QD Vol.5, No.2 (Final)

Quaestiones
Disputatae
Catholic Bioethics
Patrick Lee, Special Guest Editor
2015
Quaestiones Disputatae
In Dedication to the Memory of William May
3
Quaestiones Disputatae
Vol. 5, No. 2 Spring 2015
Introduction
Introduction to Catholic Bioethics

Patrick Lee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Submitted Papers
The Call to Holiness and Personal Vocation

Germain Grisez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Bioethics: Ethico-Centric Interdisciplinarity

E. Christian Brugger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
How Are We To Make Good Moral Choices and

Do What is Morally Good?
William E. May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Human Embryology: Science Politics versus Science Facts

Maureen L. Condic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Constitutional and Other Persons

Gerard V. Bradley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
The New Regime of Marriage Law: Its Significance for Catholic Life
Joseph Boyle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Suffering, Enhancement, and Human Goods

Christopher Tollefsen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
4
Introduction to Catholic Bioethics
In Evangelium Vitae, Pope St. John Paul II noted that our age is characterized
by a struggle between the culture of life and an emerging culture of death.
He urgently called for, “a general mobilization of consciences and a united
ethical effort to activate a great campaign in support of life.” John Paul then
made a specific call to intellectuals: “A special task falls to Catholic intellec-
tuals, who are called to be present and active in the leading centers where
culture is formed, in schools and universities, in places of scientific and tech-
nological research…. Allowing their talents and activity to be nourished by
the living force of the Gospel, they ought to place themselves at the service
of a new culture of life by offering serious and well documented contribu-
tions, capable of commanding general respect and interest by reason of their
merit” (EV, 95). It follows that today some Catholic intellectuals rightly see
as part of their personal vocation to reflect on the dignity of human life and
the sanctity of marriage and articulate the logical case for them. The seven
essays gathered in this issue provide high-quality scholarship on key funda-
mental and controversial questions central to the “great campaign in support
of life.”
* * *
Germain Grisez’s pivotal article on personal vocation and holiness sets the
stage for the specific questions on bioethics addressed in the issue. Grisez
explains and defends a theological point that is central to his project, carried
out thus far for over thirty years, of answering the Second Vatican Council’s
call for a renewal of moral theology. He sheds light on the teaching—clear in
the gospels and in St. Paul, and emphasized by Vatican II—that all Christians,
not just religious and clerics, are called to holiness, and that this holiness
includes dedication to the fulfillment of every element of one’s personal
vocation—a vocation which in some cases is centered on a spouse and tem-
poral goods. Christians are called to be holy in every aspect of their lives, not
just in prayer and other specifically religious activities. Christians are called to
actively cooperate with Christ and, with God’s grace, to help fulfill God’s plan
for creation and redemption, which is to build up the Body of Christ, the
kingdom of God. The Body of Christ, or the Kingdom, is a community of
divine and created persons, sharing richly in divine life and in created goods,
centered on Jesus Christ. Revelation is the invitation from God to enter this
5
community and faith is the acceptance of that invitation. Christians are called
to organize every aspect of their lives, lower creation, and culture, with their
commitment of faith. Each Christian has a unique, personal vocation. The
unique gifts and talents of each person, combined with their concrete op-
portunities, are not coincidental with respect to God’s providence. Those
gifts, talents and opportunities constitute a personal calling from God; the
expression of God’s plan for that person, “created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared beforehand, that [she] should walk in them.”
(Eph. 2:10)
Holiness consists not just in specifically religious acts such as
prayer—though all Christians are called to pray regularly—but, centrally, in
whole-heartedly accepting and, with God’s grace, carrying out every element
of one’s personal vocation. Hence loving one’s spouse or working for tempo-
ral goods, if part of one’s vocation, are not impediments to growth in charity,
but part of that holiness. The points explained by Grisez in this article are
pivotal for contemporary Christian bioethics, for it will be most fruitful if
pursued as part of one’s vocation. Work in health care and work in bioeth-
ics focus on bodily and temporal goods, but are not, for that reason, mere-
ly second-class. Life, health, sexuality and marriage are elements of many
Christians’ vocations, are goods integral to the Body of Christ, and merit our
dedication and reverence.
Christian Brugger’s essay addresses the question of how the various
types of knowledge useful to bioethicists—biology, ethics, law, anthropology,
for example—are related to the fundamental project of bioethics. Does a
bioethicist dabble a bit in each of these disciplines? Are different bioethicists
engaging in different disciplines? What is the fundamental project of the
bioethicist? Christian Brugger answers that the task of bioethics is funda-
mentally applied ethics, thus making use of the other types of knowledge.
Brugger illustrates how the interdisciplinarity of bioethics can arise, and how
the centrality of the specific ethical questions is consistent with the complex-
ity of bioethics, by examining in some detail the transhumanist movement.
In examining the ethical issue of cognitive enhancement, he shows how bi-
ological, legal, and political questions are essential, and yet subsidiary to the
properly ethical question.
William May next provides an exposition of the principles of the
natural law, emphasizing that these are truths, not rules, and that moral truths
direct us toward genuine fulfillment rather than being fundamentally restric-
tive. Since the basic moral principle directs us to choose in line with a love and
respect for every intrinsic good of a person, both in ourselves and in others,
it is moral badness that restricts and is self-mutilating whereas moral good-
ness is the fullness of being due the will. William May’s exposition illustrates
the personalist quality of what has often been called the “new natural-law
6
theory,” though he also shows, by his careful analysis of a seminal article in
the Summa Theologiae (I-II, q. 94, art. 2), that this interpretation of morality’s
first principles is not new, but is St. Thomas’s teaching. He also richly clarifies
how the principles of the natural law are related to moral virtue and—more
importantly—to the Christian beatitudes and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and
how these latter organize Christian life.
Maureen Condic is a scientist who has significantly contributed to
bioethical debates regarding the beginning of human, personal life. She med-
itates here on the inter-relation between faith, philosophy, and science in the
engagement of ethical discussions regarding human embryonic and fetal life.
Condic notes that people generally turn either to science or to faith to answer
the questions of what an embryo is and when it comes to be. The Bible in
various places suggests that the human being comes to be at conception.
Some scientists reject that view and think science supports the idea that a
human being comes to be only gradually in the mother’s womb, becoming
“fully human” sometime after conception. Other scientists, however, rightly
see that the scientific evidence shows that a distinct human organism does
come to be at conception. The evidence from embryology, she shows, is that
when a spermatozoon penetrates an oocyte a new and distinct organism is
produced, initially one-celled, that then actively develops itself by self-orga-
nized cell division—that is, the embryo is an organism from fertilization on
and not just a group of cells.
The embryo, even prior to any multicellular stage, Condic explains,
clearly exhibits the marks that distinguish a self-developing organism from
a mere aggregate of cells: it develops itself in an internally orchestrated se-
quence; it repairs injuries (if need be) to restore itself to integral health as a
whole organism; it adapts to changing circumstances to maintain health; and
it exercises a global coordination of the functions of its various parts for the
survival and development of itself as a whole, developing living being. Sci-
entists who fail to see this evidence do so often because of their own faith in
a dogma, the dogma of Scientism, assuming—against the evidence—that an
embryo can be only a collection of cells.
Gerard Bradley’s essay originally appeared in Reason, Morality, and
Law: The Philosophy of John Finnis, edited by Robert P. George and John Ke-
own (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), and we are grateful to Oxford
University Press for allow us to include it in this issue. Bradley painstakingly
analyzes the Constitutional dilemma to which Roe v. Wade has inexorably led.
On the one hand, Roe affirmed that human fetuses (the human concepta
from fertilization on) are not persons in the constitutional sense—that is,
that the Constitution does not affirm that fetuses are persons. On the other
hand, Roe also held both that the judiciary is not qualified to determine when
a human offspring does become a human being or a human person, and that
7
the legislature is qualified to make that determination (they could not have
said otherwise, since it was obvious the Constitution did not preclude the
legislature from so determining). The result has been that the untenability of
Roe v. Wade has emerged clearly in the last two decades. Thirty-eight states and
the federal government have enacted laws protecting unborn children against
violent acts—thus the 2004 federal Unborn Victim of Violent Acts law. This
means that, on the one hand, it is a felony for anyone other than the mother
to deliberately kill, or have killed, an unborn child, a fetus, but at the same
time, per Roe (and its progeny) it is not a crime for the mother to deliberately
kill, or have killed, that same unborn child. The very same behavior, with the
very same intention, if done by one set of people (persons other than the
mother) is homicide, but if done by the mother of the victim, is not a crime
(and indeed is legally protected). This situation obviously conflicts with the
Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection requirement. Thus, Roe has led to
its own implosion.
Bradley argues that the way out of the dilemma is to deny Roe’s first
affirmation, namely, that human fetuses are not persons in the Constitutional
sense. He provides a refutation of this position, including a careful analysis
of the relevant parts, purpose, and history of the Fourteenth Amendment’s
equal protection clause. While neither the Constitution nor the Fourteenth
Amendment affirmed that unborn humans are persons, it used the word
‘person’ to refer to a natural kind (as opposed to an extensional set); so, if
unborn humans really are persons, then the Constitution requires that they be
provided equal protection of the law.
Joseph Boyle provides a rigorous examination of the new marriage
regime resulting from the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex part-
nerships. He asks whether and how the new marriage regime threatens Cath-
olic life. He answers that Catholics should not ignore this regime for it poses
a significant threat to Catholic life, as well to the wider culture. It does so by
proposing an understanding of marriage as consisting only in an emotional
and sexual union of a committed couple, or a social form enabling and en-
couraging those who wish to reproduce to do so in terms that in fact violate
the interests of the children who will come to be from their efforts. The
Catholic understanding of marriage—as a two-in-one flesh union, of the
kind naturally fulfilled by conceiving and rearing children, and thus the social
form that provides an environment which protects the interests of children
who might come to be—is denied, not just ignored, by the new marriage
regime.
On the new regime marriage is redefined as just an emotionally in-
tense and sexually satisfying relationship, or a social form enabling two (or
more people) to reproduce or raise children by whatever means seem effi-
cient. To view marriage in this way, Boyle argues, falsifies the genuine nature
8
of marriage, and thus obscures the good of marriage as an option for choice
for Catholics as well for as others. It also is contrary to the interests of chil-
dren. Boyle’s careful argument is original in many respects. He explains, for
example, that it is beyond the state’s authority to endorse anyone’s sexual acts
just as such, but that the only point of the recent redefinition of marriage is
to do just that. The point of the new marriage law cannot be, for example, to
promote the stability of relationships as such, since non-sexual relationships
are not included. And so the new marriage regime violates the requirement
of equal protection of the law (constructing an arbitrary class on which to
bestow privileges and benefits) and needlessly alienates Christians and others
who believe that sexual acts are morally right only in marriage.
In the last essay of this issue, Christopher Tollefsen explains why
some people—often called “bio-conservatives”—rightly resist the “transhu-
manist” project of seeking to eliminate all suffering whatsoever. In doing
so Tollefsen sheds light on the general question of how suffering can have
meaning. He shows that there is a fundamental divide between those who
identify the good with what one takes an interest in—a subjective view of
the good, identifying the good with the satisfaction of the subject’s prefer-
ences, whatever they happen to be—and those who have an objective view
of the good, such as, what is genuinely fulfilling of rational beings. For the
former, the complete elimination of suffering, by enhancement technology
in the long run, and by euthanasia in the short run, appears to be desirable in
every way. Tollefsen shows, however, that suffering is more complex than it
might first seem. He distinguishes it from physical pain—which is a particular
type of sensation—and identifies it with a certain cognitive experience of a
disharmony, distinguishing different types of disharmonies, some of which
include the agent’s own moral failing.
The disharmony experienced may be physical, or it may be a dis-
harmony with other people, with God, or with the universe itself (a per-
ceived or experienced lack of meaning). Moreover, sometimes the suffering
is itself based on a misconception—for example, the frustration of a desire
for something not genuinely good; this can be called ‘disordered suffering.’
Given these complexities, Tollefsen concludes, it is not always a good thing to
remove suffering. If the suffering is disordered, then providing the sufferer
with what she desires will not be genuinely good for that person. Moreover,
the attempt to remove suffering by “fixing” its source, or by simply remov-
ing the experience (by pharmaceutical or other technological measures) of-
ten involves losing the opportunity for the existential goods that come with
changing oneself to re-establish harmonies with other people or God, or the
opportunity for the acknowledgement of the reality of one’s limitations.
This volume will appear in the twentieth year after Pope St. John
Paul II’s stirring call to all Christians to work in the ways suited to their vari-
9
ous vocations in order to build a new culture of life. I believe that with God’s
grace, these essays will contribute to that end.
Patrick Lee,
Special Guest Editor
The Call to Holiness
and Personal Vocation
Germain Grisez
1) Because of God’s traits, holiness connotes moral excellence.
We do not call people holy unless they are outstanding morally. Originally,
however, the word holy signified the mysterious and awesome reality of the
divine. We use the word in that sense in the Gloria: “You alone are the Holy
One.” But even those who believed in gods that were anything but morally
excellent thought of them as holy. Taking holy to mean the mysteriousness
and awesomeness of the divine, people of every religion also used the word
to refer to things related to the divinity they worshipped. We too speak of
holy pictures and holy water, things incapable of the moral qualities and great
charity of a Thomas More or an Angela Merici.
How, then, did holiness come to connote moral excellence? In his
relationship with Israel, God manifested fidelity and loving kindness, right-
eousness and compassion (see Exod. 34:6–7). And he directed Moses to
teach the Israelites to imitate his holiness: “Say to all the congregation of the
people of Israel, You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev.
19:2). Because Yahweh not only is mighty and terrible but loving and faithful,
his chosen people must walk in his ways, love him, and keep his command-
ments—which he gives them for their own good. Insofar as God’s people sin,
they will not be holy but unlike him and alien to him.
The New Testament presupposes the Old Testament’s teaching that
God communicates holiness to human beings. The new covenant’s commu-
nication of holiness, however, is far more profound, for Jesus is the one
“called holy, the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). By perfect obedience to the Fa-
ther, he frees humankind from sin and radically transforms those who believe
in him, so that he can present them to the Father: “holy and blameless and
irreproachable” (Col. 1:22). Thus, moral excellence is not only required of
Christians (see, Rom. 6:15–23, 8:1–17, 12:1–2; Gal. 5:13–6:10) but realized in
them as the fruit of charity—of the love of God poured forth in their hearts
by the Holy Spirit who has been given them (see John 13:34, 14:15, 14:21–24,
15:9–14; Rom. 5:5, 13:8–10; 1 Cor. 13; Gal. 5:13–16).
© Germain Grisez, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2015)

Germain Grisez 11
2) All the baptized are called and
empowered to pursue perfect holiness.
Vatican II begins its chapter, “The universal vocation to holiness in the

Church” (LG 39–42), by explaining the Church’s unfailing holiness. Jesus,
the Son of God, “loved the Church as his spouse and gave himself up for
her that he might sanctify her (see Eph. 5:25–26)” (Lumen Gentium 39).1 The
Council immediately draws the conclusion that every member of the Church
is called to holiness, and supports that inference by quoting Paul, “For this is
the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thess. 4:3), and citing Paul’s teaching
that God chose the Church’s members in Christ so that they “should be holy
and blameless before him” (Eph. 1:4).
The Council emphatically teaches that Jesus, the teacher and model
of perfection, preached “holiness of life to each and every one of his disci-
ples of every condition whatsoever: ‘You, therefore, must be perfect, as your
heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matt. 5:48)” (LG 40).
But is that really possible? The Council points out that Jesus empow-
ered his disciples to love all-inclusively: to all of them he sent the Holy Spirit
to inspire them to love God perfectly and to love one another as Jesus loved
them (see LG 40). Due to God’s graces, Christians have been reborn in bap-
tism as God’s children and called to follow Jesus: “Hence they must by God’s
grace cling to and complete in their lives the holiness they have received”
(LG 40). The Council concludes that all the Christian faithful, regardless of
their role in the Church, are called to use the opportunities Jesus gives them
so that, “following in his footsteps and becoming conformed to his image,
they may wholeheartedly devote themselves to the glory of God and the
service of neighbor, doing the Father’s will in all things” (LG 40).
Since God is love (see 1 John 4:8) and his will is perfectly loving,
doing the Father’s will in all things is the key to holiness, the perfection of
charity. It depends on more than religious activities, such as praying, receiving
the sacraments, engaging in Church ministries, and doing occasional works
of mercy. Christians become holy only by using their gifts to do God’s will
not only in their specifically religious activities but in every area and every
moment of their lives. As Jesus says: “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord,
Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my
Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). The Council sums up:
All Christ’s faithful, therefore, will grow in holiness day by day in
and through all the conditions, duties, or circumstances of their
life if they accept all these with faith from the heavenly Father’s
hand and cooperate with the divine will, manifesting to everyone
1
Henceforth Lumen Gentium will be cited as LG.
12 The Call to Holiness
by their temporal service itself the charity with which God loved
the world. (LG 41)
If we accepted with faith all the sufferings God allows to befall us and used
all his gifts in loving service to him and to our neighbors, we would cooperate
fully with his plan and will, and so we would grow in holiness day by day.
3) Pursuing holiness organizes one’s entire life as an answer to

the Father’s calling.
Commenting on Vatican II’s teaching on the perfection of charity, John Paul

