libertyinstitutefaithethics Bioethics, ethics, Uncategorized

Hope Sustains Us Even Now

It seems certain that Vincent Lambert will be euthanized by a doctor because of his brain handicap. This shameful episode, recently the subject of a L.I.F.E. blog post, has divided a family and exposed to plain view the mandate of enforced euthanasia – more properly defined by Saint john Paul II as a form of murder – which is spreading over the insipid cultures of morbid post-industrialized First World. 

In his masterful opus Evangelium Vitae John Paul the affirmed “that euthanasia is a grave violation of the law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.” (n. 65)

Vincent Lambert will die because he is disabled and members of his family, excluding his loving parents and a minority of his siblings, have deemed his life not worthy of life. Some say it is his will; that he did not want life on such disabled terms. Regardless of the justification offered, what is happening to Lambert is a crime. John Paul speaks directly to each of these circumstances: 

True “compassion” leads to sharing another’s pain; it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear. Moreover, the act of euthanasia appears all the more perverse if it is carried out by those, like relatives, who are supposed to treat a family member with patience and love, or by those, such as doctors, who by virtue of their specific profession are supposed to care for the sick person even in the most painful terminal stages.

The choice of euthanasia becomes more serious when it takes the form of a murder committed by others on a person who has in no way requested it and who has never consented to it. (n. 66) 

John Paul went on to describe euthanasia, along with abortion, as “crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize.” No one is obliged in conscience to obey such unjust laws but rather “there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them (n. 73). 

God bless the parents of Vincent Lambert who have witnessed to love and fought a courageous battle against the sadness of modern culture which has lost the art of loving.

libertyinstitutefaithethics Bioethics, biotech, ethics, technology, Uncategorized

Baby Art: Designing Humans

Christ is Risen! Happy Easter to all. 

L.I.F.E.’s Tom Davis recently published a short essay in Deacon Digest magazine entitled Technological Reproduction and Human Dignity.  Limited space for publication necessitated abbreviated treatment of the topic, but L.I.F.E.’s Bioethics Library has a rich collection of essays on point, including an expanded version of the online Deacon Digest article. Other related insights from the John Paul II Lecture Series in Bioethics include the late William May’s Begotten Not Made, Donald Demarco on Technologized Parenthood, and Raymond Dennehy’sThe Biological Revolution and the Myth of Prometheus.

Just last week The New York Times ran a Sunday editorial on three parent embryos as a path to cure certain diseases.  L.I.F.E. is a step ahead. Must reading is Kevin Semataska’s Truth and Cloning: Political Ideology, Scientific Integrity, and the Advent of Three Parent Children from the 2018 JP II Journal of Bioethics exposing deceptive “clone and kill bills” masquerading as ethical restraint and the developing clash between those supporting “reproductive” cloning and those determined to call it anything but. The Times assures us that three parent embryos are not a path to designer babies – we’ve heard that pitch before. The ugly truth remains: the western industrialized nations are in the midst of a eugenic cleansing that began almost a century ago. Read more about it here in Crisis Magazine’s Treating Embryocide with White Gloves  (also a .pdf in our L.I.F.E. bioethics library here).

libertyinstitutefaithethics Bioethics, biotech, ethics, free exercise, freedom of speech, religious liberty, technology

L.I.F.E. is Live – Join Us

Life is short, so the saying goes. Here at L.I.F.E. we are going long, as in “for the long haul.” Liberty, life, freedom of conscience, and family structures face unprecedented challenges in the era of technological revolution, expanding government intrusion into daily life, and rapidly evolving social norms. The interface of natural sciences, medicine, and technology offers previously unimaginable vistas. At the same time, those disciplines and others, such as law, ethics, economics, and philosophy open potentials for abuse. 

L.I.F.E. is a new resource, tracking developments related to religious and political liberty, bioethics, and cultural expression. It is no neutral observer. Rather, it proposes a natural law ethic that presupposes and advocates certain first principals: the human person is a creature possessed of free will; societies of persons are the natural state of human persons, beginning with the family based on marriage of one man and one woman, and expanding to local, regional and international political structures; there exist inherent standards of good and evil not contingent on circumstance or intention but of their very nature; each human life is precious, unique and unrepeatable and demands the protection of law from conception to natural death; the free exercise of religion is fundamental to the legitimacy of a given political order; each person is endowed with unalienable rights including freedom of thought, speech, conscience, and religion; and each is obliged to respect the freedom of others and to fulfill the duties inherent to the flourishing of civil society. L.I.F.E. offers a critical assessment of the forces shaping the 21stCentury in light of those first principals. 

L.I.F.E.’s principal organs of commentary, advocacy, and study are the Saint John Paul II Bioethics Center, the Religious Liberty Observatory, and the Center for the Study of Bioethics & Law. 

The annual Saint John Paul II Bioethics Lecture presents academics, jurists, scientists, and others addressing timely topics in bioethics. The 2019 lecture, And Such Were Some of You: Homosexuality and the Bible, features renowned scripture scholar Rev. Sebastian Carnazzo, PhD. And the Center for the Study of Bioethics & Law offers a free university level course: Bioethics & Law 101, with many more in the pipeline.

Please take a stroll through our easy to navigate site. We think you will find in it sources that both delight and challenge.