The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly

Embryo adoption is a topic of considerable debate in the Church. Well over a million human embryos are currently being kept in cryogenic containers with little prospect of survival. The desire to rescue these vulnerable human beings is natural. However, the processes required to do so raise serious questions regarding the ethics of embryo adoptions. The violation of the unitive and procreative aspects of human intercourse and its ramifications on the moral status of heterologous embryo transfer are key to understanding the reasoning behind some objections to human embryo adoption.

Conscience is widely misunderstood. For many, conscientious objection, both religious and nonreligious, is regarded as nothing more than a convenient excuse to get around the rules. This essay provides an argument for respecting conscience. It shows how the conscience is an integral part of responsible decision-making and must be recognized and protected and ends with an application of the right of conscience to recent debates over mandatory COVID-19 vaccination. The goal of this essay is to show why there is a strong case for taking conscience seriously in ethics and public policy.

I argue that proponents of heterologous embryo transfer are faced with the practical decision of whether would-be parents should adopt a prenatal child or a postnatal child (e.g., a child from the foster system). I argue that, all things considered, there is a good reason to favor postnatal adoption in every case in which a postnatal child is available for adoption. Since, unfortunately, there will always be postnatal children to adopt, there is little practical impetus for prenatal adoption.

Thomas Aquinas expounded a theory of delayed hominization that has greatly influenced debates about abortion. Although many have robustly criticized this theory, its continuing appeal to supporters of abortion necessitates a reexamination. This essay will revisit Aquinas’s problematic view about the place of the rational soul in embryological development and show that he confuses the ability to reason with the capacity for reason. In a time when abortion rights debates are common and vitriolic, this essay attempts to provide clear reasons for reaffirming the moral status of the embryo from conception.

I reply to Steven Jensen’s article, “Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Recent Attempts to Revive New Natural Law Action Theory,” which appeared in this journal in 2020. His arguments helpfully clarify where the disagreements between the strict and broad views of intention lie but, I argue, fail to refute the arguments and explanations he criticizes. I argue he misinterprets the strict view’s reference to necessity in its criterion for what is intended. I also argue against what he labels as the “identity thesis,” and against his attempt to show that the strict view (or New Natural Law theory of action) leads to the absurdity that most acts of adultery are not actually adultery.

Triage situations and other occurrences in which rationing of medical care is necessary require careful distribution of medical equipment, services, or resources. However, the evolution of triage has failed to eliminate certain biases in the standards of care, particularly for groups already facing societal disenfranchisement and discrimination. This article explores the use of triage calculators and other systems of rationing care, their implicit biases, and how to avoid allowing those biases to influence care.

In a recent issue of this journal, Steven Dezort criticizes two versions of the contralife argument, including my version and a version defended by some prominent new natural law theorists. In this essay, I argue that people should accept the contralife argument even if they disagree with other principles of new natural law theory. To defend this thesis, I correct some misstatements about the contralife argument and identify basic disagreements about defining actions and respecting human life.

This essay will reflect on the importance of Catholic social teaching in public health ethics, especially in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Catholic social teaching will be presented as being continuous with Catholic moral teaching—while the latter sets out norms and prohibitions often in relation to individual agents and their actions, the Church’s social doctrine invites us to think of the community and social dimension of the moral good. To illustrate this continuity of doctrine, I will argue that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown a need for a serious evaluation of the relationship between public health and the common good, in light of the far-reaching and long-lasting public health measures that have been used around the world, such that the good of health has dominated considerations of almost all other aspects of life.

Throughout history Christians have responded to the need for direct care for the sick in imitation of the healing ministry of Jesus and in the creation of hospitals as signs of God’s love. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a global, unprecedented modern experience of vulnerability. It has resulted in moral distress for doctors and health care workers in overwhelmed facilities. It has also revealed profound inequity in access to health care, the tragic consequences of the neglect of public health and its focus on communities, and the effects of poverty and marginalization on the risk of illness and death. This paper proposes insights from Catholic social teaching that can guide a renewal of public health by rebalancing duties to individuals and communities, and renewing medicine as a public trust. These insights can assist in reducing moral distress in scarcity.

This essay examines the development of a liberation bioethics in Latin America with its focus on public health equity from the experience and knowledge of those who are at the margins, the poor and historically oppressed groups. An encounter between bioethics and liberation theology contributed to form a Latin American bioethics marked by a double aspect: bioethical scholarly focus on public health equity and social activism for universal healthcare coverage. Liberation theology has a role in this bioethics oriented to public health, and Pope Francis offers a new contribution for this perspective at the same time that he brings it to a global discussion. Considering the exchange between liberation theology and bioethics and Francis’s insights, this essay offers a new perspective grounded in the Brazilian experiment and the Catholic social tradition to dialogue with US bioethical accounts by challenging the Western epistemological framework of bioethical studies in the Global North.