II links holiness to the vocation of each individual: “As the Council itself ex-
plained, this ideal of perfection must not be misunderstood as if it involved
some kind of extraordinary existence, possible only for a few ‘uncommon
heroes’ of holiness. The ways of holiness are many, according to the voca-
tion of each individual.”2 Though many, all the ways of holiness are alike in
organizing one’s entire life in response to the Father’s calling—in response
to one’s unique, personal vocation. But the lives of many Catholics are not
organized in that way.
Children begin making choices before they can grasp the ideas of
accepting everything with faith from the Father’s hand and using all their gifts
in service. Good children obey their parents and teachers but otherwise, if
left to themselves, do as they please. So, since most children are never taught
about personal vocation and holiness, they develop many interests unrelated
to their faith and its practice. Hence, in seeking their fulfillment, they seek
many things without reference to the kingdom of God.
What happens to those children as they grow up?
Some are so poor that they lack many of the necessities of life. If
they see no prospect of bettering their condition, they are motivated not to
look ahead, and so are unlikely to consider their lives as a whole. They try to
survive from day to day and are strongly tempted to seize every chance of
momentary enjoyment.
Others are better off, and in most cases their parents and teachers
encourage them to look ahead, consider their possibilities, get clear about
what they want out of life, and develop a personal agenda. The agenda re-
quires them to work toward goals far in the future. When that becomes bur-
densome, young people are tempted to take breaks, as do many students
who work hard on weekdays but get drunk and “party” on weekends. When
undertakings are unsuccessful or results disappointing, a career or even a
2
Novo millennio ineunte, 31, AAS 93 (2001) 288, L’Osservatore Romano (Eng.),
Jan. 10, 2001, VI–VII.
Germain Grisez 13
marriage may be abandoned as unsatisfying or “broken down” to make way
for a fresh start.
Both poor and better off young people may continue, more or less,
to practice their faith and to try to avoid mortal sins, at least the sins they feel
are really bad. The more kindhearted may include in their agenda promoting
social justice, and find it gratifying to spend some time in service projects.
But even if they think they might have a “vocation” to the priesthood or
religious life, they are likely to think of that as a possible agenda item. That
way of thinking about vocation is entirely different from the way the Bible
teaches us to think about it.
Abraham learned of his vocation when God appeared to him and
said: “‘I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. And I will
make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.’
Then Abram fell on his face” (Gen. 17:1–3). Moses, despite his seemingly
reasonable objections, was drafted to lead the Israelites out of Egypt (see
Exod. 3:1–4:17). The young Samuel did not realize that the Lord was calling
him, but the call was repeated until he replied: “Speak, for thy servant hears”
(1 Sam. 3:10). Isaiah volunteered for his prophetic service (see Isa. 6:8), but
he seems to have realized that he had been formed for it from the womb
(see Isa. 49:1–6). Jeremiah also was formed and consecrated for his role,
but found himself drafted for it despite his misgivings (see Jer. 1:4–10); only
after committing himself did he learn that his prophetic task required him to
remain celibate (see Jer. 16:1–4).
John the Baptist was destined before his conception for his import-
ant but subordinate role, which he accepted and heroically fulfilled (see Matt.
14:1–12; Mark 6:14–19; Luke 1:5–25, 3:1–20, 9:7–9; John 1:15, 19–35; 3:25–
30). Angels told Mary and Joseph that they would be Jesus’ parents, and they
submitted to the Lord’s plan for them (see Matt. 1:18–25, Luke 1:26–38).
Jesus called the men who would become the Twelve to drop what they were
doing, leave everything behind, and follow him (see Matt. 4:18–22, 9:9–13;
Mark 1:16–20, 2:14; Luke 5:1–11, 27). The youthful Paul was sure he was
doing God’s work until Jesus blinded him into seeing his error and becom-
ing Jesus’s chosen instrument for opening the Gentiles’s eyes (see Acts 9:15,
26:9–18).
In all these cases, God’s agenda was the source of vocations. The
Lord had his plan, and he assigned those he chose their unique roles in car-
rying it out. He prepared them in advance and expected them to cooperate.
Cooperating never allowed them to pursue agendas of their own. God took
over their entire lives.
4) Both Jesus and Paul taught clearly about personal vocation.
With revelation’s completion in Jesus, how God’s People received their vo-
cations had to change. Before that, God’s will, which was revealed to all in
the law, sufficiently guided most people, while those prepared and called for
some special role in God’s redemptive work received their vocations as a
fresh divine revelation, as a new truth of faith. After the revelatory calling
of Paul, believers would receive their vocations in a new way. Thus, the New
Testament includes teachings, unprecedented in the Old Testament, about
the personal vocations of Jesus’ disciples.
Jesus lays the foundation. Drawing on previous revelation, he com-
missions all his disciples to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world
(see Matt. 5:13–16). Jesus teaches them to trust the Father for necessities, and
to focus on seeking his kingdom and righteousness (see Matt. 6:24–34). By
the simile of the vine and the branches, he teaches them that disciples must
abide in him and bear fruit, lest they be pruned off and discarded (see John
15:1–11). Jesus teaches that disciples must offer their personal witness and
be ready to sacrifice life itself in doing so: “If any man would come after me,
let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23;
cf. Matt. 16:24, Mark 8:34). When a rich man asks what he must do to have
eternal life, Jesus makes it clear that, while keeping the commandments is
necessary, it is imperfect. One also must follow Jesus and give up everything
that would prevent doing so.
With the description of the last judgment Jesus teaches that loving
service that meets others’ genuine needs serves Jesus himself, while neglect-
ing the needy neglects him (see Matt. 25:31–46). With the parable of the
good Samaritan, Jesus teaches that the commandment to love one’s neighbor
as oneself requires more than the fulfillment of specific duties to particu-
lar people—that everyone in need is to be treated as a neighbor (see Luke
10:25–37). By the parable of the talents Jesus teaches that different servants
of God receive different resources with which to promote his kingdom and
that those, even if otherwise blameless, who fail to do what they can with
what they are given will lose their opportunity to share in the kingdom (see
Matt. 25:14–30, Luke 19:11–27).
The implication of these teachings is that disciples must do the Fa-
ther’s will, as Jesus himself did, by obeying not only the commandments
that specify obligations everyone must fulfill but the commandment to love,
which requires them to bear witness by their entire lives to the truth of God’s
revelation and to use their particular God-given abilities and resources to
meet others’ genuine needs. Only such a life serves Jesus himself, effectively
promotes God’s kingdom, and prepares one to share in it forever.
Germain Grisez 15
Paul instructs Christians to offer their bodies—their very selves—as
a living sacrifice (see Rom. 12:1). Regarding the surrounding non-Christian
world as the decadent residue of the age that is passing away, he encour-
ages forward-looking thinking: “Do not be conformed to this world but be
transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove [dokimazein;
discern] what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect”
(Rom. 12:2). All Christians are to recognize and accept their limited roles
and each is to use his or her special gifts in building up the one body. Paul
also makes it clear that each Christian ought to live his or her entire life in
response to God’s call: “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in
the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him”
(Col. 3:17).
How such a eucharistic life responds to God’s calling of each person
is most clearly articulated in the letter to the Ephesians. That letter begins
by summarizing the calling of Christians to holiness, their predestination to
adoption, their redemption from sin by Jesus’s blood, their insight into God’s
plan to gather up all creation in Christ, and their assignment to live for the
praise of God’s glory (see 1:3–14). Having been dead in their sins, Christians
were nevertheless loved by God, who, being rich in mercy, raised them to
life with the Lord Jesus, so as to manifest his infinite goodness (see 2:1–7).
Salvation, then, is entirely the fruit of God’s grace, not of human works: “For
by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing,
it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast. For
we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God
prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (2:9–10). Christians have
been recreated in Jesus for the sake of their good works, which God pre-
pared for them and gives them to live out.
Paul goes on to summarize his own vocation, the life of good works
the Lord had given to him (see 3:1–12), and then, after praying for those to
whom he is writing (3:14–19), he begs them “to live a life worthy of the call-
ing to which you have been called” (4:1), a personal calling to each of them to
live his or her unique life of good works, because “grace was given to each of
us according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (4:7). Diverse graces were given
to individuals to make their different contributions to building up Christ’s
body (4:8–12) until all attain together to holiness—to “mature manhood, to
the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (4:13).
In sum, everyone is called to be a saint, and not some generic sort
of saint but a unique saint. Just as Mary was called to be the saint she became
by living her life, each of the saints we know and love came to be the saint
he or she is by living his or her particular life. Holiness is realized only by
responding to one’s personal vocation.
God calls and sets apart each of us for a special relationship with
himself and special role in his plan. He takes the initiative; vocation is first
and always his idea and his gift. That one-of-a-kind gift includes all the abil-
ities and resources one has, one’s awareness of God’s call, and one’s ability
to respond to it. One can refuse. But if one accepts one’s unique vocation,
the good deeds that will carry it out become one’s personal, rational worship,
holy and acceptable. For those who accept the gift, the whole, living relation-
ship is a great blessing, a singular covenant of love and of working together
for the kingdom.
5) Several factors explain most Catholics’ ignorance

of personal vocation.
Given the importance of personal vocation, one wonders why the Church
has not taught explicitly about it until recently and why that recent teaching
has hardly begun to take hold. Several factors help explain why.
One factor was that Martin Luther, reflecting on the New Testament,
developed a very complete account of personal vocation. Unfortunately, Lu-
ther dealt with it in the context of his polemic against Catholic teaching and
practice regarding the monastic life and ordained priesthood, not least with
respect to celibacy and virginity for the kingdom’s sake. Moreover, in holding
that every Christian has a vocation, a role to play in the earthly kingdom,
Luther denied that any sort of vocation is superior in God’s eyes.3 Hence,
attitudes characteristic of the Counter-Reformation tended to prevent, until
Vatican II, the development of Catholic theology and doctrine on personal
vocation.
But probably an even more important factor was legalism—the no-
tion that God’s plan is like human law and that his will is like a human law-
maker’s will. Human lawmakers are not concerned about many things that
are important to us and they make heavy demands for purposes and projects
we care little about or even oppose. So, we reasonably ignore what human
lawmakers want unless they threaten us with penalties, and as citizens we are
jealous of our rights and the freedom to pursue our own agendas.
Consequently, in times past, many pastors and theologians, imbued
with legalism, focused on avoiding mortal sin and regarded the pursuit of
holiness as an optional extra. Little wonder, then, that most who hold fast
to classical theologies have paid little attention to recent Church teachings
regarding the universal call to holiness and personal vocation. At the same
3
See Karlfried Froehlich, “Luther on Vocation,” Lutheran Quarterly 13
(1999): 195–207.
Germain Grisez 17
time, those most enthusiastic about updating other things in the Church also
remain legalists. They have spent a great deal of time and energy trying to
lighten the burden of unpopular Catholic moral teachings regarding sex and
other matters.
Moreover, since Vatican II, even those theologians and pastors who
have thought about what the faithful ought to be doing have often over-
looked the Council’s teaching about holiness and personal vocation, and fo-
cused instead on promoting ecclesial ministries (distributing Communion,
participating in RCIA, and so on) and/or on social activism (famine relief
in Africa, helping victims of AIDS, stopping global warming, and so on).
Worthwhile as ecclesial ministries and social activism can be, they are only
a small part of most Christians’ vocations and have no place at all in some
vocations.
Legalism’s remarkable persistence is partly explained by the sinful
selves that we have not entirely put off. For those selves, God’s plan and will
remain alien, while clarifying our values and going after what appeals to us
seem essential to adult identity.
Consequently, growth toward holiness must begin with purgation, a
more thorough putting off of the old person. Purgation alone leads to illu-
mination: transformation by the renewal of a mind that has learned from Je-
sus and unmasked the rationalizations that had played the role of conscience.
And illumination alone leads to union: a heart synchronized with Jesus’s heart
so that even suffering is welcomed as the Father’s gift and nothing is more
enjoyable than pleasing him. When saints reached that union of wills with
God, they had found and accepted their vocations.
St. Thomas Aquinas was no legalist, but his theology of the ultimate
end of human life paradoxically lent aid and comfort to legalism.
Thomas argues that nobody can make any free choice without in-
tending some ultimate end, holds that people expect complete fulfillment
from whatever they take as an ultimate end, and concludes that at any given
time a person’s will cannot be directed to more than one ultimate end.4 He
also holds that every child, in his or her very first free choice, either takes
God as the ultimate end or commits a mortal sin.5 So, if children are not
living in mortal sin, they cannot act for anything but God as an ultimate end
except by committing a mortal sin.6 It follows that remaining in the state of
grace is of itself sufficient to integrate all one’s actions toward God.
The logic is sound. If it were true that at a given time one must
have the same ultimate end in everything one does, and if one took God as
4
See St. Thomas, ST I-II, q. 1, a. 5 (read in the context of the question
as a whole).
5
See St. Thomas, ST I, q. 89, a. 6.
6
See St. Thomas, ST I-II, q. 72, a. 3.
that end, then remaining in the state of grace would organize one’s whole
life around God. Unfortunately, Christians in the state of grace can and do
act for many ultimate ends without reference to God.7 Catholic children and
young people regularly construct agendas without reference to their faith,
with the result that many Catholics’ faith and even the devout and regular
practice of it remain isolated in a compartment and make little or no differ-
ence to the rest of their lives. Faith and its practice can make the difference
they should only if one finds and follows one’s personal vocation. Thus, the
faithful must be taught to do that. Although necessary, it is insufficient to
teach them to avoid mortal sin.
Another factor that helps explain why the Church’s current teaching
on the universal call to holiness and personal vocation has not taken hold is
the conviction of many a spiritual director that the faithful who earnestly
desire to grow in holiness can do so only by setting out on the purgative and
illuminative way toward union with God by mystical espousals—the way best
mapped by St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.
Of course, every Christian, in being called to holiness, is called to
become, in a true sense, a mystic. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:
Spiritual progress tends toward ever more intimate union with
Christ. This union is called “mystical” because it participates in
the mystery of Christ through the sacraments—“the holy myster-
ies”—and, in him, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. God calls
us all to this intimate union with him, even if the special graces or
extraordinary signs of this mystical life are granted only to some
for the sake of manifesting the gratuitous gift given to all.8
Moreover, participation in the liturgy is not enough; personal prayer also is
essential.
However, while every Christian must pray, St. Teresa makes it clear
that not everyone is called to be a contemplative of the sort that she herself
is. Addressing Carmelite nuns, she says: “Not because all in this house prac-
tice prayer must all be contemplatives; that’s impossible.”9 She also explains
that even spiritual marriage, the summit of mystical prayer, is for the sake of
loving service: “This is the reason for prayer, my daughters, the purpose of
7
See Peter F. Ryan, SJ, “Must the Acting Person Have a Single Ultimate
End?” Gregorianum 82 (2001): 325–56.
8
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed., para. 2014.
9
St. Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, XVII, 2, in The Collected Works
of St. Teresa of Avila, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez,
OCD (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1980), 2:99.
Germain Grisez 19
this spiritual marriage: the birth always of good works, good works.”10 Like
Vatican II, Teresa teaches that perfection is in the conformity of one’s will to
God’s will:
The highest perfection obviously does not consist in interior de-
lights or in great raptures or in visions or in the spirit of prophecy
but in having our will so much in conformity with God’s will that
there is nothing we know he wills that we do not want with all our
desire, and in accepting the bitter as happily as we do the delight-
ful when we know that His Majesty desires it.11
While much of the teaching of St. John of the Cross seems to sup-
port the idea that the path he maps is the only way to holiness, the heart of
his teaching agrees with St. Teresa’s and Vatican II’s: holiness grows by doing
the Father’s will in all things and accepting everything from his hand with
faith. John holds that the union with God that constitutes perfect holiness
“exists when God’s will and the soul’s are in conformity, so that nothing in
the one is repugnant to the other. When the soul completely rids itself of
what is repugnant and unconformed to the divine will, it rests transformed in
God through love.”12
The translators of John’s collected works considered trustworthy,
and so included among them, a remarkable reported statement of the saint:
Once being asked how one becomes enraptured, the Venerable
Father Fray John of the Cross, replied: by denying one’s own will
and doing the will of God; for ecstasy is nothing else than going
out of self and being caught up in God; and this is what he who
obeys does; he leaves himself and his desire, and thus unbur-
dened plunges himself in God.13
John here implies that the summit of contemplation is nothing but complete
conformity to God’s will. Everyone is called to that, and anyone can reach
it—by undertaking the purgative and illuminative way that ends in discerning
and faithfully fulfilling his or her personal vocation.
Still another factor—and a very important one—that helps explain
why the Church’s teaching on the universal call to holiness and personal vo-
cation has not taken hold is a theological error that has been tightly tied to a
truth of faith.
10
St. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, VII, 4, 6 (in the edition cited,
2:446).
St. Teresa of Avila, The Foundations, 5, 10 (in the cited edition, 3:120).
11
Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD, trans., The Col-
12
lected Works of St. John of the Cross (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1979),
116 (The Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, 5, 3).
13
Ibid., 654 (considered trustworthy) and 680 (the maxim).
Since human life, marriage, and parenthood belong to God’s good
creation, human death, incapacity for sexual intercourse, and sterility are pri-
vations of those goods, and so are evils. Still, just as laying down one’s life for
the kingdom’s sake, as Jesus did and Christian martyrs do, is not only good
but even better than living a devout life to its natural end, so—and this is the
truth of faith—forgoing marriage and parenthood for the kingdom’s sake, as
Jesus did and Christians who rightly embrace celibate chastity do, is not only
good but even better than marrying sacramentally and procreating for Christ
and the kingdom.
Jesus suggests the superiority of celibate chastity when he counsels
anyone who can receive his word about making oneself a eunuch for the
kingdom’s sake to do so (see Matt. 19:10–15). Paul explicitly affirms the pref-
erability of celibate chastity to marriage when he says: “I wish that all were
as I myself am” (1 Cor. 7:7a). For his preference, Paul argues that the unmar-
ried will be free to focus on the Lord’s affairs and on pleasing him while the
married will be divided, since they will have pressing responsibilities to their
spouses, which will distract them from the Lord’s affairs by involving them in
worldly affairs (see 1 Cor. 7:32–36). Still, Paul recognizes that not all have the
charism for celibate chastity and that some are called to marriage: “But each
has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another” (1
Cor. 7:7b; cf. 7.9).
Jesus’s and Paul’s teachings make it clear that when those with the
charism for celibate chastity make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom’s
sake, their accepting the privation of marriage and parenthood, like the mar-
tyrs’ accepting death, bears witness to the supreme worth of God’s kingdom.
They are free to collaborate closely with Jesus in his ongoing salvific work,
to apply themselves to pleasing him, and to cultivate their relationship with
this best of all friends. Insofar as the behavior that fulfills their commitment
differs markedly not only from that of nonbelievers but even from that of
devout married Christians, the lives of holy, celibately chaste Christians clear-
ly manifest God’s grace. Living miracles, such holy lives provide for nonbe-
lievers powerful evidence of the Gospel’s truth and for fellow Christians
attractive models of vocational fidelity.
The preceding truth, which undoubtedly pertains to Catholic faith,
unfortunately became host to a parasitical error, namely, that celibate chastity
is objectively holier than marriage, because marriage, though morally accept-
able in itself, impedes growth in charity, while celibate chastity facilitates it.
The truth is that growth in charity depends, not on what God calls one to
do, but on the wholeheartedness and generosity with which one does it. That
wholeheartedness and generosity is the fruit of grace, and it is obvious that
the Holy Spirit does not always give more wholeheartedness and generosity
to those called to celibate chastity than to those called to marriage.
Germain Grisez 21
Moreover, not only celibate chastity but every element of every vo-
cation, including marriage, facilitates growth in charity for those called to it,
because undertaking and faithfully carrying out any element of one’s voca-
tion is doing God’s will, and doing God’s will always contributes to growth in
charity and never impedes it. Thus, the error that marriage impedes growth in
holiness and that celibate chastity is therefore objectively holier than marriage
implicitly contradicts the truth that everyone is called to grow in holiness by
finding, accepting, and faithfully fulfilling his or her personal vocation.14
Still, several Church Fathers energetically though fallaciously argued
that celibate chastity is objectively holier than marriage, and that false propo-
sition became part of our theological tradition. Handed on by St. Thomas as
though it pertained to sacred doctrine, the proposition was strongly asserted
by Pius XII, and it taints even the teaching of Vatican II and John Paul II on
priestly celibacy and consecrated life.15
14
The error and its effect on the theology of vocation will not die easily.
More than a decade after Vatican II, Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian State
of Life, trans. Mary Frances McCarthy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 421
(published in German in 1977) wrote: “No sound and balanced Christian will
ever say of himself that he chose marriage by virtue of a divine election, an
election comparable to the election and vocation experienced or even only per-
ceived by those called to the priesthood or to the personal following of Christ
in religious life. One who chooses marriage simply has not experienced that
special election in his soul; he does so, therefore, with the best conscience in the
world and without imputing to himself any imperfection, but he does not, for
that reason, claim that he is following a way specially chosen for him by God.
He is but obeying God’s general will for his creatures.”
15
See St. Jerome, Against Jovinian, lib. 1; St. Augustine, On Holy Virginity,
esp. 14–22; St. Thomas, ST II-II, q. 152, a. 4; Pius XII, Sacra virginitas, AAS
46 (1954), 168–78, The Papal Encyclicals (1939–1958), ed. Claudia Carlen, IHM,
248:20–43. The division St. Paul is concerned with in 1 Cor. 7:32–36 is inevitable
for married Christians. Therefore, the influence of the traditional theological
error is clearly manifested by the statement that celibate chastity enables some
“more easily to devote themselves to God alone with an undivided heart (see 1
Cor. 7:32–34)” (Vatican II, LG 42 [italics mine]; cf. PC 12, OT 10, PO 16). The
adverbial more easily suggests that even the upright love of a spouse impedes lov-
ing God wholeheartedly, and that the two loves are alternatives just as becoming
involved in worldly affairs in fulfilling marital responsibilities is an alterative to
focusing exclusively on the Lord’s affairs. But, John Paul II teaches: “If God is
loved above all things, then also man loves and is loved with the fullness of love
accessible to him” (Homily at Mass for the Family [12 Oct. 1980], 6, Insegnamen-
ti, 3.2 [1980] 847, L’Osservatore Roma (Eng.), 20 Oct. 1980, 4). Nevertheless, the
statement I quoted above from Vatican II, LG 42 is quoted by John Paul II in
Pastores dabo vobis, 29, AAS 84 (1992) 703, L’Osservatore Romano (Eng.), 8 Apr.
1992, VII. Moreover, he claims that “the Church always has taught the pre-em-
The handing on of this error by so many excellent Church teachers
surely is due mainly to confusion between the false proposition and the truth
of faith on which it is parasitical. But vocations that include celibate chastity
usually involve the focus on the Lord’s affairs of which Paul speaks. Thus
they provide more separation from the profane than is possible with voca-
tions that include marriage, which involves spouses in worldly affairs. Thus,
the handing on of the error is partly due to confusion between holiness in
the primitive sense (separation from the profane) and holiness in the relevant
sense (the perfection of charity and its fruit of moral excellence).
Also contributing to the error’s transmission has been the idea, de-
rived from Greek philosophy, that the human soul progresses toward the
intelligible world of the divine, which is purely spiritual, by withdrawing as
much as possible from the material things of the sensible world. Although
the Incarnation of the Word, the sacrament of the Eucharist, and the resur-
rection of the body are at odds with that Greek idea, it nevertheless provided
the premise for a fallacious argument of St. Thomas for the true proposition
that the new law fittingly proposes counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedi-
ence.16
inence of perfect chastity for the sake of the Kingdom”—Vita consecrata, 32,
fn. 63, AAS 88 (1996) 406, L’Osservatore Romano (Eng.), XXII—and to support
that claim he cites, from within the part of Sacra virginitas I cited above a briefer
passage (AAS 174–75, Carlen, 32–36) in which Pope Pius claims that “the ex-
cellence of virginity and of celibacy and their superiority over the married state
was…revealed by our Divine Redeemer and by the Apostle of the Gentiles” and
that it was “solemnly defined as a dogma of divine faith by the holy Council
of Trent.” Both Pius XII’s fn. 57 and John Paul II’s fn. 63 refer to the tenth of
Trent’s canons on the sacrament of matrimony (DS 1810/980): “Si quis dixerit,
statum coniugalem anteponendum esse statui virginitatis vel caelibatus, et non
esse melius ac beatius, manere in virginitate aut caelibatu, quam iungi matrimo-
nio, anathema sit.” Trent thus condemns the conjunction of two propositions:
(1) The married state should be preferred to (set before) the state of virginity or
celibacy, and (2) it is not better and more blessed to remain in virginity or celibacy
than to get married. One plainly does not affirm either of those condemned
propositions by holding, as I do: (1) the state of virginity or celibacy is prefera-
ble to the married state in the way that Jesus suggested and Paul explained, but
neither state is objectively holier than the other; and (2) it is better and more
blessed for every Christian “to live the life that the Lord has assigned to him” (1
Cor. 7:17). So, it is better and more blessed for those who have the charism for
virginity or celibacy and have entered that state to remain in it than to get married
(see 1 Cor. 7:38). But it is better and more blessed for those who lack the charism
for celibate chastity and are called to marry to do so (see 1 Cor. 7:2, 9).
16
See St. Thomas, ST I-II, q. 108, a. 4.
Germain Grisez 23
Consequently, while vocations including celibate chastity truly are
preferable to and better than those involving marriage in the ways that Jesus
suggested and Paul explained, every Christian is called to holiness, and no
one is impeded from attaining it by undertaking what God asks him or her to
do.
—Mount Saint Mary’s University

