Peter Singer & Christian Ethics

Peter Singer & Christian Ethics by MSW.  MGB: It is not the moral status of the fetus that is really in doubt, but the status of the first trimester embryo.  No one is a fetus until the second trimester.  Where the Church needs to meet the modern world in understanding is to realize that the question is not at all the guilt or innocence of the fetus or embryo but the danger it poses to the physical, psychological and economic well being of the mother and the family.  Indeed, the same decision criteria are evidenced in how to deal with other issues of deadly force, like euthanasia, war, self defense and capital punishment.  We do not have the right to decide on someone's fate because they are guilty or innocent.  Rather, we can only act to prevent a greater harm.  The question then becomes, what is the greater harm and what is the best way to mitigate it.

If we really wish to discern the essentials for Catholic moral theology, we will not fetishize the fate of every fetus - especially if the pregnancy will almost certainly prove harmful to the mother when the child itself has no chance of survival due to some defect.  No amount of danger is moral to save a child that is fatally flawed with no prognosis of ever surviving to birth.  God does not expect us to turn off our brains and expect him to be an ogre.  Nor is it reasonable to expect that the optimum remedy of abortion is to make it dangerous through the criminal law.  What does honor the teachings of Christ is to create a society where abortion is never necessary for family well being - with a just wage and a nurturing society that truly welcomes children economically was well as emotionally, including when the parents are high school students.  This insistence on adoption rather than enabling the formation of young families also plays into the desire for abortion as an option.  For many, it is more natural to terminate the child than give it up. For these mothers, it is better to offer as an equally reasonable option a supportive structure to keep the child, marry the father and pursue both of their futures.

Part of the problem with our discussion on abortion is that we approach it without first discerning the nature of the soul, so we examine the issue with one eye blind.  Neuroscience teaches us that the soul is not lodged in the consciousness, somehow guiding our thoughts.  Our brains act first and our consciousness is our experience of having thought.  As Catholics, we do not believe in the resurrection of the consciousness or the brain, but of the entire body.  The locus of the soul must therefore be our entire bodies - each and every cell.  Indeed, the obvious candidate is that life force which begins at gastrulation to guide our development (which is not evident before then) and which continues until death - resulting in entropy fairly quickly.  Of course, theologians won't go there at the risk of challenging the hierarchy's preconceived notions on conception.  A little moral courage is called for here among theologians.  Once one quits seeking a way to validate Church teaching, one may at last find the truth.

The entire question of transplantation will soon be overcome by advances in stem cell research and the growing of new organs using cadaver cartilage and the person's own stem cells.  Keeping people alive to harvest their organs will no longer be required.

As for Euthanasia as a compassionate option, St. Thomas More settled that question from a natural law perspective in his Utopia.  He saw no objections to it.  Moral cowardice in relieving pain and preventing harm is not the virtue the Church thinks it is.  Some of this comes from a glorification of suffering as expiation, which is a total misunderstanding of why Christ suffered.  He did not do so to satisfy the anger of God or man, but to experience the human emptiness that is endemic to the human condition.  Suffering's value is to find awareness of human powerlessness and the need for God.  Beyond that, it is needless torture.