caused by the attachment’s damage and possible rupture of the site, time is of the essence in these circumstances. Besides the appropriate moral intent, the surgical act is acceptable. A more adequate treatment would have included the following key points consistent with Catholic moral analysis.įirst, the two surgical procedures are morally acceptable because the intent behind the surgery is to heal damaged tissue, not directly kill the fetus. Yet, the Holy See’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has not addressed the matter - though the topic has been supposedly before it for almost a decade.īecause such pregnancies are not uncommon and their outcome potentially fatal, a fuller discussion in the column should have occurred. Some writers like the author do not agree with this. But, these concerns were not found to be contrary to church thinking. In those reviews, note was taken of the concerns his column raised. This issue has been reviewed by the cardinal’s Bioethics Committee three times in the past six years. His opinions do not represent the teaching of the church nor mainstream moral thinking faithful to the magisterium on this topic. He asserted that only one - a surgical approach - is morally acceptable and the other two are morally objectionable. It addressed the morality of three approaches (two surgical and one pharmaceutical) used to resolve the lifethreatening, often fatal tragedy of pregnancy attachment outside the womb. 7 edition of this paper included a column by the neuroscientist - priest Father Tad Pacholczyk. “You have to have a ridiculous faith in reason to let your child die rather than use an embryo to save them,” he says, staring at the table.The Oct. “It’s not a confidence I share.” He admires Catholics for their faith in reason-”the faith required to live with the consequences of their conclusions,” even when intuition screams the other way. The Catholics will raise the deepest questions and then presume to offer a rational account of things.” He laughs. “The Jews will raise 36 questions about something. “Christians have a lot more theological confidence than Jews,” he says. ![]() I’d mentioned the Catholic-Jewish question to Cohen the previous evening. Cohen says Levin has written a wonderful essay on this point. Family, not individual life extension, is our true immortality. It’s about Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, and the challenge of passing on a moral way of living. Kass has written a whole volume on the book of Genesis. Above all, he worries about new threats to the family. He worries about what we create, not just what we destroy. ![]() His greater concern is what kind of society we’ll become if we treat humanity as something to manipulate. Kass is agnostic on the moral status of the embryo. When a priest compares embryonic cell harvesting to fetal tissue harvesting, Landry replies, “In abortion, the objective is death.” Hurlbut says legalized abortion has become a “travesty” and is “not altogether unfairly called the silent holocaust.”Īs Cohen tells it, Kass has been misunderstood. Landry has the lingo down: intrinsic, person, human dignity. The science and the religion are interwoven. Hurlbut has been running his ideas by Pacholczyk and other priests all along. The other plan, by Bill Hurlbut, a member of the president’s council, is the one that would create “artifacts.” Landry, Zucker, and Hurlbut have come here to sell their proposals to the church in the hope that the church, in turn, will help sell these proposals to politicians and the public. Their plan is to define embryonic death as “the irreversible arrest of cell division,” so that cells can be harvested at that point-without destroying a living embryo-to make stem cell lines. One is a team of medical experts from Columbia University, Drs. This is the gauntlet that awaits the conference’s two main presenters.
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