Bioethics: Ethico-Centric
Interdisciplinarity
E. Christian Brugger
When scholars over the past forty years have proposed definitions of ‘bio-
ethics,’ they have usually addressed the question in terms of methodology:1
do we start with an analytical framework of abstract principles (Beauchamp
and Childress),2 or the particularities of individual cases (John Arras, Jonsen
and Toulmin);3 do we follow a neo-Kantian method (Alan Donagan),4 a more
explicitly Christian approach,5 a narrative-based approach,6 a utilitarian,7 or
1
Edmund D. Pellegrino, “Bioethics as an Interdisciplinary Enterprise: Where
Does Ethics Fit in the Mosaic of Disciplines?” in Philosophy of Medicine and Bioethics,
eds. R.A. Carson and C.R. Burns (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997),
1–23.
2
Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 7th
ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 13; Tom L. Beauchamp, “Principals
and Other Emerging Paradigms in Bioethics,” Indiana Law Journal 69, no. 4 (1994):
955–72.
3
John D. Arras, “Principles and Particularity: The Role of Cases in Bioeth-
ics,” Indiana Law Journal 69, no. 4 (1994): 983–1014; Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toul-
min, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1988).
4
Alan Donagan, “Informed consent in therapy and experimentation,” Journal
of Medicine and Philosophy 2, no. 4 (1977): 307–29; see also Michio Miyasaka, “Re-
sourcifying human bodies—Kant and bioethics,” Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy
1, no. 1 (2005): 19–27.
5
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Theory and Bioethics,” by John Ar-
ras, ed. Edward N. Zalta, summer 2010 ed., http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/
sum2010/entries/theory-bioethics; H. Tristam Engelhardt Jr., The Foundations of Bio-
ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986/1996); Alan Donagan, “Informed
Consent in Therapy and Experimentation,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 2 (1977):
307–29.
6
Laurie L Zoloth, et al., “Like/as: metaphor and meaning in bioethics narra-
tive,” American Journal of Bioethics 8, no. 6 (2008): W3–5; cf. Richard B. Miller, “Nar-
rative and Casuistry: A Response to John Arras,” Indiana Law Journal 69, no. 4 (1994):
1015–19.
7
Peter Singer, Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics
(New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1994); Julian Savulescu and Nick Bostrom, eds.,
Human Enhancement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
© E. Christian Brugger, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2015)
E. Christian Brugger 25
“progressivist” approach?8 But prior to the question of methodology is the
question of identity. What is bioethics? I do not mean to say that this can be
answered entirely free of a consideration of methodology, but the question
of how a discipline should be carried out—the methodological question—de-
pends on the defining aim or aims of the discipline (i.e., what it is). So insofar
as bioethics is a particular field of inquiry, we might ask what it inquires into:
what is someone doing when one does bioethics?
More than philosophers claim to do bioethics. There are physicians
(e.g., Edmund Pelligrino, Leon Kass and William Hurlbut), lawyers (e.g.,
Alta Charo), sociologists (e.g, Raymond De Vries), political scientists (e.g.,
Francis Fukuyama), psychologists (e.g., Rebecca Levy), historians (e.g., Stan-
ley Woodward) and theologians (e.g., Germain Grisez, Paul Ramsey, Daniel
Callahan, and Stanley Hauerwas). Bioethicists now act as commercial con-
sultants to corporations, do policy analysis, offer expert testimony in courts,
and perform political advocacy; they are members of institutional review
boards, ethics committees and government task forces; the field of “bioeth-
ics” boasts of its own scholarly journals, professional societies and academic
institutes, departments and majors.9 What unites all this work? What qualifies
one to do bioethics?
So I ask again: what is bioethics? This is the question explored in
this essay. I argue that bioethics is a specialization of moral philosophy that
uniquely depends upon knowledge from outside the field of philosophy. This
cross-disciplinary dependence is key to understanding its nature. In this essay
I shall use the term ‘interdisciplinary.’10
To describe a field as interdisciplinary is to claim that its corpus of
organized knowledge is secured via the knowledge found in more than one
discipline. Nissani uses a “fruit metaphor” to illustrate the idea: a disciplinary
science can be likened to serving up individual pieces of fruit; multidisciplinar-
ity makes a fruit salad; and an interdisciplinary subject makes a smoothie.11 The
metaphor seems to me inadequate. Bioethics does not merely blend together
distinctive components of multiple disciplines. It organizes and prioritizes
8
See Jonathan Moreno and Sam Berger, eds., Progress in bioethics, science, policy
and politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010).
9
Some argue that the field should assert its independence and create its own
comprehensive code of ethics; see R. Baker, “A draft model aggregate code of ethics
for bioethics,” The American Journal of Bioethics 5 (2005): 33–41.
10
Wendy Austin, Caroline Park, and Erika Goble, “From Interdisciplinary to
Transdisciplinary Research: A Case Study,” Qualitative Health Research 18, no. 4 (April
2008): 557.
11
M. Nissani, “Fruits, salads, and smoothies: A working definition of inter-
disciplinarity,” Journal of Educational Thought 29, no. 2 (1995): 121–28; cf. Austin, Park,
and Goble, “From Interdisciplinary to Transdisciplinary Research,” 557.
26 Ethico-Centric Interdisciplinarity
domains of knowledge in the service of a disciplinary end, which is, the se-
curing of normative knowledge. Bioethics is a branch of applied ethics.
Philosophical ethics comprises more than applied ethics. It includes
metaethics and normative ethics as well. The ethical reasoning involved in a
branch of applied ethics such as bioethics relies upon the soundness of the
ethical and metaethical theory one adopts. My references to “ethical reason-
ing” in this essay principally refer to the work of applied ethics. But I do not
mean to draw any strict boundaries. Sound work in applied ethics requires the
specification and consistent application of moral principles (normative eth-
ics), and the derivation of moral principles depends upon sound metaethical
conceptions, especially on the nature and working of free choice and practi-
cal reason. Good work in bioethics involves more than situation casuistry.
Thomas Silber argued thirty years ago that the “mother structure”
of bioethics is ethical reasoning, and that such a structure includes as a nec-
essary infrastructure cross-disciplinary premises and discourse.12 The Encyclo-
pedia of Bioethics (1995, rev. ed.) says something similar: “all the contributing
disciplines are concerned with an evaluative endeavor.”13 Without the orga-
nizing role of philosophical ethics, the contribution of allied fields would
amount to little more than a “dialogue between sciences.”14 The relationship
is analogous to a living body, where specified functions are made intelligible
by the end of the health of the organism; but the functions of a healthy or-
ganism are not only necessary for that end, they are, in a sense, constitutive
of it. Similarly, the end of ethics, which is the ordering of actions, commit-
ments, and communities towards personal and communal fulfillment, makes
intelligible the necessary contributions of the allied fields. Or again, most
architects cannot wire an electrical panel, or install a photovoltaic system,
or test for, and treat, radon contamination in a well. To build a house many
specializations are necessary; and their relative autonomy must be respected.
Still, the ultimate intelligibility of their contributions stems from the ordering
principle of house building that the architect’s knowledge directs.
For at least two reasons, this does not mean that the allied disciplines
are merely instrumental to the task of ethical reasoning. First, the questions
12
Thomas J. Silber, “Bioethics: An Interdisciplinary Exercise,” Journal of Reli-
gion and Health 21, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 21.
13
It continues: “each discipline brings a different competence and methodol-
ogy to such questions as: What should be done? Who should decide? What virtues
and values should guide society in these areas?” Warren Thomas Reich, introduction
to Encyclopedia of Bioethics, Revised Edition, ed. W.T. Reich (New York: Simon & Schus-
ter Macmillan, 1995), 1:xxx.
14
Corina Delkeskamp, “Interdisciplinarity: a critical appraisal,” in Knowledge,
Value and Belief, ed. H. Tristam Engelhardt Jr. and Daniel Callahan (New York: The
Hastings Center, 1977), 324.
bioethics asks are not only practical, but also speculative and descriptive, as
illustrated, for example, in the question: “Is whole brain death a reliable indi-
cator for human death?”15 Second, the answers to bioethical questions extend
beyond the scope of philosophical ethics as when the field turns to legislative
and regulatory solutions. But if by ‘instrumental’ we mean “pertaining to that
which is not for its own sake,” then the allied disciplines are instrumental.
The specific ends of biology, psychology, medicine, law, history, and sociolo-
gy, are not the ends of the discipline we call bioethics. To the extent they are
a necessary part of bioethics, they are necessary for formulating satisfactory
replies to prior questions related to what is good and right, to what humans
should do and what kind of people they should be.
Interdisciplinarity: Differentiated by the Questions it Asks
If the overarching questions pertain to applied ethics, progress towards their

