Ariel Wilberg, a 20-year-old student in Edgerton, Wis., says she enrolled in the program two years ago to cover the cost of her birth-control pills. With a part-time bookstore job that pays $10 an hour, she couldn’t afford to pay for the NuvaRing prescription birth control she now takes. She estimates it would cost her about $300 for the three-month supply she gets at a Planned Parenthood outlet.

“It’s very nice to know that I’m healthy in terms of I don’t have to worry about pregnancy,” she said.

The conclusion is clear: the day she gets pregnant, she’ll have a disease. That’s the warped world the culture of death has wrought.

Yours truly will be one of the speakers.

A version of the paper I delivered on that panel has just been published in Touchstone: A Magazine of Mere Christianity (May/June 2010).   Entitled, “Justice for Some: Moral Theology & the President’s Honorary Doctorate,” here is an excerpt:

Now I would like to discuss a portion of President Obama’s commencement address that, although it has been applauded by many of his Catholic and Evangelical supporters, I believe expressed a misunderstanding of the pro-life position—a misunderstanding that may serve to diminish the moral seriousness of the effort to protect unborn persons, which the pro-life movement has fought hard to communicate for several decades now.

In his address, Obama said that, on the issue of abortion, we should strive for common ground, since, “no matter how much we may want to fudge it . . . at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable.” This is certainly true, and thus, one who does not share the president’s view on abortion should not fault him for reaching out to those with whom he disagrees.

Nevertheless, I believe the president’s call for common ground should not be confused with a pro-life understanding of humanity’s wideness. Here are the president’s words from his speech:

So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.

The president chose his words carefully. Let’s begin with the second sentence. He tells us that people “disagree with abortion,” though that’s not quite right. Pro-lifers don’t condemn abortion because they disagree with it; they think abortion is unjustified homicide. It’s hard to imagine President Obama saying that he “disagrees with” spousal abuse, genocide, or racial discrimination. He would say that these things are categorically wrong; thus, it would diminish the seriousness of his convictions for us to cast his judgments in language that makes it sound as if he is merely being contrary. Likewise, by framing pro-lifers’ objection to abortion as a subjective opinion rather than as a serious moral judgment they believe to be true and universal, the president diminished the pro-life conscience he calls for us to honor.

You can read the whole thing here.
(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)

In March 2008, the President’s Council on Bioethics published a volume entitled, Human Dignity and Bioethics.  It consists of essays penned by council members as well as other scholars and practitioners invited to contribute. As one would guess, the idea of human dignity and what it means for bioethics, both in theory and in practice, is the theme that dominates each of the works contributed to this impressive volume. But for those who have been following or participating in the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary world of secular bioethics during the past fifteen or twenty years, the insertion of the idea of “human dignity,” or even the word “dignity,” as the anthropological foundation of bioethics is highly unusual.  Much of the cutting edge literature in bioethics, with few exceptions, tends to employ the language of modern political theory and contemporary analytic political philosophy and jurisprudence. So, for example, one finds in these cutting-edge works discussions about the meaning and implementation of the principles of autonomy, justice, nonmaleficence, and beneficence, as well as calls for the application of these principles to what constitutes physician neutrality, informed consent, and patients’ rights.  This project often goes by the name principlism. There is, of course, much that this project has contributed to the study and practice of bioethics.  For each principle and its application has a long and noble pedigree about which many of us hold a variety of opinions. But what distinguishes principlism from the concept of “human dignity,” and what makes this central concern of the council’s volume so astounding, is that advocates of principlism typically intend for it to be a means by which a physician, ethics committee, nurse practitioner, general counsel, etc., need not delve into the metaphysical question for which “human dignity” is offered as a partial answer, namely, “Who and what are we, and can we know it?”

To put it another way, if bioethics commits itself to the idea that “human dignity” is essential to its practice, as the President’s Council suggests, it follows that bioethics must embrace a philosophy of the human person, a philosophical anthropology, if you will, that can provide substantive content to the notion of “human dignity.” But such a suggestion seems to run counter to two ideas that are dominant in the secular academy: (1) Enlightenment Liberalism, and (2) Scientific Materialism.

