Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Difficult questions

Some discussion around here in the last couple of days on ethics. See what y'all think.

What are we to say to a woman in a "crisis pregnancy" who is considering abortion, when she tells us that she would rather the child be killed than risk being adopted by homosexuals. In Britain, for example, there is no such thing as legal private adoption. All adoptions are regulated by the state and the state says that even Catholic organisations must allow homosexual "partners" to adopt children.

Now that we know a great deal about the human genome, and scientists are growing more able to find genetic predispositions to genetically transmitted illnesses, is there a case to be made to restrict marriage between people who have a high risk of transmitting, say, diabetes to their children?

Can there be an ethical case made for the germline genetic alteration to eliminate the possiblity, before the are conceived, of children with such illnesses?

5 comments:

Zach said...

1. No.

2. No.

3. Possibly, but fraught with too much peril to trust our hubristic death-loving culture with at this time.


There, that was easy.


peace,
Zach

P.S.: I realize #1 isn't a "pastoral" response, but it's the ethical one.

Hilary Jane Margaret White said...

Moral clarity from the Anglican gallery.

Zach said...

Yes, well... there are days that I'm a very un-Anglican Anglican.

Anonymous said...

"the germline genetic alteration"

What does this mean? How is it done?

Hilary Jane Margaret White said...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&hs=NQn&q=germline+alteration&aq=f&oq=&aqi=