resolution depends on mediating questions from allied fields. An attempt to
itemize the allied fields would be laborious, and perhaps not even possible.
But since the interdisciplinarity of bioethics is represented by the questions
it asks,16 and questions are generated in relation to practical possibilities,
an attempt to operationalize the interdisciplinary mode of rational inquiry
through use of an example might be instructive.
Consider the current of thought known as “transhumanism” that
defends and advocates for the use of science and technology to enhance the
basic capacities of human nature.17 Clinical research traditionally has striv-
en to overcome the effects of disease and degenerative conditions—aims
that are broadly therapeutic in nature. The transhumanist ideal promotes
augmenting the ordinary capacities of human nature through enhancement
technology: from healing human nature to transforming it. I would like to
consider one area of research supported by the transhumanist ideal that pos-
es an interesting case for bioethical analysis.
15
See C. Brugger, “D. Alan Shewmon and the PCBE’S White Paper on Brain
Death: Are Brain-Dead Patients Dead?” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 38, no. 2
(2013): 205–18; doi: 10.1093/jmp/jht009.
16
Marcus Düwell, Bioethics: Methods, Theories, Domains, Biomedical Law and
Ethics Library (New York: Routledge, 2014), 7–11.
17
For more on this current of thought, see Francis Fukuyama’s response
to the question in Foreign Policy (October 2004), “What ideas, if embraced, would
pose the greatest threat to the welfare of humanity?,” in Francis Fukuyama, “Trans-
humanism,” Foreign Policy, October 23, 2009, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/arti-
cles/2004/09/01/transhumanism.
Before I do, however, I want to note two caveats on what I have to
say about Transhumanism. First, the line between therapy and enhancement
is not always clear. Some, for example, might consider neural interface cards
allowing users to access the internet via thought alone for non-therapeutic
purposes to be ethically no different from utilizing Bluetooth technology;
others might see it as the first step towards creating a human supercapaci-
ty. I do not intend here to address questions related to drawing satisfactory
lines between therapy and enhancement. Second, I set aside the question of
technology for the augmentation of the powers of the disabled. The ethical
questions surrounding this area of research are more a matter of safety and
fair distribution than questions of basic justifiability: for example, brain-com-
puter interfacing (BCI) to assist quadriplegics in the operation of comput-
ers; embedded micromechanical devices to deliver drugs and gene therapies;
expanding nanotechnologies for treating disorders of the heart, brain, ner-
vous system and musculoskeletal system; retinal, neuromuscular and cortical
prostheses to assist the visually, physically or cognitively disabled; so-called
telepathy chips to assist with severe communication deficits or motor neuron
disease—these all are being developed. I consider these treatments, at least in
principle, triumphs of clinical medicine, and I leave the related ethical ques-
tions of their safety and distribution to another essay.
The case I want to consider is the use of technology to assist the
cognitive functioning of those who are not suffering from maladaptive cog-
nitive-emotional disabilities; in particular, the case of memory alteration.
Presently, memory alteration studies go in two general directions: on the one
hand, they attempt to restore and improve it,18 on the other, they attempt to
blunt and erase its effects. This latter is what I would like to consider.
Scientists are beginning to understand better the way memories are
stored (or “encoded”) in the brain and the mechanisms by which memo-
ry and emotions interact. The almond-shaped clusters of nuclei within the
brain’s temporal lobes known as the amygdale seem to be involved in the
encoding of what’s called “emotional memory.”19 Our brains remember not
18
Successful therapeutic memory enhancement studies have been performed
on epilepsy patients using brain implants meant to supply deep-brain stimulation (see
Nanthia Suthana, et al., “Memory Enhancement and Deep-Brain Stimulation of the
Entorhinal Area,” New England Journal of Medicine 366 (2012): 502–10; DOI: 10.1056/
NEJMoa1107212); also, promising restoration research in rodents is presently under-
way at Wake Forrest University.
19
Scientists at the California Institute of Technology recently found evidence
that another brain structure called the lateral septum is involved in generating emo-
tional experience, especially the experience of anxiety; see “Worry on the brain: Re-
searchers find new area linked to anxiety,” Science Daily, January 30, 2014, http://
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140130141313.htm.
only images and facts from past experiences, but also emotions associated
with those experiences. Those who suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress
disorder) as a result of living through traumatic experiences (e.g., abuse as a
child or military combat) can find the memories of those experiences emo-
tionally crippling.
Research has found that people who suffer damage to the amygda-
lae can still remember past events, but do not exhibit the enhanced memory
ordinarily associated with emotionally stirring experiences.20 Consequently,
clinical studies over the last decade have aimed at suppressing the activation
of the amygdale using drugs called beta-blockers. We can expect more pow-
erful drugs to be developed that separate the experience of memory from
other facts of the experience that is remembered.21 And we do not have to
be alarmists to predict that as their functions are perfected, the drugs will
be sought for use in non-clinical settings to minimize ordinary feelings of
remorse, fear, guilt, and sadness. Again, I am not addressing the use of the
technology to treat pathological expressions of emotion, but rather as a kind
of “morning after pill” (to quote Leon Kass22) for coping with ordinary pain-
ful feelings corresponding to human experiences.
Four Types of Questions
I said above that the interdisciplinarity of bioethics is represented by the ques-

tions it asks. These questions can be divided into four categories: “descrip-
tive,” “predictive,” “prescriptive-regulative,” and “prescriptive-normative”
questions.23 I also stated that the “mother structure” of bioethical analysis is
philosophical ethics.24 For the sake of this exercise, I formulate the overarch-
ing (or organizing) normative question as follows: What is the ethically most
appropriate way for our community to deal with memory-alteration technol-
ogies wanted for non-therapeutic purposes? This is a prescriptive-normative
question. To answer it, however, certain descriptive and predictive questions
20
L. Kass, ed., Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, A Report
of the President’s Council on Bioethics (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003), 222;
available at https://bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu/pcbe/reports/beyondthera-
py/.
21
Kass, Beyond Therapy, 226.
22
See ibid.; Erik Baard, “The Guilt-Free Soldier: New Science Raises the
Specter of a World Without Regret,” Village Voice, January 21, 2003, www.villa-
gevoice.com/2003-01-21/news/the-guilt-free-soldier/.
23
I am roughly following Marcus Düwell’s account in Bioethics: Methods, Theo-
ries, Domains, 7–11; rather than the term ‘prognostic,’ I use the term ‘predictive.’
24
Silber, “Bioethics: An Interdisciplinary Exercise,” 21.
need to be asked. These are the domains of what Pellegrino calls the “disci-
plines of the particular.”25
Descriptive Questions
Chief among these disciplines are the hard, technical and clinical sciences
from which the technologies arise. Memory alteration techniques involve (in-
ter alia) the domains of neurobiology, neuropsychology, behavioral and clini-
cal medicine, and computer science. Drawing on the expertise of scholars in
these fields, bioethical analysis asks: what are the scientific and technological
possibilities presently available? To assess whether they pose any wrongful
risks, we need a sufficient understanding of what they are and what they
entail: what are the current types of memory alteration? What are their re-
spective modes of activity? What are the benefits and burdens of each? What
are their side effects?
To discuss their impacts on populations, the social sciences (i.e.,
sociology, psychology, anthropology, and economics) can assist us. These
sciences engage in what might be called descriptive ethics.26 They provide
analysis of the consequences of technologies as reflected in the behaviors,
attitudes, and policies of differing populations, especially within vulnerable
populations such as children, the poor, the disabled, and the sick.27 How do
the technologies influence the behaviors of those who utilize them? What
are their impacts upon marriages (e.g., divorce rates), parenting outcomes,
sexual behaviors, school performance, religious participation, and indicators
of mental health (such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicidal
ideation)? What motivates researchers to develop them? Who benefits most
economically from them? What motivates people to use them?
Historians may ask other more remote descriptive questions: what
is the continuity and interrelationship of viewpoints and social initiatives
on cognitive alteration over time? Do we have examples from the past that
can help us address questions in the present? Literature and film ask what
imaginary and fictive worlds are or can be used to illustrate the benefits and
burdens of technologies of this sort. Philosophy and religion also answer
descriptive questions: what views of human nature are presupposed in the
use of, and advocacy for, these techniques? How do religious values such
as belief in God, or views about sin, forgiveness, death, judgment, heaven
and hell, correlate to people’s attitudes about memory alteration technology?
25
Pellegrino, “Bioethics as an Interdisciplinary Enterprise,” 18.
26
Silber, “Bioethics: An Interdisciplinary Exercise,” 23.
27
Vilhjalmur Arnason, “Sensible Discussion in Bioethics: Reflections on In-
terdisciplinary Research,” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 14 (2005): 323.
How do these values influence the questions we ask and answers we give in
relation to the technologies?
Predictive Questions
Düwell argues that questions aimed at foreseeing the direction that current
28
technologies are likely to take also need to be asked. I refer to these as “pre-
dictive questions”: What future developments do the current possibilities
anticipate? When drugs cease to satisfy, people commonly desire drugs that
promise stronger expressions of a desired effect. What stronger forms of
memory alteration are foreseeable?—for example, memory-erasing for peo-
ple who want a complete break from the past? The President’s Council on
Bioethics envisions the technology being sought by the military to steel the
nerves of soldiers on the battlefield against emotional resistance to killing, or
by persons who want to dull the sting they suffer from their own shameful
acts, or to assist criminals “to numb the memory” of their victims.29 How are
future variations of the drugs likely to affect the community? Are there rea-
sonable alternatives to assist people with painful memories that do not pose
as many undesirable risks?
Because they are predictive and not descriptive, they deal in proba-
bilities and not facts. Yet ethical analysis is not only concerned with what is
the case and what ought to be the case. It must also take into consideration
the reasonably foreseeable side-effects of one’s actions and one’s communi-
ty’s adoption of certain possibilities over others. For example, if in response
to school shootings, a community posts armed guards in its grammar schools
without advance consultation of experts in child psychology on how this is
likely to affect the development of youth, then their decision-making is defi-
cient.
Regarding memory alteration, bioethics should ask questions such
as: if we grow comfortable with augmenting human cognition through ma-
chines such as neural implant memory chips, will concepts presently applied
to computers, such as upgrading, hacking, and technical obsolescence, begin
to be applied to people? Since technology is market driven, questions of fair
access to augmentation technology should also be considered. What popu-
lations are most likely to benefit and who will be left behind? What will be
the affects of the creation of a “new normal” where every child is above
average? How will the attitudes and expectations elicited by augmentation
technology affect relationships between parent and child, teacher and pupil,
Marcus Düwell, Bioethics: Methods, Theories, Domains, 7–11.
28
Kass, Beyond Therapy, 224; another critic (Baard, “The Guilt-Free Soldier”)
29
asks whether by their use we are “medicating away” our consciences.

and between peers? Would widespread use cause people to grow in disdain
for the “givenness” of ordinary human nature?30 Will feats of human excel-
lence made possible through biotechnology (e.g., winning a spelling bee, de-
feating a difficult opponent at chess) deserve the same kind of praise as lesser
accomplishments achieved without the assistance of biotech? Are “personal
achievements impersonally achieved…truly the achievements of persons”?31
Will the limited distribution of bio-perfecting techniques—since all costly
medical techniques are limited (usually to the wealthy)—increase social tran-
quility or foment disharmony?
Who is competent to answer these questions? With due consider-
ation for the provisionality of the answers, predictive questions should be
entrusted to the disciplines that specialize in a question’s content. Questions
pertaining to the future direction of science and technology should be en-
trusted to the scientists and technology experts, questions about impact on
somatic health to those in the medical profession, questions on the impact on
social units, psychological development, and culture to sociologists, psychol-
ogists, and anthropologists, questions about economic impact to economists,
and so on.
Prescriptive-Regulative Questions
A final type of inquiry involved in bioethics is what I call prescriptive-reg-

ulative questions. Related to the normative questions are questions about
possibilities for the juridical regulation of science and technology. So, for
example, even if we defend in principle the non-therapeutic use of memory
alteration technologies, we may argue nonetheless that some regulation is in
order. Or we might oppose the technology, but believe that legal regulation,
subject to the law of unintended consequences, would make things worse.
The expertise of lawyers and policy specialists can play an important role in
generating and answering questions such as what policy options are available
in light of accepted moral principles and which should be adopted. They
might also be called upon to advocate for public regulation of technologies
that affect communities on a broad scale.32
30
Kass, Beyond Therapy, 287.
31
Ibid., 294.
32
A.R. Jonsen and L. Butler, “Public ethics and policy making,” Hastings Center
Report 5, no. 4 (1975): 22.
The Centrality of Philosophical Ethics
I have argued that no single discipline possesses all the requisite competen-
cies for bioethical discourse to be done well. I called philosophical ethics the
“organizing discipline” by which I meant to refer more to a competency than to
a field. That competency is the ability to engage in, and guide, ethical reason-
ing. Ethical preeminence in the bioethical task therefore should not be taken
as supremacy over the task, but rather as the ethicist’s guidance and leader-
ship. The idea that bioethicists are pack-minded meddlesome busybodies is
not uncommon.33 It is important, therefore, for philosophical ethics not only
to acknowledge the necessary role of others disciplines, but also to facilitate
their proper contributions.
Two objections are made to this ethico-centric conception of bio-
ethics. The first comes from those who argue that the interdisciplinarity of
bioethics brings into existence a new discipline, a hybrid of science and phi-
losophy that offers a new way of doing ethics, combining values, principles,
and methods from both the abstract and particular disciplines and hence
entailing a unique domain of expertise.34 Some even propose creating a pro-
fessional code of ethics for bioethicists as a way of asserting the “integrity
and independence” of the bioethical task.35
33
Roger Cooter, “Historical keywords: Bioethics,” The Lancet 364 (2004):
1749: “In the UK, both the medical profession and those moralizing on it from the
outside tended to regard bioethics as an Americanism associated with priestly-look-
ing interlopers acting as moral police.” Sidney Bloch challenges the assumption that
bioethicists are especially apt to conceal their conflicts of interest in ethical deci-
sion-making; see S. Bloch, “A Commentary in Response to: By What Authority?
Conflicts of Interest in Professional Ethics,” Journal of Ethics in Mental Health Novem-
ber 3, no. 2 (2008): 1–2.
34
Warren Reich discussing the origins of bioethics says that from the begin-
ning two visions prevailed: one characterized by the view that bioethics was a “new”
discipline and the other by the closer identification of bioethics with moral philos-
ophy; the two visions he called respectively the “Wisconsin” approach (named after
professor Van Rensselaer Potter at the Univ. of Wisconsin) and the “Georgetown”
approach (named after Andre Hellegers at Georgetown Univ.); Warren T. Reich,
“The word ‘Bioethics’: Its birth and the legacies of those who shaped it,” Kennedy
Institute of Ethics Journal 4, no.4 (1994): 319–35, esp. 321–22; cf. Pellegrino, “Bioethics
as an Interdisciplinary Enterprise,” 3.
35
Robert Baker, “A draft model aggregate code of ethics for bioethics,” The
American Journal of Bioethics 5 (2005): 33–41; Robert Baker et al., Report and Recommen-
dations of the ASBH [American Society for Bioethics and Humanity] Advisory Commit-
tee on Ethics Standards (ACES) (2006), accessed January 31, 2014, http://www.asbh.
org/uploads/files/membership/protected/pdfs/acesrprt.pdf.
This seems to me to fall into the “smoothie” error mentioned above,
conceiving bioethics as the blending of specialized ideas from multiple dis-
ciplines in such a way as to create something new. Bioethics is not a homog-
enous blend of specializations. It is a way of organizing knowledge derived
from diverse disciplines in the service of answering normative questions.
Normative questions are always relative to, among other things, the good
of those creatures capable of asking them. So the normative task of bio-
ethics always has reference to human good. Although our understanding of
human good unfolds, the basic capacities of human beings are consistent
over time; thus the basic ends corresponding with the fulfillment of those
capacities—the goods of human beings—are also consistent. Bioethics, like
all branches of ethics, interests itself in protecting and promoting human
life and health, facilitating communal harmony and minimizing injustice,
protecting the weak, raising healthy children, promoting adaptive behavior,
advancing knowledge, and, in general, guiding action in accord with what is
reasonable. Advances in technology and medicine generate new complexities
for human beings, and give rise to new questions about what is and isn’t con-
sistent with human good. These questions often cannot be answered without
an adequate understanding of complex facts derived from allied fields. If we
misunderstand the facts, we risk sabotaging the analysis. But the analysis, as
an organized effort, is, as I have emphasized, normative inquiry. Its principles
are supplied by practical reason, and the field that concerns itself with prac-
tical reasonablness is philosophical ethics.
The second objection comes from those who both reject the idea
that bioethics is a new discipline, as well as the view that philosophical ethics
plays an architectonic role. For example, Loretta Kopelman, from the Bro-
dy School of Medicine in Greenville, North Carolina, argues that bioethics
should be regarded as a “second order” discipline. By this she means it is a
sort of emanation (my word) from multiple fields, but not reducible to any of
them.36 What end, then, does interdisciplinarity serve? The most she is willing
to say is that six features unite those who call themselves bioethicists.37 She
says 1) they “are united by the problems they address”; but she gives no indi-
cation as to how or why any problem should be designated a bioethical prob-
lem other than arguing circularly that they are addressed by people who claim
to be bioethicists. 2) They “appreciate interdisciplinary methods and resourc-
es to address these problems”—but pointing to interdisciplinarity without
clarifying what end it serves tells us nothing unique about bioethics. 3) They
“generally employ cases” when teaching, writing or giving consultations—
36
Loretta M. Kopelman, “Bioethics as a second-order discipline: who is not
a bioethicist?” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 31, no. 6 (2006): 601–28, esp. 602,
620.
37
Ibid., 620–21.
but this tells us nothing unique about bioethics: medical doctors, clinical psy-
chologists, and physical therapists also employ cases in their teaching, as do
soils experts, sewage engineers, and urban planners. 4) Their teaching meth-
ods focus upon “making students better problem-solvers”—but does this
tell us anything unique about bioethics? 5) They “seek not only to clarify the
problems but to find morally justifiable solutions”—here the normative task
is slipped in at position five, it is not prioritized, it is one task among many;
no explanation is given for why the casuistical task should be privileged over
the task of clarifying problems, no light is shed on the meaning of the term
“morally justifiable,” and no principles are set forth for determining moral
justifiability. Finally, 6) bioethicists are “united by their desire to learn about
methods and theories from other disciplines that can help address problems
in bioethics and sometimes seek collaborative approaches to do so”—since
she has said almost nothing substantive about what bioethics is, this sixth
point begs the all important question of what makes a discipline “other” than
bioethics?
Her sole argument for rejecting philosophical ethics as defining rests
on the empirical fact that many people who call themselves bioethicists have
no formal competence or training in philosophical ethics.38 For two reasons,
this proves nothing about the identity of bioethics. First, to contribute to the
end of bioethics, one need not possess trained competency in the knowledge
that orders the field. Many people contribute to the end of surgical medicine:
technicians, nurses, surgical supply manufacturers and anesthesiologists are
all necessary for successful surgeries to be carried out. But only the sur-
geon possesses the organizing knowledge that unifies these disparate fields
of competency. Similarly, many branches of knowledge are necessary for
bioethics to be done well, especially knowledge from the hard and clinical sci-
ences. But ethical analysis is as it were the surgeon’s skill: it takes in hand the
allied knowledge, organizes and prioritizes it, and directs it towards its nor-
mative end. Therefore those who have no expertise in philosophical ethics, it
seems to me, may assume the title “bioethicist” to the extent, and only to the
extent, that they contribute necessary allied knowledge to the normative task.
But if they lack competency in formal ethical reasoning, then their normative
judgments on bioethical questions—i.e., their judgments about what should
be done—are (and should only be taken as) the judgments of scientists, phy-
sicians, political activists, lawyers, etc., not as the judgments of bioethicists.39
38
Ibid., 606: “One problem with this analysis of bioethical expertise is that
many respected bioethicists do not have competence in philosophical ethics.”
39
By ‘formal’ I do not mean only those with degrees in philosophy. I am sym-
pathetic with R. L. Holmes’s argument that the expertise of philosophers does not
necessarily equip them to make good judgments in bioethics and that non-philoso-
phers can be competent to engage in formal ethical reasoning. Holmes, “The limited
The second reason Kopelman’s argument proves nothing about the
identity of bioethics is that in the absence of some substantive definition for
the field—which she doesn’t give—mere self-identification as a bioethicist
tells us nothing more than what one believes. Kopelman might reply that
self-identification is not enough; it needs to be coupled with affirmation by
members of the academic or professional discipline, for example, through
the process of peer review for publication in respected bioethical journals
or by appointments to academic positions, what she calls “marketplace cri-
teria.”40 And bioethics journals publish a wide range of scholars other than
professional philosophers. This doesn’t demonstrate, however, that the de-
fining aim of bioethics is not philosophical ethics. It demonstrates either
that not only professional philosophers are competent to undertake rigorous
ethical reasoning in science and technology, or that bioethics journals publish
essays that relate to, but are not specifically engaged in, the normative task
that defines bioethics.
Conclusion
The questions raised in my opening paragraphs can now be answered. First,

what unites the work of bioethicists? All work in bioethics is organized by
(i.e., contributes to, or stems from) ethical analysis in regard to questions
raised by advances in science and technology. Second, what qualifies one
to do bioethics? Persons competent to undertake the bioethical task ordi-
narily should be expert in moral analysis, having studied moral questions
carefully, being familiar with dominant theories addressing those questions,
and professionally engaged in articulating reasonable arguments in defense
of normative conclusions.41 This is not sufficient for making sound moral
judgments. But without these skills, a person ordinarily should not guide bio-
ethical deliberation, especially on complex issues.
Bioethicists should understand and be amenable to the necessary
role of other disciplines and avoid facile attempts to overcome the tension
between disciplinary specialization and the field’s manifest interdisciplinari-
ty. Specialization is required for the sake of subject mastery; and experts in
multiple subjects are required for competent discourse. Thus all reasonable
efforts should be made to overcome obstacles to interdisciplinarity, such as
relevance of analytical ethics to the problems of bioethics,” Journal of Medicine and