Enlightenment Liberalism is, roughly, the view that a state that aspires to justice and fairness ought not to embrace one view of the human person as the correct view because to do so would be to violate the principles essential to liberal democracy. This is why the principles central to principlism, such as autonomy and justice, are almost all procedural in their application. That is, when they are applied and practiced correctly, they commit the relevant medical personal and institution to as minimal an understanding of the human person and her good as possible. Now, as I point out below, I think that this is actually false. In fact, secular bioethics does commit its practitioners to a substantive understanding of the human person and the human good, one that is as contested and controversial as the so-called “religious” views for which principlism is often thought of as a neutral arbiter. What I am suggesting here, however, is that this is not how its supporters present, or in some cases understand, their position.

The second idea, Scientific Materialism, is, roughly, the view that science is the best or only way of knowing, and that science is committed to methodological naturalism (that science must proceed under the assumption that non-natural entities cannot be items of knowledge that may count against the deliverances of the hard sciences).  Therefore, philosophies of the human person that affirm non-material properties like “human dignity” are not items of real knowledge.  Thus, such philosophies of the human person, though they may be privately embraced and practiced by individual citizens in accordance with their own religious sensibilities or believed on the basis of utility, none of these philosophical anthropologies may ever serve as the basis on which a society may regulate research and practices of bioethical controversy, such as embryonic stem-cell research, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, or reproductive technologies.

As one would suspect, given these definitions, advocates of Enlightenment Liberalism and Scientific Materialism offer them as neutral and uncontested concepts that provide a fair, impartial, and scientifically respectable foundation for the practice of medical ethics in a pluralistic society of competing worldviews. Despite their intuitive appeal to many in the academic and professional cultures in which a secular bioethics is dominant, I want to argue that these views are not neutral and uncontested concepts. Rather, they support an account of the common good and the human person that answers precisely the same questions that the so-called contested worldviews, including so-called religious perspectives, attempt to answer.  In order to make my case, I employ as my point of departure several comments that appeared in a 2008 article published in The New Republic, “The Stupidity of Dignity,” authored by Harvard University psychology professor, Steven Pinker.

You can download the entire article on my website here.

(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)

One of the many bad habits of the modern mind is its proclivity to answer moral questions with social science answers. So, for example, it is not unusual to hear a political activist assess a policy’s success or failure at confronting the moral problem of out of wedlock teenage fornication by examining whether there are fewer bastards sired and borne by teenyboppers this year compared to last year (or the year before). If the numbers go up, the activist will likely argue that the schools should start distributing prophylactics as well as abortion gift certificates redeemable at your local Planned Parenthood. But just as you don’t erradicate illiteracy by burning all the books, you don’t solve a moral problem by redefining it as exclusively one of unpleasant consequences. After all, a promiscuous teenage girl, who while copulating with the entire high school football team remains prophlyicatically conscientious, does not cease to have a soul that is being formed by her judgments and experiences simply because her body has not exhibited the ordinary physical consequences of recreational sex.

As far as I know, Trojan, with its well-funded and creative research and development team, has yet to develop a metaphysically reliable condom that can protect the soul.

You can read the whole thing here.

(Originally posted on Return To Rome blog)

Dante is never outdated, as we see in this story from Drudge.  Turns out the Dignitas suicide clinic has been disposing of remains in a rather undignified manner:  dumping the urns into a heap at the bottom of Lake Zurich.  I’m sure the ‘suicide tourists’ expected something a bit more clinical, more Swiss, for their considerable Euros.

They have learned the lesson of the souls in Canto XIII of The Inferno:  As you measure to the body in life, so it will be measured to you in death.  Pier delle Vigne, the soul entrapped in a blackened, twisted thornbush, protests after his branch is broken by the pilgrim Dante:  “Why do you break me?  Your hand had shown us greater mercy had we been the souls of serpents.”  Indeed, but the terrible irony is that Pier showed no mercy to himself in life, treating his own flesh as something to be disposed of at will.  In consequence, his body will be returned to him only to hang on his tree, in a grotesque parody of the crucifixion.

The same blindness is reflected in the outraged protests of Europeans over the dumping.  They are outraged that bodies were disposed of improperly, not that human beings disposed of themselves improperly in the soothing, sanitary confines of the Dignitas clinic.  Both the customers and the clinic treated their bodies in precisely the same way:  as so much inconvenient tissue.  Certainly they were suffering, but to be human is to suffer.  Our hope is to love well in the midst of that suffering, brutally hard as that might be.

