We had a couple bring a wrongful death suit in Cook County against a fertility clinic that had destroyed their embyros.
The courts went back and forth on it and finally dismissed the suit because the Illinois Law on Wrongful Death applied only to fetuses in the womb. (Here's a link on this story).
We can talk about reducing abortions but that's really dodging the fundamental question of the moral status of a fetus. Technology simply isn't going to let us dodge that and providers are going to demand clarification of the law, and the law is going to need moral/ethical guidance.
Sciene tells me the embryo is the first stage of human life and my ethics tell me human life in all of its stages is equally worthy and of equal moral status.
I don't believe we can ask anyone to risk their lives for another and that includes asking a mother to risk her life to give birth to a child.
So there is a clash of rights.
But Biden and your link dodge the hard ethics with a soft desire to reduce abortions.
Technology is going to force our hands and Catholics at the moment have the case that Liberalism does not respond back to well.
I do think you're right that there is a clash of rights and that trying to reduce abortions does side-step the argument of when life starts.
However, I think that in real-world application, reducing abortions is a good place to start. When we push women underground, they continue to have abortions, and many die themselves in the seedy underworld of illegal abortions. So where is the morality in that? Some may say that those women deserve what they get in their immoral attempt to kill a living being...but that's very species-centric ;). Do the sam people never step on an ant, or eat meat? Where does morality for the living creatures begin and end? Only at human life?
It's much sticker and larger than just abortion and human morality.
This is where it's really hard to negotiate church/state separation, and even more so in an increasingly pluralistic world. Catholics aren't the only ones who have an opinion one way or the other.
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We had a couple bring a wrongful death suit in Cook County against a fertility clinic that had destroyed their embyros.
The courts went back and forth on it and finally dismissed the suit because the Illinois Law on Wrongful Death applied only to fetuses in the womb. (Here's a link on this story).
We can talk about reducing abortions but that's really dodging the fundamental question of the moral status of a fetus. Technology simply isn't going to let us dodge that and providers are going to demand clarification of the law, and the law is going to need moral/ethical guidance.
Sciene tells me the embryo is the first stage of human life and my ethics tell me human life in all of its stages is equally worthy and of equal moral status.
I don't believe we can ask anyone to risk their lives for another and that includes asking a mother to risk her life to give birth to a child.
So there is a clash of rights.
But Biden and your link dodge the hard ethics with a soft desire to reduce abortions.
Technology is going to force our hands and Catholics at the moment have the case that Liberalism does not respond back to well.
I do think you're right that there is a clash of rights and that trying to reduce abortions does side-step the argument of when life starts.
However, I think that in real-world application, reducing abortions is a good place to start. When we push women underground, they continue to have abortions, and many die themselves in the seedy underworld of illegal abortions. So where is the morality in that? Some may say that those women deserve what they get in their immoral attempt to kill a living being...but that's very species-centric ;). Do the sam people never step on an ant, or eat meat? Where does morality for the living creatures begin and end? Only at human life?
It's much sticker and larger than just abortion and human morality.
This is where it's really hard to negotiate church/state separation, and even more so in an increasingly pluralistic world. Catholics aren't the only ones who have an opinion one way or the other.
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