Philosophy 15 (1990): 143–59.
40
Ibid., 603–4.
41
B. Hooker, “Moral expertise,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Rout-
ledge Hooker, 1998), 509.
disciplinary chauvinism,42 rhetorical laziness (i.e., a failure to translate spe-
cialized jargon into a commonly accessible idiom), or disrespect for dialogue
partners.
Bioethics certainly may undertake tasks other than ethical analysis,
for example, the analysis of regulatory guidelines, public policy and institu-
tional practice, providing expert testimony in courts of law, or undertaking
political advocacy, popular writing and public speaking. But their core com-
petency qualifying them for these tasks is ethical analysis. Without this, their
public speaking becomes nothing more than reporting, their writing journal-
ism, and their policy and corporate analysis an exercise in institutional rule
compliance.
Finally, can bioethics be considered an autonomous branch of inqui-
ry in its own right? Yes and no. Yes, insofar as its scope of interdisciplinary
reliance is, it seems to me, uniquely wide among academic disciplines, and
insofar as bioethicists must not only be experts in ethical analysis but also
familiar enough with knowledge from the “disciplines of the particular” to
guide intelligent deliberation.43 No, insofar as the central bioethical task is
not substantially different from the task of “medical ethics,” its disciplinary
predecessor, namely, the task of generating, assessing and drawing out the
implications of ethical questions in relation to advances in science and med-
icine; in other words, the task of applied ethics.
—St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, Denver
42
Austin, Park, and Goble, “From Interdisciplinary to Transdisciplinary Re-
search,” 562.
43
Pellegrino, “Bioethics as an Interdisciplinary Enterprise,” 18.
How Are We To Make
Good Moral Choices and
Do What Is Morally Good?
William E. May
Every day each of us has to decide what we are going to do; we are faced with
choices. Should I, on coming to a stop light showing yellow, drive through
the intersection if I am in a hurry to meet an important person in a company
I want to work for? If I am filling out my income tax or expense report for
my employer, should I “pad” it by claiming thirty charitable contributions
under $50.00 for my tax report—they do not require written proof—and
by claiming as business expenses meals and car rentals that were primarily
for personal—not business—use even though one of ten meals was with a
business client?
To choose the morally good alternative and carry it out in act we
need a criterion to distinguish morally good from morally bad alternatives of
choice. We can exclude different types of consequentialism such as utilitari-
anism because consequentialism in all its forms holds as morally good those
actions that bring about more benefits for people than would an alternative
choice, irrespective of the means elected to produce the benefit. Their motto
is “The most good for the most number of people,” even if this choice nec-
essarily includes bringing harm, even death, on a smaller number of people.
Consequentialists of all stripes (i.e., act and rule utilitarians, proportional-
ists, etc.) forget, however, that human acts—ones that we freely choose and
are not chosen because our heredity and/or environment determines us to
choose—not only “get things done,” (i.e., bring about results or consequenc-
es), but also—and more importantly—“get things said.” People recognize
this because we commonly say that ‘actions speak louder than words.’ Ex-
pressed more technically, human acts are self-reflexive, abiding in the agent
as dispositions to engage in similar acts of the same kind. We can indeed
truly say that we make ourselves to be the kind of persons we are—selfish or
self-giving, turned in on ourselves, or receptive of others—in, and through,
the deeds we freely choose to do every day. So true is this that we can say that
our integral, existential character as moral persons is shaped by our everyday
freely chosen deeds, good and bad. We make ourselves to be the persons we
are in, and through, the choices, good and bad, we make each day of our
lives.
© William E. May, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2015)
William E. May 39
Natural Law
This brings us to natural law, the law “written in our hearts.” But what does
this mean? Some think that the basic principle of natural law is “Do Good,
Avoid Evil.” But this cannot be the fundamental precept or principle of nat-
ural law because “Do Good, Avoid Evil,” is an imperative, and imperatives
are neither propositions nor precepts, and so are neither true nor false as
such. The first and basic normative precept or principle of natural law is:
“Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.” But what is
designated by ‘Good’?
First of all, let us note that St. Thomas Aquinas made it perfectly
clear that “‘law,’ properly understood, is a work of practical reason, because
practical reason, i.e., reason as ordered to action, brings into being universal
propositions directed to action [universales propositiones rationis practicae ordinatae
ad actiones] and universal propositions of this kind, namely, of practical rea-
son as ordered to actions, have the meaning of law” [et huiusmodi propositiones
universales rationis practicae ordinatae ad actiones habent rationem legis] (Aquinas, ST
I-II, q. 90, a. 1, ad 2).
Aquinas also says that the first precepts of the legis naturae (note that
he says praecepta plural, not the singular praeceptum) are not derived from prior
knowledge of any kind, but are “naturally” (i.e., spontaneously) known to
be true and not in need of being demonstrated in the light of antecedently
known truths. Thomas does this in the crucially important fourth article of q.
94 of the I-II of the Summa theologiae. There he begins by rejecting the position,
commonly held by his medieval predecessors and contemporaries, that the
natural law is best understood as the habitus (internal disposition like a virtue)
of first principles. He does so writing: “Something can be said to be a habitus
in two ways: In one way, properly and essentially; and in this way natural law
is not a habitus. It was said above that the natural law is constituted by rea-
son…, but what one does and that whereby one does it are not the same…. There-
fore since a habitus is that whereby one does something, therefore habitus cannot be
any law properly and essentially” [aliquid potest dici habitus dupliciter. Uno modo,
proprie et essentialiter; et sic lex naturalis non est habitus. Dictum est enim supra quod
lex naturalis est aliquid per rationem constituitum…non est autem idem quod quid agit
et quo quis agit. Cum igitur habitus est quo quis agit, non potest esse quod lex aliqua sit
habitus proprie et essentialiter] (Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 94, a. 4).
St. Thomas then makes an important analogy between the precepts
of the natural law that pertain to reason as ordered to action (ratio practica)
and the first principles of demonstration that pertain to reason as ordered to
speculative inquiry or knowledge for the sake of knowledge (ratio speculativa)
[more complete Latin text: Sicut etiam ens est primum quod cadit in apprehensione
40 Good Moral Choices
simpliciter, ita bonum est quod cadit in apprehensione practicae rationis, quae ordinatur
ad opus [=act/work]: omne enim agens agit propter finem, qui habet rationem boni]:
“And therefore the first principle of practical reason is what is based on the
meaning of the good, which is, that the good is what all desire [bonum est quod
omnia appetunt] good is to be done and pursued. Therefore the first precept of
the [natural] law is good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided
[bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum]. And all other precepts
of the law of nature are based on this one, namely, all those things to be
done or avoided pertain to the law of nature that practical reason naturally
apprehends to be human goods” [Et super hoc fundantur omnia alia praecepta legis
naturae: ut scilicet omnia illa facienda vel vitanda pertinent ad praecepta legis naturae quae
ratio practica naturaliter apprehendit ut bona persequenda et facienda] (note well that
Thomas speaks of goods—plural, not singular).
But what are the “goods” to be done and pursued? Aquinas iden-
tifies some but not all in Summa theologiae I-II, q. 94, art. 2: the set of goods
Aquinas mentions includes being itself, a good that human beings share with
other entities, and since the being (esse) of living things is life itself (vivere),
the basic human good at this level is life itself, including health and bodily
integrity. The second set includes the union of male and female in order to
transmit the good of human life to progeny who need education and care
if they are to flourish, and this is a set of goods that human persons share
with other animals, but, of course, in their own unique and distinctive way.
The third set includes those goods that are unique to human persons, for in-
stance, the good of knowledge, especially but not exclusively the knowledge
of God, the good of living in society with others (friendship and justice), and
the good of being reasonable in making choices, a good that we can call the
good of practical reasonableness, or the good of putting harmony among
our choices, judgments, and actions (Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2).
Grisez and his associates, in their development of St. Thomas’s un-
derstanding of natural law, have identified eight such goods: in the article
“Practical Principles, Moral Truth, and Ultimate Ends,” published in American
Journal of Jurisprudence in 1987, Grisez, John M. Finnis, and Joseph A. Boyle,
Jr. identified four “reflexive” or “existential” goods and four “substantive”
goods. The four “reflexive” or “existential” goods are: 1) harmony between
and among individuals and groups—living at peace with others, friendliness,
fellowship; 2) within individuals and their personal lives similar goods can
be realized—feelings can conflict among themselves and be at odds with a
person’s judgments and choices—the harmony opposed to such conflicts is
inner peace. 3) A person’s choices can conflict with his judgments and his
behavior can fail to express his inner self—the harmony opposed to all this
is peace of conscience and consistency between one’s inner self and its ex-
pression. 4) Finally, most people experience conflict with the wider reaches
William E. May 41
of reality. Efforts to gain harmony with some more than human source of
meaning and value take many forms, depending on a person’s worldview.
Thus another kind of reflexive or existential harmony is peace with God or
the gods or some nontheistic source of meaning and value. (Note: one can
participate in these “reflexive” goods in a morally upright way or a way that
is not morally upright.)
These authors identify the four “substantive” goods as follows: 1)
Health is one of these goods, and thus persons intelligently choose to pro-
tect their health by appropriate means. 2) Pursuit of the truth is another. It
is good to know the truth—denying this is self-contradictory, because by
affirming this one implicitly supposes that knowing that truth is not a good
to be pursued is itself a truth to be pursued. 3) The good of religion, or
harmony with God, is another. 4) Finally, it is good to develop ones natural
capacities to exercise them in work and play.
St. Thomas also distinguished, implicitly, the natural species of an
act from its moral species, and illustrated this by commenting on Abraham’s
consent to kill his son Isaac (cf. Gen. 22): “he [Abraham] did not consent to
murder [homicide, killing an innocent person] because it was his duty [debitum
erat] to kill through the command of God who is the Lord of life, and death
[per mandatum Dei, qui est Dominus vitae et mortis]. This is so because he [God]
inflicts death on human beings, the just and the unjust, for the sin of our first
parent. If a man is the executor of this sentence by divine authority, he will
not be a killer [murderer] just as God is not one [non erit homicida, sicut nec Deus]
(Summa theologiae I-II, q. 100, art. 8, ad. 3). “Killing,” in the example above,
would be the natural, but not moral, species of the act as freely chosen.
Regarding the moral species of a human act, the following text from
St. Thomas’s commentary II Sent, II, 40, 1, 2c is important. There he writes:
“…Voluntas dupliciter potest considerari: vel secundum quod est intendens, prout in ulti-
mum finem fertur; vel secundum quod est eligens, prout fertur in obiectum proximum, quod
in finem ultimum ordinatur. Si consideretur primo modo, sic malitia voluntatis sufficit ad
hoc quod actus malus esse dicatur; quia quod malo fine agitur malum est. Non autem
bonitas voluntatis intendentis sufficit ad bonitatem actus: quia actus potest de se malus,
qui nullo modo bene fieri potest. Si autem consideretur voluntas secundum est eligens, sic
universaliter verum est quod a bonitate voluntatis dicitur actus bonus, et a militia malus.”
John Finnis offers this translation of this text: “Willing can be considered un-
der two aspects: (i) as intention, insofar as it bears on an ultimate end; (ii) as
choice, insofar as it bears on a proximate object ordered to an ultimate end.
Then, (i) When we take willing as intending, we can say that the will’s badness
suffices to make the act bad, since whatever is done for a bad end is bad. Yet
the goodness of the intending will is not sufficient to make the act good, for
the act may be bad in itself, an act which in no way can be good to do. But
(ii) if we take the will as choosing, then it is universally the case that the will’s
goodness makes the act good, and the will’s badness makes the act bad.”1
Natural Law andVirtue
There is today, in large measure because of the widespread influence of

