Matt Bowman: 10 Issues from the Vatican’s New Bioethics DocumentBy Matt Bowman, Esq. The Catholic Church issued an influential new document today discussing embryo research and other disputed questions of bioethics. The Instruction is called Dignitas Personae (The Dignity of a Person). It was issued by the Church’s teaching body called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and was promulgated with the Pope’s approval and oversight (and presumably editing). The last major document by the Church on life issues was Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, and before that was the CDF’s bioethical Instruction Donum Vitae, issued 25 years ago. So an update was due. Here I would like to discuss 10 issues from the document, somewhat randomly chosen, but which I consider important especially regarding those that are disputed even among pro-life theologians. 1. The Zygote Is a Person The document’s first development is triggered in its first sentence: “The dignity of a person must be recognized in every human being from conception to natural death.” Everyone seems to know that the Church values every human being as a person from the moment of conception, when sperm and egg combine. But some theologians have disputed whether the Church says zygotes are persons at conception, rather than merely that we must treat them “as” persons. There is a lot of evidence from Church teaching that the zygote has indeed been taught to be a person, because the Church treats every human being as a person, and affirms a human being’s life as beginning at conception. In 1995 Pope John Paul II quoted Donum Vitae:
And the Pope later said, “to kill a human being, in whom the image of God is present, is a particularly serious sin.” With the clarity and frankness we have come to expect from Pope Benedict, Dignitas Personae addresses this point head on. First the document notes that “If Donum Vitae, in order to avoid a statement of an explicitly philosophical nature, did not define the embryo as a person, it nonetheless did indicate that there is an intrinsic connection between the ontological dimension and the specific value of every human life.” What DP seems to mean is this. Donum Vitae said that ethical status (possessing the qualities and rights of personhood) is linked to the scientific status that an entity has when it is a whole human organism, and this link exists at any point during its life, all the way back to the beginning. But in saying so, Donum Vitae was assuming an “ontological dimension”–a philosophical belief that beings themselves exist, even over time and even as they develop. So we really can speak of a “you” that is the same “you” that existed when you were a baby, or an embryo. As a human being you exist as “yourself” over time, your being is linked to your bodily existence as a whole human organism, and your human value rests in being a kind of thing that is a human. Dignitas Personae connects the dots: “the reality of the human being for the entire span of life, both before and after birth, does not allow us to posit either a change in nature or a gradation in moral value, since it possesses full anthropological and ethical status. The human embryo has, therefore, from the very beginning, the dignity proper to a person.” We don’t just accord embryos the status of persons, nor do we just treat them as if they were persons. They actually possess that status as full human persons. This puts the opening sentence of Dignitas Personae in a new developmental light when it says personal dignity “must be recognized” from conception. Recognition means that something is actually there–personhood is present. 2. Human Rights Exist in All Human Beings The second point I noted is the document’s reaffirmation that if being a human being isn’t the bedrock source of having human rights, then human rights can be given or taken away by any “relativistic conception,” including decisions of the powerful, or of voters. Human rights can’t be universal, and can’t be secure as rights, if they are not accorded to each human being just because he or she is a human being. That is not a new point but it is an important one, especially in dialoguing with a secular society that claims to support human rights. Society needs to give an account of where human rights come from, and the only stable account, founded in merely being a whole human organism, requires that human rights be recognized in the unborn, too. 3. Sex-Selection Killings Are Increasing Thirdly, the document notes the increase of “couples who have no fertility problems are using 4. Frozen Embryo Adoption May Be Problematic A fourth point concerns a great debate by pro-life Catholic theologians: whether it is morally licit for couples to implant or adopt “spare” frozen embryos produced during in vitro fertilization, so that their little lives might be saved rather than eventually destroyed and discarded. Some theologians suggest that because IVF and surrogate motherhood are themselves illicit, so too is it impermissible even to try to save an embryo by implanting him in a womb. The document first broaches this debate by saying that “the desire not to have a child cannot justify the abandonment or destruction of a child once he or she has been conceived.” This comment suggests that, whatever the status of genetically unrelated individuals who wish to adopt embryos, the actual parents of those embryos have a moral duty not to “abandon” them to the freezer and destruction. They have placed their children in this precarious situation, and now they need to get them out. The only way not to abandon those embryos is to implant them in a woman. Nevertheless, when the document turns to “prenatal adoption” of frozen embryos by persons who are not the embryo’s parents, it seems to frown upon the procedure, though perhaps not decisively. The document first discusses whether embryos could be distributed specifically to help infertile couples–it rejects that idea based on the already-stated immorality of IVF and surrogacy, which separate conception and gestation from marriage and the conjugal act. Then it discusses embryo adoption that occur with a good intent: “solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are otherwise condemned to destruction.” Here the CDF says, “This proposal, praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life, presents however various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above.” Those problems presumably include cooperation with the IVF industry itself and its manufacturing approach to human life. The document concludes, “All things considered, it needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved.” These statements are not as decisive as they could be in rejecting prenatal adoption. The CDF doesn’t actually label prenatal adoption as IVF or surrogacy in the way it labels prenatal adoption for infertility purposes as IVF and surrogacy. Theologians still might be able to argue that prenatal adoption could be licit if it were performed minimizing the “various problems” that can attend IVF, and which cooperate in the illicit industry of IVF itself. Perhaps because there is no non-evil solution, a double effect argument could be made to support prenatal adoption in ideal circumstances. The document notes later that “It is never permitted to do something which is intrinsically illicit, not even in view of a good result.” The question seems to remain, however: is prenatal adoption illicit in an intrinsic way, or merely (but seriously) because of other non-intrinsic, “various problems” that are “similar” to those involving IVF? Unfortunately for us impatient mortals, the current document will probably not fully resolve this issue. 