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Life and Learning Xix LIFE AND LEARNING XIX PROCEEDINGS OF THE NINETEENTH UNIVERSITY FACULTY FOR LIFE CONFERENCE at THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS SCHOOL OF LAW MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA 2009 edited by Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. KOTERSKI LIFE AND LEARNING XIX UFL University Faculty for Life University Faculty for Life was founded in 1989 to promote research, dialogue, and publication among faculty members who respect the value of human life from its inception to natural death, and to provide academic support for the pro-life position. Respect for life is especially endangered by the current cultural forces seeking to legitimize such practices as abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide. These topics are controversial, but we believe that they are too important to be resolved by the shouting, the news-bites, and the slogans that often dominate popular presentation of these issues. Because we believe that the evidence is on our side, we would like to assure a hearing for these views in the academic community. The issues of abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia have many dimensions–political, social, legal, medical, biological, psychological, ethical, and religious. Accordingly, we hope to promote an inter-disciplinary forum in which such issues can be discussed among scholars. We believe that by talking with one another we may better understand the values we share and become better informed in our expression and defense of them. We are distressed that the media often portray those favoring the value of human life as mindless zealots acting out of sectarian bias. We hope that our presence will change that image. We also believe that academicians united on these issues can encourage others to speak out for human life in their own schools and communities. Membership in the University Faculty for Life is open to all who now have or who have once had a teaching position in a university or college. We welcome members from every field of study and of every political, philosophical, and religious persuasion. For further information or for additional copies of this or of earlier volumes, please contact us at the following address: Fr. Joseph W. Koterski S.J., Dept. of Philosophy, Fordham University, Bronx NY 10458. Our website can be found at www.uffl.org. ISSN 1097-0878 LIFE AND LEARNING XIX PROCEEDINGS OF THE NINETEENTH UNIVERSITY FACULTY FOR LIFE CONFERENCE at THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS SCHOOL OF LAW MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA 2009 edited by Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. University Faculty for Life Bronx NY Copyright © 2013 by University Faculty for Life All rights reserved. Published by University Faculty for Life c/o Philosophy Department Fordham University Bronx NY 10458 Printed in the United States of America ISSN 1097-0878 Table of Contents Preface CURRENT MORAL PROBLEMS 3 Stem Cells and Torture Gilbert Meilaender 5 Lying for Life? On Delayed Disclosure of Healthcare Limits Andrew Jaspers 1 9 More Vulnerable to Exploitation and Abandonment Richard Stith 3 1 Right to Life: A Right Beyond Ideology, The Case of Tabaré Vazquez Mario Ramos-Reyes 4 1 M ORAL ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND MEDICINE 5 3 Is Breastfeeding the Moral Equivalent of Emergency Contraception in Inducing Early Pregnancy Loss? Richard J. Fehring 5 5 Professional Conscientious Objection in Medicine with Attention to Referral T.A. Cavanaugh 6 5 Unintended Consequences of the Separation of Sex from Procreation Hanna Klaus, M.D. 89 The Orientation of Freedom toward Bodily Integrity: Defending the Oocyte from Extracorporeal Manipulation Kimberly Henkel 9 9 P HILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 115 Pro-Life Communitarianism and a Metaphysics of Relation James G. Hanink 117 Fichte’s Idealism and Natural Rights: A Key to Understanding Seemingly Inconsistent Arguments for Abortion and Euthanasia Eric Manchester 131 The Difference Between Form and Shape: Why Human Appearance Is Morally Irrelevant Craig Payne 175 Retrieval of Fatherhood through a Retrieval of Faith in God the Father Matthew Lewis Sutton 191 PERSPECTIVES FROM LITERATURE AND RHETORIC 205 Abortion in Canadian Literature: Comparisons with American Literature and Canada’s Unique Contributions Jeff Koloze 207 Pak Wans4’s “The Dreaming Incubator”: An Application of Western Literary Theories to a Major Work of Korean Fiction Jeff Koloze 227 The Coercive Reality behind Pro-Choice Rhetoric: Identifying What “Popular Sovereignty,” “Reproductive Freedom,” and “Death with Dignity” Demand from Those Who Disagree Ryan C. MacPherson 243 CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES 279 Catholic Feminist Ethics and the Culture of Death: The Case of Sister Margaret Farley Anne Barbeau Gardiner 281 “For contributions to the science of racial cleansing”: Harry H Laughlin and the American Eugenics Movement John Gerdtz 295 Euthanasia: Hell’s Last Sacrament Robert C. Cetrulo, J.D. 305 The “Heated Debates” Survey: How Connecting Issues Have an Impact on Opposition to Violence Rachel M. MacNair 329 Prudence and Telos in Pro-Life Evolution James R. Kelly 347 About Our Contributors 375 Acknowledgments 383 UFL Boards 385 Preface OLUME NINETEEN of Life and Learning offers a selection of papers drawn largely from UFL’s 2009 conference. The editor Vwould like to extend his apology here in the preface for the extensive delay in bringing these fine papers into print. UFL is deeply grateful to the University of St. Thomas Law School for providing a splendid venue for this meeting, and to our charming and indefatigable local host, Prof. Teresa Collett. Our program chair for this meeting, Prof. Frank Beckwith, arranged a wonderful program. We would also like to express our grateful appreciation to the Our Sunday Visitor Institute for a special grant in support of the 2009 UFL Conference and to all the benefactors of UFL who have made possible its annual meetings as well as the publication of its newsletter and of its annual volume of proceedings. Without their generous contributions this organization would not be able to continue its work. Let me also offer special thanks to Prof. Jacqueline Nolan-Haley (Fordham University Law School) for her invaluable help yet again this year in the reviewing the papers submitted for this volume. Electronic versions of these papers and many of those delivered at previous UFL conferences are available on our web site at www.uffl.org. For additional copies of this volume or for bound versions of the proceedings of our earlier conferences, please contact me at [email protected]. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. Citation for the following article: Gilbert Meilaender, “Stem Cells and Torture,” Proceedings of the Nineteenth University Faculty for Life Conference at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, Minneapolis MN (2009), ed. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. (Washington, D.C.: University Faculty for Life, 2013), pp. 5-18. This essay first appeared in The Weekly Standard, vol. 14 (June 8, 2009), and we are grateful to its editor, William Kristol, for permis- sion to reprint it here. Stem Cells and Torture Gilbert Meilaender ABSTRACT: Arguments in support of torture as an instrument of policy often trade on the view that it is necessary to deal with great and imminent threats, or necessary even to ensure a society’s survival. The structure of such arguments is not unlike the structure of moral arguments that have been used to justify embryo-destructive stem cell research. This essay uses the example of limits on research to think through complica- tions in arguments about torture. In each case we are forced to reflect upon whether how we live or how long we live is of greater moral importance. ET ’ S START WITH STEM CELLS. That may seem a strange place to begin thinking about torture, but many bioethical issues are at Lleast as controversial and disputed as is torture. Among the most controversial in recent years has been research that destroys embryos in order to procure stem cells for use in regenerative medicine. Those who oppose embryonic stem cell research, have, in my view, made the right moral choice. The logic of that choice is worth examining, however, before we turn more directly to the issue of torture, for it is a choice that comes with certain costs. It is still much too soon to say for sure whether the promise for regenerative medicine that some see in embryo-destructive research will be fulfilled or will turn out to be a dead end. Perhaps other approaches– for instance, using induced pluripotent stem cells or altered nuclear transfer–will make better scientific progress without the destruction of embryos, thereby demonstrating that at least sometimes we can have our cake and eat it too. But perhaps not. Maybe these other approaches will fail to cure or ameliorate suffering from serious degenerative diseases, 5 6Life and Learning XIX and embryo-destructive research will, in fact, turn out to be the “gold standard” its defenders often call it. Even if things were to turn out that way, it would not mean that opponents of embryonic stem cell research had been wrong. It would simply mean that they had accepted the cost to which their moral beliefs committed them. They do not think that good results are the only–or even the most important–factor in determining how we ought to live. However fervently and sincerely they may hope that we find ways to relieve the condition of those who suffer, they do not take the further moral step of concluding that not any and every avenue to that good end may be used. If this means that some suffering that could be relieved is not, then that is the cost, however regrettable, that a commitment to act rightly will sometimes exact. This distinction, between what we do and what we accomplish, marks one of the fault lines in moral reasoning, and it re-emerges time and again in bioethical argument.
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