Alastair MacIntrye’s influential book After Virtue, a resurgence of interest by
moral philosophers in the role played by virtue in our moral life.
I grant that virtue, in particular the four “cardinal” virtues of pru-
dence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, play a role in our moral life, but
how do we acquire virtue? We do so by choosing in accordance with reason
in light of the first moral precepts of the natural law. Moreover, what are we
to do when persons, equally virtuous or perhaps some more virtuous than
others, disagree among themselves? We do so by appealing to the basic moral
norms of natural law to determine which virtuous person is correct and why
he or she is correct.
The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount and Gifts of the Holy Spirit
When we are confirmed the Holy Spirit gives us seven great gifts, which St.
Augustine said correspond to the eight Beatitudes.
The first is fear of the Lord which is suitable for the humble, of whom
it is said “Blessed are the poor in Spirit”—that is, those who think not high
things but who fear. The second is piety, which belongs to the meek, for he
who seeks piously does not find fault, does not resist, and this belongs to the
meek. The third is knowledge, which belongs to those who mourn, who have
learned that certain things they once pursued as goods are actually what evils
that enslaved them. The fourth, which is fortitude, rightly belongs to those
who hunger and thirst, who are seeking joy in true goods, who labor to turn
away from earthly lusts. The fifth, counsel, is appropriate to those who are
merciful, for there is one remedy to deliver from such great evils, i.e., to go
beyond forgiving those “who trespass against us” by being merciful to them,
praying for them. The sixth is understanding, and belongs to the pure of heart,
who with purged eye can see what the uncleansed eye cannot. The seventh is
wisdom, and may be assigned to the peacemakers in whom there is no rebel-
lious motion but only obedience to the Spirit.
The eighth Beatitude, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for
righteousness’s sake,” explains Augustine, is a return to the first and a demon-
John Finnis, “Intentions and Objects,” chap. 9 in Intention and Identity, Col-
1
lected Essays, vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 166.
William E. May 43
stration of perfect character: “Seven in number, therefore, are the things
which bring perfection: for the eighth brings into light and shows what is
perfect, so that starting, as it were, from the beginning again, the others also
are perfected by means of these stages.”2 We are led into the kingdom of
Heaven by the progression through the Beatitudes at the movement of the
Holy Spirit; it is for this reason, Augustine explains, “the one reward, which
is the kingdom of heaven, is variously named according to these stages.”3
Grisez, transposing the second and third Beatitudes, writes as fol-
lows:
What exactly are these beatitudes? According to Matthew’s ac-
count of the Sermon on the Mount they are the following:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, / for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven. / Blessed are those who mourn, / for they shall be com-
forted. / Blessed are the meek, / for they shall inherit the earth. /
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, / for
they shall be satisfied. / Blessed are the merciful, / for they shall
obtain mercy. / Blessed are the pure of heart, / for they shall see
God. / Blessed are the peacemakers, / for they shall be called
the children of God. / Blessed are those who are persecuted for
righteousness’ sake, / for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt.
5:3–10).4
Reflection on the beatitudes helps us understand that they propose norms of
Christian life more specific than the commandment to love as Jesus does—
the first principle of Christian morality. Yet they are not so specific as definite
norms of Christian life, i.e., norms identifying the precise human choices and
acts that one, as a Christian, is called upon to do here and now in carrying
out his or her unique personal vocation. They are rather modes of Christian
response, internal Christian dispositions or virtues, linked traditionally, as in
the thought of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to the “gifts” of the
Holy Spirit as enumerated in Isaiah 11:1—“And the Spirit of the Lord shall
rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel
and might, the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord”—to which the
2
Augustine, Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Bk. 1, chap. 3, in St. Augustine:
Sermon on the Mount; Harmony of the Gospels; Homilies on the Gospels, Nicene Post-Nicene
Fathers, series 1, vol. 6.
3
Augustine, Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Bk. 1, chap. 4; NPNF-1, vol. 6.
4
See Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, chap. 8, introduction,
n. 1, for a justification of the transposition of the Beatitudes and Grisez, The Way
of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, chap. 26, q. A, for an explanation of the relationship of the
Beatitudes to “the modes of responsibility,” so called.
Christian tradition, relying on the Vulgate translation of Isaiah, added the
“spirit of piety.”
When the beatitudes are considered within this framework, Grisez
believes that the modes of Christian response can be expressed as follows:
1. To expect and accept all good, including the good fruits of one’s work, as
God’s gift—for the “poor in spirit” understand that their achieve-
ments are only a share, given freely and generously by God, in his
fullness. The virtuous disposition is humility; the Christian vice is
pride. The corresponding gift of the Spirit is fear of the Lord….
2. To accept one’s limited role in the Body of Christ and fulfill it—for the
“meek” understand that submissiveness to God’s will involve no
loss or delay to their personal fulfillment. The virtuous disposi-
tion is “Christian dedication,” while lukewarmness and minimal-
ism are opposed to it. The corresponding gift of the Spirit is piety
or godliness, an attitude of filial reverence and dutifulness toward
God…. 3. To put aside or avoid everything which is not necessary or useful
in the fulfillment of one’s personal vocation—for those who “mourn”
(not only contrite sinners but all those who turn from transient
goods to fulfillment in Jesus) understand that to be disposed to
goodness itself frees one from the pursuit of particular, finite
goods for their own sake. The virtuous disposition is detachment;
worldliness and anxiety are opposed dispositions. The corre-
sponding gift of the Spirit is knowledge, by which one discerns
what belongs to faith and judges everything by its light…. 4. To
endure fearlessly whatever is necessary or useful for the fulfillment of one’s
personal vocation—for those who “hunger and thirst for righteous-
ness” understand that they have nothing whatsoever to fear. The
virtuous disposition is the faithfulness and heroism characteristic
of the martyr, though required of all Christians, while weakness
of faith and faintheartedness in the face of non-Christian stan-
dards are among the Christian vices. The corresponding gift of
the Spirit is fortitude…. 5. To be merciful according to the universal
and perfect measure of mercy which God has revealed in Jesus—for those
who “are merciful” understand that they are to be disinterested
and selfless as God is. The virtuous disposition is mercy, com-
passion, service to others on the model of Jesus, while the op-
posed vice is a legalistic attitude toward others. The gift of the
Spirit is counsel…. 6. To strive to conform one’s whole self to living faith,
and purge anything which does not meet this standard—for the “pure
of heart” understand that in this life charity requires continuous
conversion. The virtuous disposition is single-minded devotion
William E. May 45
to God, including a sense of sin and continuing conversion, while
the Christian vice is reflected in mediocrity and insincerity. The
corresponding gift of the Spirit is understanding…. 7. To respond
to evil with good, not with resistance, much less with destructive action—for
“peacemakers” understand that the effort to live according to di-
vine love must be universally conciliatory. The virtuous disposi-
tion is the conciliatoriness which seeks the redemption of ene-
mies; one opposed disposition is the tendency to shun evil instead
of carrying on a redemptive ministry to those enslaved by it. The
corresponding gift of the Spirit is wisdom, the power of putting
in order as peacemakers do…. 8. To do no evil that good might come
of it, but suffer evil together with Jesus in cooperation with God’s redeeming
love—for “those persecuted for righteousness’s sake” understand
that one must undergo evil in order to bring the evildoer in touch
with perfect goodness. The virtuous disposition is self-oblation,
the Christian vice the fragile rectitude of the person who does not
wish to sin but seeks fulfillment in this world. Since there are only
seven gifts, Augustine assigns none here; however, one might say
there is a corresponding gift, unique to each Christian and dispos-
ing him or her to offer God the unique gift of himself or herself.5
I believe that meditating on this list of the Beatitudes and corresponding
Gifts of the Holy Spirit in this manner is a very good way to examine our
consciences.
Appendix on Marriage
The Church teaches that marriage comes into being only through the free
consent of the man and the woman to give and receive each other as her
husband and his wife and that it is absolutely indissoluble once it has been
consummated by the spouses in their “one flesh union,” rightly called the
conjugal or nuptial act, the only bodily act through which God wills that new
life be given. Note that the Church teaches that husband and wife “give and
receive each other” in the conjugal act, the only bodily human act through
which he wills that new life be given. I believe that this is true and further be-
lieve that the husband and the wife “give and receive each other” in comple-
mentary but differing ways. I believe that the lines from the beautiful hymn,
based on Beethoven’s 9th symphony, “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee,” eluci-
date the appropriate relationship between men and women. There in verse
three we read: “Thou art giving and forgiving, wellspring of the joy of life,
5
Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, chap. 26, q. D–K.
ocean depth of happy rest.” With Robert Joyce (see, in particular, his book
on men, women, and a philosophy of sex6) I think that the male is uniquely
fit biologically to receive his wife giving himself to her as her “wellspring
of eternal life,” and that she is uniquely fit biologically to receive him as his
“ocean depth of happy rest.”
—John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family
Robert Joyce, Human Sexual Ecology: A Philosophy and Ethics of Man and Wom-
6
an (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1980); see also my, Marriage: The
Rock on which the Family is Built (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), for a treatment
of the complementarity between men and women as situated in the context of mar-
riage.
Maureen L. Condic 47
Human Embryology:
Science Politics versus Science Facts
Maureen L. Condic
As a scientist, I have written and spoken about the topic of human embry-
ology for many years, and I am continuously reminded of both the mystery
surrounding human embryos and of the passionate feelings they evoke. The
prenatal origin of human life has fascinated biologists, philosophers, and re-
ligious thinkers for a very long time.1 Yet in the modern age, thinking about
the earliest stages of human life—and considering the value of life at its very
beginning—has become entangled with some of the most emotionally com-
pelling issues society and individuals face, including the bearing of children,
the relief of human suffering, and the pursuit of scientific knowledge.
For the vast majority of human history, prenatal development has
been a profound mystery. A host of folklore, mythology, and religious beliefs
have arisen surrounding the origin of human life, but until quite recently, we
knew very little for certain beyond the basics that can be readily observed;
that after a period of confinement lasting approximately nine months, a baby
is brought forth from the mother’s womb with much effort and with consid-
erable risk to both mother and child.
Over the last several decades, science has begun to unravel the mys-
teries of human development. Yet despite these advances in our understand-
ing, in many ways, the true nature of our embryonic origin remains shrouded
in darkness, mystery, and controversy.
One of the challenges we face in thinking about the human embryo
is that embryonic development falls outside every-day human experience.
Typically, we formulate our opinions about the world based on what we ob-
serve, what we feel about our observations, and what we conclude from these
observational and emotional events. We develop an intuitive sense of what
things are and how they fit into our lives based on our experiences with
them over time. This kind of intuitive understanding allows us to overcome
our immediate reactions in favor of what we know to be true overall—even
when appearances might beg to differ.
For example, many of us, quite understandably, react to human tod-
dlers as members of an alien species. They are louder, messier, and consider-
For example, in the fourth century BC, Aristotle considered the topic of
1
embryonic development extensively in De Generatione Animalium.

© Maureen L. Condic, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2015)
48 Science Politics versus Science Facts
ably more stubborn than those who legitimately bear the moniker “human.”
Yet despite this emotional reaction, we nonetheless understand toddlers to
be members of the human race based on our own personal experience and
observation; we were once young and perhaps we still carry memories of
this period of our lives; we have seen toddlers mature into adults, and we
understand the “terrible-twos” to be a stage along the natural progression of
human development. This is also true for infants, teens, and twenty-some-
things. Despite very large differences in size, ability, and form, we intuitively
recognize all of these as stages of human life.
In contrast to our ample experience with postnatal stages of human
development, very few of us—even professional embryologists and phy-
sicians—have appreciable experience with embryos. We do not encounter
embryos directly or interact with them in our daily lives. We do not have the
opportunity to watch the gradual maturation of embryos in the womb or to
connect these early stages to those that come later. What we may know about
human embryos we learn not from our own experiences, but second-hand
from medical school courses, or books or the news media. And these purely
intellectual encounters are a poor foundation for the kind of intuitive un-
derstanding that informs most of our daily thinking. Because of this unfa-
miliarity, we react to embryos as somehow foreign and separate from “true”
humans; related to us in a mysterious way perhaps, but not really one of us.
Importantly, this reaction has nothing to do with the immaturity of embry-
os—their limited abilities or their incomplete form—but only with our lack
of familiarity. If humans developed like butterflies, remaining inside a co-
coon until they “hatched” as a fully formed adult, we would have exactly the
same emotional response to infants, toddlers, and teenagers as we currently
do to embryos; they would appear to be distantly related to “true” human
beings, yet fundamentally foreign and unfamiliar.
Because we lack a natural, intuitive understanding of human embry-
os, we must formulate our opinions in some other way. In the past, citizens
were rarely called upon to have an opinion about the embryo, and most peo-
ple simply did not think about this topic. However, the modern world of
scientific and medical investigation has increasingly peered into the womb,
and revealed its contents for us to study, to manipulate, and ultimately to use.
We have begun selecting embryos based on genetic characteristics, both to
avoid serious medical conditions but also to help improve the chances that
our offspring will be tall, beautiful, and the gender of our choosing—lead-
ing some to see human embryos as little more than a personal possession.
Fertility clinics have developed ever more sophisticated techniques to over-
come infertility and attract clients, leading some to see human embryos as
little more than a commodity. Finally, the alluring promise of using the cells
of the early embryo to provide a “repair kit” for patients with intractable
medical conditions has led some to view the embryo as little more than a
scientific reagent, a medically powerful “ball of cells” that can be harnessed
for biomedical research. In the face of these profound and disturbing devel-
opments, the option of simply not formulating an opinion about the embryo
seems increasingly irresponsible.
How then, do people arrive at their opinions about the nature and
value of the human embryo? How do we decide what an embryo is and when
during the seamless progress of prenatal development it comes into being?
In my experience, people take one of two basic approaches: faith or science.
Many believe these two approaches are in opposition to each other, particu-
larly on the topic of the human embryo, yet I would like to focus this analysis
on the synthesis of faith and reason by examining the role of science in both
informing and supporting what is known by faith.
When confronted with the complex and often confusing moral
questions surrounding human embryos, many turn to a higher authority, and
accept a specific moral or religious teaching on the embryo. Many faithful
Christians, for example, accept that human life begins at conception; a con-
clusion that is based, in large part, on the Biblical account of the Incarnation
of Christ. When Mary conceived her child, she was filled with the presence
of God in the person of the Holy Spirit, and from that moment forward
Christ entered the world. When Mary, in the early stages of her pregnancy,
visits her cousin Elizabeth, scripture states that Elizabeth’s “baby leaped in
her womb, and she was filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:42) in response
to the presence of Christ. These passages make clear that Christ was truly
present in the world prior to his birth. Since Christ was human, and like us in
all things but sin, what was true for Christ must also be true for all of us; that
is, our lives also must have begun at conception.
Christians accept this view of the embryo on the authority of the
Bible and with the conviction of their faith in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
Other religious traditions, such as Islam, Judaism, or Mormonism, come to
somewhat different conclusions regarding the embryo, based on the specific
tenets of these faiths. Yet in all cases, views of the embryo that are based on
faith cannot be either proven or disproven; in appealing to a higher authority
than mere human knowledge, such views are not only outside of the realm
of scientific scrutiny, they are above it.
Somewhat surprisingly, a large number of scientists also take a faith-
based approach when considering the nature of the human embryo, albeit
faith of a different sort from Christianity. I am certain that most scientists
would vehemently reject the characterization of their opinions on the em-
bryo as “faith-based,” yet scientists are as much inclined to appeal to their
central beliefs and value systems when confronted with complex and con-
fusing issues as anyone else. For many scientists, these central values and
assumptions do not arise from a specific religious tradition, but rather from
an inappropriate inflation of the scientific method into a belief system some
have termed ‘Scientism.’2
One of the core tenets of Scientism is scientific reductionism; the
belief that everything can be explained by purely material causes. Because im-
material things like God or the human soul cannot be weighed or measured,
many scientists conclude that they simply do not exist. Yet, the non-existence
of the immaterial is by no means proven. Indeed, as I have repeatedly remind
students in my laboratory, science is categorically incapable of proving some-
thing does not exist; science can only conclude that something is not detected
by available means of measurement. In the face of this inconvenient fact of
logic, the honest scientist remains intellectually neutral on such topics. The
non-existence of immaterial things like God and the human soul is therefore
not a scientific theory or fact, it is merely something many scientists take as
a matter of faith. For those who accept Scientism, this faith determines how
they view the embryo, irrespective of the actual scientific evidence.
Based on their belief in reductionism, many scientists begin with the
assumption that embryos are nothing more than the cells that comprise them.
Defending this position, scientists often assert that human development is a
continuum, and indeed it is. Development proceeds seamlessly from a single
cell through all the stages of human maturation. Scientists will then point
to the beginning and the end points of this continuum and triumphantly
announce that since it is “obvious” a single cell or group of cells cannot pos-
sibly be a human being and yet a fully formed adult clearly is a human being,
what we call ‘human’ is some ill-defined and arbitrary set of characteristics
that is gradually accrued over developmental time.
The mystical nature of this faith-based assertion becomes clear when
you ask the simple question: what evidence proves that an embryo is merely
a group of cells? A large number of experiments have addressed this ques-
tion quite extensively and yet, in my experience, practitioners of Scientism
roundly reject the ample evidence that contradicts their assumptions about
the nature of the embryo. For such scientists, the conviction that an embryo
is nothing more than a collection of cells is not falsifiable, and therefore it is
not scientific; it is merely an article of faith.
Setting aside the faith-based views of Scientism, what does science
itself say about the embryo? What is objectively known about human devel-
opment based on scientific observation and manipulation? More important,
what do these observations tell us about the two most morally compelling
2
The term ‘scientism’ is generally credited to F. A. Hayek’s book, The Counter
Revolution of Science, originally published in 1955; full text is available at, http://www.
archive.org/stream/counterrevolutio030197mbp/counterrevolutio030197mbp_
djvu.txt.
questions regarding human development: what the embryo actually is and
when the life of a distinct human organism begins? I would like to present
a brief overview of the science of early development, initially focusing on
what the embryo is; that is, what does the scientific evidence tell us about the
nature of human life at its earliest stages?
A human embryo is initially a single cell, formed by the fusion of
sperm and egg (Figure 1). This cell undergoes a period of rapid cell division
to generate a loose collection of eight to sixteen cells known as the morula by
the third day following fertilization. At this point, the cells of the embryo un-
dergo a change in molecular properties that allows them to form a compact,
tightly adhered mass of cells, and this cluster rapidly inflates with fluid to
generate a structure known as the blastocyst. The blastocyst contains the first
two cell types of the embryo; trophectoderm (TE), which will both mediate
implantation and form the first vital organ of the embryo (the placenta); and
the inner cell mass (ICM), which will produce most of the tissues of the
postnatal body.
Figure 1: Preimplantation development. (A) The one-cell embryo or zygote forms at

