04/10/2021, 16:31 BioEdge: Is “sanctity of life” a useful concept?

Is “sanctity of life” a useful concept?

by Michael Cook
| 20 Nov 2016 | 18 comments

In increasingly heated debates over abortion and euthanasia, pro-lifers cling

doggedly to the concept of “the sanctity of life”. This has been under attack for
years by utilitarian philosophers, notably Princeton’s Peter Singer. In a 2005
article Singer went so far as to contend that “During the next 35 years, the
traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from
scientific, technological, and demographic developments. By 2040, it may be
that only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists will
defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is
sacrosanct.”

You might think that Singer’s withering prediction would be countered with a
robust defence by Catholic bioethicists. However, in a controversial article in
The New Bioethics, David Albert Jones, director of the Anscombe Bioethics
Centre, in the UK, suggests that the term “sanctity of life” is so woolly that it
should be scrapped. He says that Singer and others are attacking a straw man
created by his buddies. “The connotations of this language are part of a
deliberate attempt to distract from fundamental issues of justice, solidarity and
human rights and falsely to imply that the legal protection which is due to
vulnerable human beings is based only on religious sentiment.”

In a very interesting analysis of the term, Jones points out that Christian
philosophers and theologians almost never used the term until the 1970s. It
was only with the publication in 1957 of a book by Welsh legal
scholar Glanville Williams, The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law, that it
gained currency. And the aim of this author was to promote abortion and
euthanasia and to attack Catholic views on bioethical issues. The books title
was “an attempt to undermine the prohibition against killing the innocent in
certain cases”.

Jones is a resolute foe of Singer and “quality of life” theorists. But he feels that
“sanctity of life” leads people to think that opposition to abortion and
euthanasia is based only on religious convictions. This is the tactic which has
been used by Singer for years to discredit his opponents.

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04/10/2021, 16:31 BioEdge: Is “sanctity of life” a useful concept?

“It is better, in summary, to jettison the language of a ‘principle’ of ‘the

sanctity of human life’ in favour of clearer and more traditional ethical
concepts: the prohibition on killing the innocent and the prudential
consideration of burdens and benefits, integrating distinct virtues and
distinct practical principles in pursuit of the human good of the
particular individual in the context medical treatment.”

MORE ON THESE TOPICS | pro-life, quality of life, sanctity of life, utilitarianism

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