Zurich, in the heartland of the Reformation, has lost the language to condemn such acts.  Zwingli would find himself bewildered.  When self-murder is spoken of in terms of human dignity, we no longer know the meaning of the human or what its proper dignity might be.  We protest over the corpse, but do not speak for the man.

“I’m doing this to de-mystify abortion,” she says. “I’m doing this so other women know, ‘Hey, it’s not nearly as terrifying as I had myself worked up thinking it was.’ It’s just not that bad.”

These are the words of Angie Jackson, a blogger and mother of a 4-year-old son. Her IUD birth control failed; she is four weeks pregnant and writing about her abortion on YouTube, her personal blog, and on Twitter under the hashtag #livetweetingabortion.

Last Thursday, Jackson visited a Planned Parenthood where her doctor gave her the first dose of RU-486, the abortion pill. (Note: The abortion pill is not the same as the morning-after pill.) She had to take four more pills — swallowing two and letting two others dissolve in her mouth—on Friday and Saturday.

She hasn’t taken to her various media platforms to show the graphic parts of her abortion. Instead, Jackson is chronicling how her abortion feels physically and emotionally — as she puts it on YouTube, “It’s just not that bad.” It’s almost like guerilla sex ed.

An optimistic part of me thinks that the woman’s callous disregard for human life and the way that she is acting in the public square will actually hurt her cause.  Instead of de-mystifying abortion, she offers an extreme example of self-absorption and selfishness.

Well, that’s what I tell myself to keep from weeping.

By the way, I find the comments of the person blogging about this to be hysterical.

I think it’s brave of her to share something that will make her a bulls-eye for anti-choice activists.

Oh yes, what a brave woman.  She will have to endure the slings and arrows of hundreds of furious blog comments (like this one) that she most likely will never read.  It certainly takes a brave individual to swallow a few pills in order to “do away with a problem” rather than take responsibility for one’s actions.  She’s a real warrior that one.

I’m a pretty big sports fan, but I had never heard of Sean James, until I saw this commercial only moments ago. Al Joyner, I’ve heard of, but only because of his talented late wife, Florence Griffith Joyner, and sister, Jackie Joyner-Kersey.

But here’s my take on this: if you have to tell people you’re a famous athlete, you’re probably not a famous athlete. I can’t imagine, for example, Michael Jordan saying, “Hello, I am Michael Jordan. I am a former professional and college basketball player, and a two-time Olympic gold medalist. I was also a member of six NBA championship teams in the 1990s.”

I discussed my 2007 book, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press), which, as of Monday evening, was the #1 ranked book in the category of “abortion and birth control” on Amazon.com.

(Originally posted on the Return to Rome blog)

It is heartening that we have made some small strides through the years.  Opposition to abortion has increased, and we’re seeing some signs that the youth of today are embracing the culture of life.  But we still have far to go, as evidenced by the actions of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Council.

The Montgomery County Council is considering a regulation that would require pro-life pregnancy resource centers to tell new clients that the information they provide is not intended to be medical advice and to turn to other providers before “proceeding on a course of action regarding [her] pregnancy.” The regulation would impose a fine of up to $750 per day for not doing so.

The bill singles out pregnancy resource centers only because of their pro-life mission. If approved, the Montgomery County regulation would impose government-compelled speech on a non-profit organization that does not receive public funding simply because the organization declines to provide or refer for abortion. The regulation does not apply to “family planning” clinics, which the County government funds, or to abortion clinics.

Maryland, which as a colony was a haven for Catholics, is now the state with the fourth highest abortion rate in the country, and had been one of the few states where the rate is increasing.

There is a critical need for offering alternatives to abortion. While the abortion rate declined 9 percent nationally between 2000 and 2005, the abortion rate in Maryland rose 8 percent in the same period. Our state’s abortion rate is now 38 percent higher than the national rate, with more than one-in-four Maryland pregnancies ending in abortion. There were 37,590 abortions performed here in 2005 – about 103 per day.  To even consider targeting centers that help women choose life is unconscionable in light of these tragic statistics, which represent an even more tragic reality.

Though there is growing opposition to this movement, the Montgomery City Council has not a single Republican member.  My wife has written to our Council member, but I fear our pleas will fall on deaf ears.  If you are in or around the Montgomery County area, please write your local representatives to fight this ideologically motivated attack on pregnancy resource centers.  There is more information on how to get involved here.