sperm-egg fusion. (B) The zygote divides to form the 2-cell embryo between 24–30 hours
post sperm-egg fusion. (C) The morula, or 8-cell embryo forms on day 2–3 post fertiliza-
tion. (D) Changes in molecular properties of the cells cause them to adhere tightly to each
other, forming the early blastocyst, that also begins to fill with fluid. This gives rise to the
first two cell types of the embryo. The outer cells (dark grey) constitute trophectoderm
(TE) and will form the placenta and embryonic membranes. The inner cells (light grey) are
inner cell mass (ICM) and will form the postnatal body. (E) Cell division continues, and
implantation usually occurs at the expanded blastocyst stage, approximately 4–5 days
post sperm-egg fusion. (F) The postnatal body of the fetus (light grey) is formed largely
from ICM, while the placenta and membranes form from TE.
In these early stages, the embryo progresses from being a single cell
to only a few hundred cells (in contrast to the roughly one hundred trillion
cells in the mature human body). Moreover, during preimplantation stages,
the embryo does not look like a human or have any characteristically human
functions. How do we determine whether a human embryo is a new human
being or just a group of human cells that will become a human at some later
time? The answer to this question is based on the clear, observable differ-
ences between cells and organisms. Living cells, including the cells of an
embryo, have many molecular components and organelles that work together
in complicated ways to preserve the life and health of the cell as a whole.
However, organisms show a level of complexity that goes well beyond mere
cellular life. In an appropriate environment, embryos undergo an organized
pattern of development to generate all the cells, tissues, structures, organs
and systems of the mature body. They function not as a single cell or group
of cells, but rather as an organism (i.e., a functionally integrated living being).
Organisms exhibit a number of characteristics that distinguish them
from cells. First, organisms are capable of development, or an orderly sequence
of growth that ultimately results in a characteristic mature form. Cells, in
contrast, will proliferate to produce copies of themselves, or (in the case of
pluripotent stem cells) tumors that contain many different cell types, but they
will not produce a characteristic mature state. Second, organisms repair injury
to restore the natural health and function of the entity as a whole. When an
embryo is damaged, for example by removal of one cell at the eight-cell stage
for preimplantation genetic diagnosis, in many cases the embryo will regen-
erate the missing parts and proceed with development.3 In contrast, tumors
will continue to proliferate after injury, but will not specifically restore the
damaged tissues and structures. Third, organisms show adaptation to changing
environmental circumstances, such that the health and overall function of
the organism is preserved. In most cases, when an embryo abnormally im-
plants outside of the uterus, it fails to establish adequate placental circulation
with the mother, and dies. In rare cases, however, full-term, healthy infants
have been delivered after implanting in their mother’s abdomen,4 liver,5 or
ovary,6 indicating that embryos can adapt to highly abnormal environments
while still undergoing normal development. Finally, organisms show coordi-
nated function of all parts for the good of the organism as a whole. And an
embryo clearly exhibits global coordination of parts. For example, as early
as the four-cell stage, individual cells of the embryo have distinct patterns
3
J.C. Harper and S.B. Sengupta, “Preimplantation genetic diagnosis: state of
the art 2011,” Human Genetics 131, no. 2 (2012): 175–86.
4
Amal A Dahab et al., “Full-term extra uterine abdominal pregnancy: a case
report,” Journal of Medical Case Reports 5 (2011): 531; A.Y. Isah et al., “Abdominal
pregnancy with a full term live fetus: case report,” Annals of African Medicine 7, no.
4 (2008): 198–99; J. Zhang, F. Li, and Q. Sheng, “Full-term abdominal pregnancy: a
case report and review of the literature,” Gynecologic and Obstetric Investigation 65, no. 2
(2008): 139–41; G.H. Xiao et al., “Abdominal pregnancy: full-term viable baby,” Eur
J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol. 118, no. 1 (2005):117–18; L Badria et al., “Full-term viable
abdominal pregnancy: a case report and review,” Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics
268, no. 4 (2003): 340–42.
5
V.K. Shukla et al., “Primary hepatic pregnancy,” Journal of Postgraduate Medi-
cine 61, vol. 719 (1985): 831–32.
6
J. Huang et al., “Primary unruptured full term ovarian pregnancy with live
female infant: case report,” supplement, Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics 283, no.
S1 (2011): 31–33; A. Sehgal et al., “Full term ovarian pregnancy: a case report,” Aust
N Z J Obstet Gynaecol. 45, no. 2 (2005): 165–66.
of gene expression that become more pronounced by the eight-cell stage.7
Moreover, each cell of the four-cell embryo has a distinct pattern of cellular
function,8 and unique developmental capabilities,9 indicating that each of the
cellular parts of the embryo must interact in a coordinated manner to gener-
ate a normal developmental sequence.
Based on these observations, we are now in a position to ask: Do
the scientific facts provide evidence for the view of the embryo given by
Christian faith? Conversely, do they provide evidence for—or instead, do
they refute—the view given by the faith of Scientism? What the scientific ob-
servations tell us, independent of any bias we may bring to this question due
to our individual beliefs, is that the embryo acts as an organism—a self-or-
ganizing-system. Embryos exhibit all the important features of organisms,
including growth, repair, adaptation and coordinated function of parts for
the good of the whole. Moreover, the embryo does not gradually acquire the
ability to orchestrate development, but rather immediately initiates specific
molecular events that will result in the production of distinct cell types in an
organized temporal and spatial sequence to generate the increasingly sophis-
ticated structures of the body. The embryo progressively develops itself to-
wards a more mature human form. These conclusions are objective and not
dependent on any specific religious or philosophical perspective. Asserting,
as many scientists do, that embryos are merely human cells that gradually ma-
ture into human beings is not consistent with the scientific evidence. Indeed,
the only conclusion that is consistent with the evidence is that the embryo is
7
M. Antczak and J. Van Blerkom, “Oocyte influences on early development:
the regulatory proteins leptin and STAT3 are polarized in mouse and human oocytes
and differentially distributed within the cells of the preimplantation stage embryo,”
Molecular Human Reproduction 3 (1997):1067–86; R.G. Edwards and C. Hansis, “Initial
differentiation of blastomeres in 4-cell human embryos and its significance for early
embryogenesis and implantation,” Reproductive BioMedicine Online 11 (2005): 206–18;
C. Hansis, J.A. Grifo, and L.C. Krey, “Candidate lineage marker genes in human pre-
implantation embryos,” Reproductive BioMedicine Online 8 (2004): 577–83; A. Jedrusik
et al., “Role of Cdx2 and cell polarity in cell allocation and specification of trophec-
toderm and inner cell mass in the mouse embryo,” Genes & Development 22 (2008):
2692–706; J.H. Sun et al., “Differential expression of Axin1, Cdc25c and Cdkn2d
mRNA in 2-cell stage mouse blastomeres,” Zygote 20 (2012):305–10; N. Plachta et
al., “Oct4 kinetics predict cell lineage patterning in the early mammalian embryo,”
Nature Cell Biology 13 (2011):117–23.
8
M.E. Torres-Padilla et al., “Histone arginine methylation regulates pluripo-
tency in the early mouse embryo,” Nature 445 (2007): 214–18.
9
K. Piotrowska-Nitsche et al., “Four-cell stage mouse blastomeres have dif-
ferent developmental properties,” Development 132 (2005): 479–90; A. Jedrusik et al.,
“Role of Cdx2 and cell polarity in cell allocation and specification of trophectoderm
and inner cell mass in the mouse embryo,” Genes & Development 22 (2008): 2692–706.
a human organism, that is, a human being from the earliest stages of life. This
is a conclusion from scientific fact, not from faith, yet this conclusion both
supports and expands what is given by Christian revelation.
Our examination of the scientific evidence provides us a compelling
answer to the question of “what” an embryo is, yet thus far we have not
addressed the second important question regarding our embryonic origin;
the question of “when” human life begins. In considering this question, the
continuum problem, writ small, rears its thorny head yet again. A Christian
view asserts that human life warrants respect from conception onward, and
yet the complex events of fertilization are often viewed as something of a
continuum themselves. Different countries and different states within our
own country define the “moment” of conception quite differently. For ex-
ample, in Canada the human embryo is defined as an organism during the
first eight weeks of development. Similar definitions have been proposed in
the United States.10 In contrast, Germany sets the beginning of life approxi-
mately twenty-four hours after the fusion of sperm and egg,11 and the United
Kingdom refers to the embryo as the fertilized human egg cell.12 While it is
clear that embryos behave in a coordinated, organismal manner at very early
stages—when, precisely, does this kind of integration commence?
Again, the scientific evidence pertinent to this question is entirely
unambiguous. In the instant of sperm-egg fusion, a new cell that is distinct
from both sperm and egg is produced. This cell has a unique material com-
position (i.e., it contains all of the components of both sperm and egg, and
is thus different from either gamete) and it immediately enters into a unique
10
Canadian law states an embryo is: “a human organism during the first 56
days of its development following fertilization or creation,” (Assisted Human Re-
production Act, SC 2004, c 2, s 3), and in the United States the proposed definition,
using the same definition on both occasions, suggests: “The term ‘human embryo’
means an organism of the species Homo sapiens during the earliest stages of devel-
opment, from 1 cell up to 8 weeks” (Human Chimera Prohibition Act of 2005, S.
659, 109th Cong. [2005]; Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act of 2009, S. 1435,
111th Cong. [2009]).
11
§ 8 Act for Protection of Embryos (The Embryo Protection Act) [Gesetz
zum Schutz von Embryonen (Embryonenschutzgesetz—ESchG)] v. 13.12.1990,
BGBl (Bundesgesetzblatt). 69 1990, pp. 2746–48: “an embryo…means the human egg
cell, fertilised and capable of developing, from the time of fusion of the nuclei,”
(available at: http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/cae/servlet/contentblob/480804/
publicationFile/5162/EmbryoProtectionAct.pdf)
12
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, 2008, Eliz. 2, c 22, s 2: “An egg
that is in the process of fertilisation or is undergoing any other process capable of
resulting in an embryo,” (available at: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2008/ukp-
ga_20080022_en_1).
pattern of behavior.13 For example, within the first minute following sperm-
egg fusion, the one-cell embryo or zygote initiates a sequence of molecular
events that will rapidly modify the cell to prevent any additional sperm from
binding. The rapid initiation of cellular modifications that prevent sperm
from binding to the zygote clearly opposes the function of the gametes
(whose primary purpose is to bind to each other). Moreover, preventing the
fusion of additional sperm is not required for the health of the zygote as a
single cell,14 yet it is critical for embryonic development. Thus, the immedi-
ate actions of the zygote anticipate the future developmental needs of the
embryo and promote the continued health of the embryo as a whole. They
cannot be seen as cellular events, but rather only make sense as part of an
ongoing, developmental process that is produced by the embryo itself.
From the moment of sperm-egg fusion, a new cell, the zygote, is
formed and this cell immediately enters into a coordinated, organismal pat-
tern of development. The conclusion that human life begins in the “mo-
ment” of conception, at the point of sperm-egg fusion, is a conclusion from
the facts, not from religious doctrine or faith. Importantly, these facts in no
way contradict what Christians know from faith, but rather enrich, support
and strengthen this understanding. In contrast, the dogma of Scientism—
that fertilization, and indeed all of human development, form a continuum
with no clear moment at which a new being is formed—simply does not hold
up well under the cold, hard illumination of scientific evidence.
What are we to conclude from this exploration into the science of
human origins? In my experience, faith and reason do not oppose, but rather
complement each other. When looking at the world through the eyes of faith
or through the eyes of science, we are looking at the same world, the real
world. Because of this, there can be no fundamental contradiction between
13
The organismal behavior of the embryo from sperm-egg fusion forward
has been extensively documented in the following three articles: M.L. Condic, “When
does human life begin? A scientific perspective,” Westchester Institute White Paper 1, no.
1 (2008): 1, available at http://www.bdfund.org/whitepapers, reprinted as M.L. Con-
dic, “When does human life begin? A scientific perspective,” National Catholic Bioethics
Quarterly 9, no. 1 (2009): 127–208; M.L. Condic, “Preimplantation Stages of Human
Development: the Biological and Moral Status of Early Embryos,” chap. 3 in Is this
cell a human being? Exploring the Status of Embryos, Stem Cells and Human-Animal Hybrids,
ed. Antoine Suarez and Joachim Huarte, Social Trends Institute Monograph Series
(New York, NY: Springer, 2011); M.L. Condic, “When does human life begin? The
scientific evidence and terminology revisited,” Journal of Law and Public Policy 8, no. 1
(2014): 44–81.
14
Polyploid human cells (i.e., cells having more than the normal two sets of
genetic information) are common, and this condition typically does not impair cel-
lular function. In contrast, polyploidy is incompatible with embryonic development
and almost always results in the early death of the embryo.
faith and science. There are things within the material world that we do not
fully understand, but an imperfect understanding of how faith and science
can be reconciled does not require us to reject the truths given either by faith
or by science. It requires patience and renewed striving for a better under-
standing. There are topics on which science appears to contradict what is
known by faith, and in these cases, science can enrich the convictions of faith
by forcing us to search for deeper meaning and a more mature understanding
of what faith reveals. Finally, there are mysteries that lie outside the power of
science to probe, but the fact that the real world is bigger and more complex
than the purely material world that science is fit to explore is no reason to
reject the truths given either by faith or by science.
Given the complementary nature of faith and reason, why do so
many scientists reject faith as irrational and incompatible with science? Why
has the scientific method become inflated into the flawed belief system of
Scientism, a system that is often patently unable to accommodate the factual
observations made by science itself ?
There is no simple answer to this question—particularly in the over-
heated atmosphere surrounding human embryonic stem cell research. In de-
fense of my profession, and those who practice it, I would argue that at least
part of the explanation rests in the fact that scientists are often profoundly
distracted by the awesome beauty and order of the material world. This beau-
ty can be so mesmerizing, it goes quite a way towards satisfying the deepest
longings of the human soul. Transfixed by the elegance of the natural world
and inebriated by the power of science to control it, many scientists never
feel compelled to lift their eyes beyond the simple questions of “what” and
“how” that science so powerfully addresses, to the larger and most profound
question of Aristotle’s Final Cause; the ultimate meaning and purpose of
creation. This kind of distraction is not merely a problem of the modern age.
The Book of Wisdom (13:1–9) describes the modern scientist with disturb-
ing accuracy:
For all men were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of
God, and who from the good things seen did not succeed in
knowing him who is, and from studying the works did not dis-
cern the artisan;
But either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circuit of the stars,
or the mighty water, or the luminaries of heaven, the governors
of the world, they considered gods.
Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods, let
them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these; for the
original source of beauty fashioned them.
Or if they were struck by their might and energy, let them from
these things realize how much more powerful is he who made
them.
For from the greatness and the beauty of created things their
original author, by analogy, is seen.
But yet, for these the blame is less; For they indeed have gone
astray perhaps, though they seek God and wish to find him.
For they search busily among his works, but are distracted by
what they see, because the things seen are fair.
But again, not even these are pardonable.
For if they so far succeeded in knowledge that they could specu-
late about the world, how did they not more quickly find its Lord?
How then, do we as citizens, as medical professionals and as scien-
tists avoid the fate of the “foolish” ones who are depicted so sternly in the
Book of Wisdom? What is the proper use of scientific knowledge? How do
we keep from being intoxicated by the compelling vision science offers, and
by its power to control and master the created world?
Part of the answer is actively to resist the temptation to see science
as a religion or a philosophy. Science is nothing more than a careful way of
making observations that either validate or invalidate a proposed explanation
for a phenomenon; an observational method that provides accurate and reli-
able information about the real world. Science is a tool that extends the pow-
ers given to us by nature; making our eyes keen enough to see down to the
level of cells and molecules, our ears more sensitive to detect the vibrations
of atoms, our noses more acute to pick out the scent of a single rose among
a multitude of onions. Science is useful because it allows us to better see and
understand the world. This understanding can, in turn, help us to apply what
we know by faith to the complex problems presented by the modern age.
The Bible has very little to say about the embryo, and nothing at all about the
specific topics of in vitro fertilization, human cloning, preimplantation genet-
ic diagnosis, embryonic stem cell research, or a host of other issues related to
embryos that confront society today. But science can help us to see the world
as God himself sees it; as the world truly is in all of its complexity, its pow-
er and its awesome beauty. A scientific understanding helps us make sound
judgments on the complex issues surrounding the human embryo based not
on what we prefer to believe, but on what the embryo truly is.
The value of a scientific description of the embryo is not that it
reduces the embryo to mere cells and biochemical pathways, but rather that
it opens a window into the phenomenal richness of human life, down to
the very molecules that support and sustain that life from its inception. As
a mother, I find babies just as endearing and miraculous as any mother does.
Yet as a scientist, I find them even more beautiful and awe-inspiring. Knowl-
edge only enhances the beauty of the world, and makes our appreciation of
it ever richer and more real.
—University of Utah, School of Medicine

59
A Subtle Beauty
(On the occasion of my 20th anniversary as a scientist)
Maureen Condic
Over the course of twenty years

much has altered in the realm of men.
But science, ageless, yet perdures
in stubborn insistence on the facts.
Being is believing.
Whether seen,
unseen, has yet to be seen
or not.
The beauty of a rose:

Trimethoxybenzene,
wrought from phloroglucinol
(florid, sweet, intoxicating)
Oh elusive methylation!
A rose is a rose is a rose
best known.
Science flowers in illuminated darkness

where the poet sees
not at all.
The hidden laughter of a rose
(O-methyltransferase!)
Sublime joy. Irony.
The poetry that permeates
the obvious.
Ephemeral constructs, compelling, beautiful

race shoreward, tempting fate.
Courting fact.
Mere elegance, no shield from destruction.
(facts have no mercy)
The fluidity of ideas, rebuked
by rigid, inflexible matter.
Dauntless, curiosity recreates.
Chastised, refined, my passion,
my child
passes the fiery furnace, unscathed.
Jubilantly triumphant!
The union of mind and matter.
Creation purified. Conception justified.
Conjecture incarnate,
manifested in the facts.
Over the course of twenty years

precision proliferates, tongues
to rival Babel.
Soliloquy hypertrophies. A victim of
the seer who
can
not, will
not, will to not
see.
With open eyes, the mind finds

no rest.
Life’s infinite intricacies
ferment
questions. Chimeras. Unstable fusions
(truth, mystery, longing)
Facts, factoids, factules.
Infuriating fragments
dappling darkness. A
painful partial
brilliance.
Yet an uncertain certainty abounds

amid the facts, not
of the facts, not
seen by the seeing, not
for what it is, for
what it is for, is not
factual.
God
is in the details.
Gerard V. Bradley 61
Constitutional and Other Persons1
Gerard V. Bradley
In Roe v. Wade2 the Supreme Court affirmed three propositions about the
status of unborn children as human persons.
The first proposition was that the unborn are not constitutional per-
sons. The Court asserted that the word “person” as used in the Fourteenth
Amendment does not include the unborn (156). This conclusion was import-
ant because, as the Court plainly stated, the case for abortion liberty would
otherwise, “collapse…, for the fetus’s right to life would then be guaranteed
specifically by the Amendment” (156–67). The Court concluded, more spe-
cifically, that if the unborn were recognized as constitutional persons, only
abortions to save a pregnant woman’s life could be consistent with equal
respect for the life of the unborn.3
Writing for the Roe Court, Justice Blackmun treated the constitu-
tional-person question as one about past legal usage, as an inquiry about a
technical term whose meaning in Roe depended upon how it was understood
in the nineteenth century. He considered just two kinds of historical evidence
Reprinted and modified from G. Bradley, “Constitutional and Other Per-