5. Drugs that Prevent Implantation Are Abortion Dignitas Personae wades into another controversial area: “emergency contraception,” and whether it prevents implantation of an embryo or not, and whether it is therefore morally like abortion. The document helpfully tries to distinguish between several effects of various drugs: the contraceptive (acting before sperm and egg combine at conception), the interceptive (acting after conception but before the embryo implants in the uterine wall), and the contragestative (acting after implantation). Dignitas Personae makes the bold statement that contraception advocates should not be permitted to hide the interceptive ball on this issue: “scientific studies indicate that the effect of inhibiting implantation is certainly present.” With that effect present, even in few cases, someone who seeks to use a drug like the morning after pill is intending abortion, in a general but a real and grave sense, implicating even Canon Law’s penalties for participating in abortion. The interceptive effect is part of the act of taking the drug, because it is part of its designed effect. Someone who takes or distributes the morning after pill to stop someone from “getting pregnant,” is including in their intention all of the means and effects by which the drug functions to prevent the outcome of a live gestating baby. Interception is included. This further supports what Church documents have said for many years, that Catholics cannot participate in the effect of interceptive drugs. They have not only a moral duty not to do so, but a right and duty to conscientiously object, because they are objecting to participation in an act that is no different than abortion at a later stage of pregnancy. Unfortunately, the document does not directly discuss the use of these drugs on rape victims. In those cases Catholic health providers actually are allowed to try to prevent conception and they should attempt to avoid interception. Nevertheless, the principles here can be applied to the rape situation, because they clarify that an interception effect of a drug is morally significant–it cannot be brushed aside by the claim of agnosticism about what the drug’s effect will be. This adds further support to Catholic theologians who argue that if a partially-interceptive drug is taken when a woman has likely ovulated, or taken in deliberate ignorance of whether she has likely ovulated, the act of giving the drug includes an abortive intent and is morally impermissible. 6. Gene Therapy Cannot Embody Eugenics A sixth notable issue is gene therapy. The CDF points out that techniques can manipulate the genes of an individual to correct genetic defects, or can target the individual’s sperm (in a man) and eggs (in a woman) to correct a flaw for all their children and children’s children. Generally, the former is permissible though risky–the latter, in the current state of uncertainty about its long term effects, is too risky and therefore impermissible. On a larger scale, the proposal to conduct gene therapy on the whole human race to eliminate undesirable traits is condemned as eugenics, because it diminishes the value of human beings as human beings, it would lead to dystopian kinds of discrimination, and it begs the question of who are the super-scientists who get the power of fashioning this Brave New World. As Chesterton said, “I shall begin to take seriously those classifications of [racial] superiority and inferiority, when I find a man classifying himself as inferior…. I never heard a man say: ‘Anthropology shows that I belong to an inferior race.’ If he did, he might be talking like an anthropologist; as it is, he is talking like a man, and not infrequently like a fool.” 7. Clones Are People, Too On cloning, the document debunks an artificial distinction frequently made by the cloning movement between “reproductive cloning,” by which they mean cloning, implanting, and gestating a child to birth, and “therapeutic cloning,” by which they mean cloning an embryo and experimenting on it to death. The cloning movement wishes to prohibit the former and mandate the latter. But there is no essential distinction–there is only “cloning,” which “is proposed for two basic purposes,” not two kinds of cloning. Cloning advocates claim to oppose reproductive cloning (for now), and instead promise to clone and kill to prevent that evil. Dignitas Personae condemns reproductive cloning, but not because the clone is not killed. Quite the contrary. The clone is a person, and cloning him unjustly subjects him to “biological slavery” because an arrogant scientist played God in creating him and setting his genetic makeup. But the clone-and-kill option of therapeutic cloning “is even more serious,” because it creates a person to kill him and help another. 8. Don’t Accidentally Make Embryos Eighth, the document accepts in principle, but notes a caution, on a new promising area of science by which stem cells are created without killing embryos. These techniques can involve reprogramming cells from adults to revert back to a stage where they can be made into any other kind of cell. But care must be taken that cells are not created which might be embryos—if there is even a chance that embryos are being killed, science should refrain from taking the risk. 9. Killing Embryos is Morally the Same as Abortion A ninth point worth addressing is the relationship between abortion and embryo experimentation. In both instances a human person is killed. But as a technical medical matter, experimenting on an embryo that was created in a petri dish and is never put in a woman is not “abortion,” which is the removal of a baby from a woman. Nevertheless, as a moral matter the two sorts of killing are of the same kind. Both are in “the category of abortion.” This is perhaps a simple point but it is a helpful clarification for those who object to participating in abortion. Their objection is because human beings are killed, and is not dependent on whether the person was killed from inside a woman or in a lab, nor, as noted above, on whether the embryo had implanted yet and therefore by some medical definitions was not yet in an “established pregnancy.” The moral objection to killing innocent children stands, no matter the circumstances. 10. Opposing Death Is a Way of Affirming Life Finally, Dignitas Personae calls for “courageous opposition to all those practices which result in grave and unjust discrimination against unborn human beings.” The document reminds us that Christian morality is not all about saying no to things:
Overall this is a helpful document with several important updates and clarifications. It should be read by all pro-lifers who pay close attention to bioethical abuses and quandaries, or who want to learn. |