1
sons,” chap. 16 in Reason, Morality, and Law: The Philosophy of John Finnis, ed. R. George
and J. Keown (New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2013), 249–68, by permission of
Oxford University Press.
2
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). Page references in parentheses in the text
are to this volume.
3
See Roe, 410 U.S. at 157n54, where the Court said that “if the fetus is a per-
son who is not to be deprived of life without due process of law, and if the mother’s
condition [namely, a life-threatening pregnancy] is the sole determinant, does not
the Texas exemption appear to be out of line with the Amendments command?”
The Court worries in the same footnote too, that, if the unborn are Fourteenth
Amendment “person[s],” even Texas’ restrictive law might not be restrictive enough.
The Court asked, for example, whether any penalty for a criminal abortion less than
the penalty for murder could be constitutionally justified. This worry is not so well
grounded as the one expressed in the text, which simply identifies the effect of ap-
plying with equal force the laws governing acts which cause death of persons, born
and unborn.
© Gerard V. Bradley, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2015)
62 Constitutional and Other Persons
to be relevant.4 By far the more critical to his reasoning were the twenty or so
uses of the term “person” in the Constitution (such as that no “person shall
be elected President more than twice”). Blackmun concluded that none of
these usages indicated, “with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal
application.”5 “All this, together with our observation that throughout the
major portion of the nineteenth century prevailing legal abortion practices
were far freer than they are today,”6 Blackmun added, “persuades us that the
word ‘person’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment does not include the
unborn” (158).7
This first proposition affirmed by the Roe Court had no connection
to the subject matter of the second and third. These latter two affirmations
had to do with whether the unborn really are persons. The common concern
of these two propositions is the question: when do persons truly begin? Do
they really begin at conception, or at any other time before live birth?
“Texas urges,” Blackmun wrote in Roe, that apart from the Four-
teenth Amendment, “life begins at conception and is present throughout
pregnancy” (159). Texas further argued, “only when the life of the pregnant
mother herself is at stake, balanced against the life she carries within her,
should the interest of the embryo or fetus not prevail” (150). On this view,
the state has a “compelling interest”—indeed, a duty—to “protect…that life
from and after conception.” The sources of this “duty” no doubt included
Texas’ constitutional obligation to accord all persons within its borders the
“equal protection of the laws.”
The Roe Court neither affirmed nor denied the state’s proffered an-
swer to the question about when persons begin. The Court instead declared
its incompetence in the matter: “We need not resolve the difficult question
4
The Court did not explore the Congressional drafting or the state ratifi-
cations of the Fourteenth Amendment, with a view to discerning what “person”
was understood to mean in the provision precisely at issue in Roe v. Wade. One such
exploration appears in Part IV, infra.
5
None of the usages considered by the Roe Court conveyed the full extension
to all instances of a kind or to every member of a class, as the Fourteenth Amend-
ment does in declaring that “no state” shall deprive “any” person of Due Process or
“deny” to “any” person Equal Protection of the laws.
6
The Court described the wave of increasingly restrictive abortion statutes
which began just before, and was in full swing when, the Fourteenth Amendment
was drafted, debated, and ratified. The Court recognized that these reforms owed
in significant part to lawmakers’ realization that persons began at conception. But
the majority’s analysis of whether the unborn might be among those “persons” who
were guaranteed “equal protection of the laws” (inducing those against homicide)
did not consider the possible significance of this coincidence.
7
This conclusion, Justice Blackmun wrote, “is in accord with the results
reached in those few cases where the issue has been squarely presented” (l58).
of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of med-
icine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the
judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in
a position to speculate as to the answer.”8 This is the second proposition
about unborn persons affirmed by the Roe Court: persons—or, in the Court’s
phrase, “life, as we recognize it” (161)—may truly begin at conception, or at
some later time before birth. But it is not for the judiciary to say that they do,
or that they do not.
The third proposition affirmed in Roe had to with whether legislators
are similarly incompetent to authoritatively judge when persons begin. Roe
implicitly determined that they are not so incompetent. The evidence that Roe
affirmed Proposition Three is not limited to the Court’s silence, that is, to the
fact—and it is a fact—that nowhere in Roe does the Court say that legislators
may not judge when persons truly begin. The Court also reviewed various
areas of law where legislators predicated valuable rights of the unborn child
(161–62). The Court questioned none of these legal regimes. The majority
concluded from this review only that the “unborn have never been recog-
nized in the law as persons in the whole sense”; that is, in every respect, or to the
extent that adults (for example) are so recognized (162; my emphasis). The
Court did not expressly reject the predicate of Texas’ contention that it bore
a “duty” to ban abortion because persons begin at conception. The Court
instead sidestepped the predicate while denying the conclusion: “Logically,”
the state’s asserted interest in protecting the unborn “need not stand or fall
on acceptance of the belief that life begins at conception or at some other
point prior to live birth” (15). And a woman’s interest in abortion generally
outweighed that state interest, whatever exactly it might be.
The stated reasons for the abortion liberty supply further evidence
of Roe’s affirmation of Proposition Three. The Court stated that legislators
may affirm what they wish about the unborn, so long as they do not, “by
adopting one theory [of when] life [begins], override the rights of the preg-
nant woman that are at stake” (162). Those “rights” were rooted neither in
a judicial conclusion about when persons begin (Proposition Two), nor in
the denial of legislative competence in the matter (Proposition Three). The
ground of the abortion liberty articulated in Roe v. Wade was, instead and
8
The Court’s metaphysical difference in a case which announced such a nov-
el, controversial constitutional right is striking. But the Court’s affirmation of Propo-
sition One, along with ambient notions of judicial supremacy in constitutional inter-
pretation, supported the Justices’ apparent belief that they could resolve the abortion
issue by categorically separating the subject matters of Proposition One from both
Propositions Two and Three. They maintained throughout Roe the position that the
truth about when persons begin—whatever it might be—had no bearing on whether
the unborn are Fourteenth Amendment persons.
unquestionably, the “detriment that the state would impose upon the preg-
nant woman by denying her” the abortion option. The Court listed seven
such “detriments”: “medically diagnosable harm” even in early pregnancy;
“psychological harm”; “additional offspring” may herald a “distressful fu-
ture”; “mental and physical health may be taxed by child care”; “the stigma
of unwed motherhood”; the “distress for all concerned, associated with the
unwanted child”; and “the problem of bringing a child into a family already
unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it” (153).9
Proposition Three was confirmed and more explicitly asserted by
the Supreme Court in the 1989 Webster decision.10 Missouri’s legislators de-
clared that the “life of each human being begins at conception.” They de-
fined “unborn children” to include “all…offspring of human beings from
the moment of conception until birth at every stage of biological devel-
opment.” They mandated that “the laws of this state shall be interpreted
and construed to acknowledge on behalf of the unborn child at every stage
of development, all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other
persons, citizens, and residents of the state,”11 subject only to federal consti-
tutional limitations (chiefly, those found in Roe and its progeny).
The Supreme Court in Webster upheld all these provisions. The
Court interpreted its prior cases to mean “only that a state could not justify
an abortion regulation otherwise invalid under Roe v. Wade on the ground that
it embodied the state’s view” of when persons begin (emphasis added).12
State v. Holcomb13 illustrates the sweep of the legislative competence
expressed in Proposition Three. Holcomb was a prosecution for first degree
murder. The Missouri appellate court upheld the defendant’s conviction for
killing his own unborn child, where the victim was expressly declared to be,
simply, a “person” for purposes of the state murder law. The Holcomb court
observed that “it is basic doctrine of Roe v. Wade, and it is understood by per-
sons on all sides of the abortion controversy, that Roe limited to the mother
the legal right to consent to the destruction of her unborn child.”14 For the
rest of the world, “destruction of the unborn child” was criminal homicide.
9
“All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily
will consider in consultation” (l53).
10
Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 U.S. 490 (1989).
11
Webster, 492 U.S. at 504.
12
Webster, 492 U.S. at 505. When the Court affirmed the basic holding in Roe
in 1992 (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 [1992]) the
Court said that “the State has legitimate interests from the outset of pregnancy in
protecting…the life of the fetus,” so long (again) as the pregnant woman’s rights
were respected (Casey, 505 U.S. at 846).
13
State v. Holcomb, 956 S.W. 2d 286 (Mo. App. W. D. 1997).
14
Holcomb, 956 S.W. 2d at 292.
The combined effect of these Roe propositions is paradoxical, at
least. Propositions One and Two mean that even if the unborn really are
human persons (who would, obviously, benefit greatly from legal protection
against being killed), they are still not “persons” whose lives are protected by
the Constitution. Proposition Three means that legislators may (in fact, have)
recognize the unborn as real persons with the same right not to be killed as
everyone else, save that Roe means that what would be unjustified homicide
by anyone requires no articulated justification at all by the unborn person’s
mother.
II
This trio of propositions affirmed by the Roe Court was no casual grouping.
Each one played an essential role in the majority opinion.
Proposition One was essential to the Court’s holding. Even Roe’s
attorneys “conceded as much on reargument” (157). The hypothesized “col-
lapse” of the appellant’s case owed to the effect of extending equal protec-
tion of the laws governing justified use of deadly force to the “person in
utero.”15 The Roe Court correctly saw that the constitutional-person question
was gatekeeper of these laws. Proposition One had no point or significance
in Roe save to block the bringing of abortion under the ordinary laws about
killing. In other words: Roe’s statement that “the word ‘person’ as used in the
Fourteenth Amendment does not include the unborn” is transparent for,
and has no meaning apart from, the proposition that the decision to kill the
unborn was exempted from the operation of the criminal law’s homicide
proscriptions, including its provisions about justified use of deadly force.
Proposition Two was essential to Roe’s legitimacy. The Roe majority
opinion begins with an argument, not about abortion or about the person-
hood of the unborn, but about the Court’s peculiar competence to resolve
this “sensitive and emotional” question, one plagued by “vigorous opposing
views,” and to end a debate marred by “the deep and seemingly absolute
convictions that the subject inspires.” The Court’s warrant (so to speak) lay
15
The Roe Court curiously attributed this assimilative prospect to the Due
Process Clause. But there was no question in Roe (and there is none about abortion
generally) of state depravation of life. The question is rather about private violence,
and the suspension of ordinary protection of the law in the case of the pregnant
woman seeking an abortion. It is also hard to see which “process” might be “due”
so as to justify a hypothetical state-imposed abortion. In any event, the Roe majority’s
concerns about restricting abortion to life-threatening cases (among other concerns),
make it clear that an equal right to be protected by the criminal laws was on the Jus-
tices’ minds.
precisely in its capacity “to resolve the issue by constitutional measurement,
free of emotion and predilection” (116). Such was the Roe Court’s self-de-
scribed “task.”
This special competence depended upon the Justices’ detachment
from the “philosophic” issues raised by abortion; that is, upon Proposition
Two. It (the detachment) allowed and equipped them to resolve the divi-
sive abortion question in a uniquely credible and authoritative way. That way
was free of emotion, partisanship, and of either side’s “absolute[ness].” That
way was a third way, a distinct path between the warring sides’ moral argu-
ments.16 As the Casey Justices said when they affirmed the central holding of
Roe in 1992: “Men and women of good conscience can disagree about the
profound moral and spiritual implications of terminating a pregnancy.” The
Casey plurality added: “Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to
mandate our own moral code.”17
Proposition Three is not strictly entailed by Proposition Two. The
Roe Court could have consistently held that it was incompetent to judge when
persons begin, and that legislators are too. But some alternatives to Proposi-
tion Three were incompatible with Two. The Roe Court might have said, for
example, that in truth nobody comes to be before birth. But that would have
voided the second proposition, and thus sabotaged the Court’s credibility.
The Court might have said that there is no true answer to the question of
when persons begin, that it is all a matter of opinion. This, too, would have
voided the second proposition, and thus undermined the Court’s legitimacy.
16
That the Roe Justices did not personally believe that persons begin at con-
ception suggests that Proposition Two was an all the more deliberate choice. Lewis
Powell’s biographer, University of Virginia law professor John Jeffries, clerked for
Powell during the Roe term. Jeffries reports “the surprising lack of antiabortion sen-
timent inside the Court. White and Rehnquist voted to uphold [Texas’] laws, but
chiefly for the reason that abortion was not covered by the Constitution, not on the
ground that it was intrinsically wrong. The Court’s only Catholic, William Brennan,
supported freedom of choice. So did Powell’s closest friend on the Court, Potter
Stewart” (John Jeffries, Justice Lewis Powell: A Biography [New York: Fordham Univer-
sity Press, 1994], 350). Jeffries adds that Powell would not have changed his mind
even if he had been confronted by an articulate defender of the right-to-life. “Powell
was not personally religious nor otherwise much given to abstraction. The idea that a
fertilized embryo was a fully recognized life would always seem to him unacceptably
remote from ordinary experience. That this belief was closely associated with the
Catholic Church only made it easier for him to dismiss. No argument would have
persuaded Powell that the disturbing realities of unwanted pregnancy and back-alley
abortion should be subordinated to religious dogma” (Jeffries, Justice Lewis Powell,
350).
17
Casey, 505 U.S. at 850.
Saying that there is no true answer to a philosophical question is itself a phil-
osophical assertion.
The Justices might have avoided an open clash with Proposition
Two by saying that the truth of the matter about whether persons begin
before they are born—assuming for the sake of argument (the Court could
have said) that there is such a truth—is entirely beyond the government’s
competence to ascertain.18 One problem with this possibility is that it would
have flown in the face of centuries of contrary legal practice (all the ways in
which the unborn were treated as persons, if not in the “whole sense”). To
clothe its declaration with the desired legal force, moreover, the Court would
have had to have the Constitution say that when persons begin is a question
which no public authority in America is authorized to answer. This would
have been a real challenge.19
18
This is roughly how the Religion Clauses handle questions of doctrine,
worship, and church organization. The First Amendment effectively holds that the
truth (or falsity) of positions about such revealed matters must not be a predicate of
government action (see Employment Division, Department of Human Resources
of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 877–78 [1990]). Several members of the Roe Court
held a view about abortion that seems to intersect their views about religion. The
Roe opinion rooted abortion liberty in the pregnant woman’s concrete experiences
and interests, in the “distressful life” which a state would impose upon a woman by
denying her the choice to abort (see Roe, 410 U.S. at 153). Against this impressive fact
stood—as several Justices repeatedly said in internal correspondence—an abstrac-
tion, a speculative possibility, “potential” or inchoate life. The Justices (to varying
degrees) regarded those who believed that persons began at conception as moved by
religious belief or by moral beliefs which were neither facts nor consensus “values,”
and thus in some sense ethereal, and perhaps unreal. The normative calculus appro-
priate to these circumstances was also expressed by Brennan, privately to Douglas:
“moral predilections must not be allowed to influence legal distinctions…the law
deals in reality not obscurity—the known rather than the unknown. The law does not
deal in speculation” (David Garrow, Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the
making of Roe v. Wade [Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1994], 537). These
words were almost verbatim taken from a 1969 law review article justifying abortion
rights by retired Justice Tom Clark. Clark’s treatment of the matter is, unfortunately,
deeply confused and at times, stupid (see Clark, “Religion, Morality, and Abortion: A
Constitutional Appraisal,” Loyola University Law Review 2, no. 1 [1969]: 1–11).
19
Indeed, it would have required a reading of the Fourteenth Amendment
which—as we shall see in Part IV—is wholly at odds with its history and logic. A
deeper and truly catastrophic flaw in this possibility apparently did not occur to
the Roe Court. The Justices there seem to have assumed that the Constitution de-
clares—holds, settles, says authoritatively—that every human being who is born is
straightaway a “person.” The Court evidently further assumed that the Constitution’s
agnosticism about when people begin was limited to putative persons in utero. But the
Constitution contains no such stipulation (see text accompanying notes 45–46).
The strategy adopted by the Roe Court to resolve the contentious
debate about abortion is clear enough. It is effectively conveyed by Proposi-
tions One, Two, and Three. Most simply put, the Court thought that Prop-
osition One blocked any constitutional requirement of equal protection for
the unborn. The Court also thought that its holding in Roe blocked any legal
requirement of equal protection. Proposition Two establishes the Court’s
warrant for putting into practice Proposition One. Proposition Three pro-
tects Proposition Two, and conforms to other practical and logical require-
ments of Roe’s establishment of abortion rights.
The Roe Court believed, in other words, that if the unborn were not
constitutional persons then ordinary criminal law principles prohibiting the
use of lethal force, unless in justified defense of self or others, were inappli-
cable to a woman’s abortion decision (and its implementation by herself or
her agents). This belief was mistaken. Proposition Three opened a second
path to that destination, another route by which homicide law and its justi-
fication principles would supervene upon a pregnant woman’s deliberations,
namely, constitutional challenges by men convicted under one of the thir-
ty-eight or so feticide laws enacted since 1973.
III
Matthew Bullock and Lisa Hargrove were having a baby. Hargrove was twen-
ty-two to twenty-three weeks pregnant on New Years Eve 2002, when she
and Bullock consumed some alcohol and cocaine at a party. After returning
to their apartment, Hargrove did some more cocaine. Bullock asked her to
stop for the baby’s sake. When Hargrove ignored his request, they argued
and—according to Bullock’s later statement to the police—he blacked out.
Next thing he knew he was on top of Hargrove, strangling her. Because he
feared that Hargrave would call the police on him, Bullock bound and gagged
her. After she struggled to break free Bullock returned and strangled her to
death. Their unborn child died, too, as a result.20 Just after Christmas 2006
the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed Bullock’s multiple convictions,
including one for Voluntary Manslaughter of his (and Hargrove’s) unborn
child.21
Barry Holcomb was convicted in Missouri state court of strangling
his girlfriend Laura Vaughan to death. Her unborn child perished with her.
For the child’s death Holcomb was convicted of first-degree murder, just as
20
These facts are taken from Commonwealth v. Bullock, 913 A. 2d 207 (Pa.
2006).
Bullock’s conviction for third-degree murder of Hargrove was not at issue
21
on appeal.
he was for killing Vaughan. Holcomb knew that Laura was pregnant, and
prior to the murders he had threatened to kill both of them. Under Missouri
law, the location of a homicide victim in utero made absolutely no difference
to Holcomb’s criminal liability. Holcomb received consecutive life sentences,
without possibility of parole.22
Airman First Class Scott Boie was charged with intentionally kill-
ing his unborn child. This crime was punishable just the same as it would
have been if his victim had been 50 years old, or five. Boie had married his
girlfriend shortly after learning that she carried their child. But he was never
happy about the pregnancy. Before long, he asked her to have an abortion.
When his wife refused his request, Boie bought some Misoprostol, a known
abortifacient commonly used in lawful chemical abortions. He ground the
drug into a powder and secretly put some of it into his wife’s food and drink
on four different occasions. She soon miscarried. After admitting what he
had done during a secretly recorded conversation with his wife, Boie pleaded
guilty under the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act to the lesser offense
of attempting to kill his child. Boie was dishonorably discharged, and sen-
tenced to nearly ten years in prison.23
Erica Basoria was pregnant with twins by Gerardo Flores. By the
time she discovered it and concluded that she wanted an abortion, it was too
late: her doctor said that neither he nor any other local dodos could safely
perform the abortion. Basoria testified at Flores’s trial for capital murder that
she then asked him to terminate her pregnancy by stepping on her abdomen.
He did so, but only after—as the appellate court recounted Basoria’s testi-
mony—her repeatedly asking him to. Basoria supplemented Flores’s efforts
with some of her own. The court which affirmed Flores’s convictions wrote:
“by the last week of her pregnancy, she was striking herself every day” (434).
Basoria subsequently delivered stillborn twins. Flores was sentenced to life in
prison.24
Criminal laws protecting the life of unborn children govern deadly
transactions even where the child survives unscathed. Jaclyn Kurr stabbed
her boyfriend, Antonio Pena, to death. She was convicted after trial, notwith-
standing her contention that she killed Pena after he “punched her two times
in the stomach and [after she] warned Pena not to hit her because she was
carrying his babies.” Evidence at trial indicated that Kurr had indeed recently
become pregnant. The trial court nonetheless denied her request that the jury
22
These facts are taken from Holcomb, 956 S.W. 2d 286.
23
These facts are taken from United States v. Boie, 2011 WL 5986774 (A.F.
Ct. Crim. App. 2011).
24
These facts are taken from Flores v. State, 245 S.W. 3d 432 (Tex. Crim. App.
2008).
be instructed about justification.25 Her proposed instruction was the standard
one, commonly used in every American jurisdiction. It is precisely what the
Roe Court presupposed when it said that, if the unborn counted as persons,
abortion laws would have to be very restrictive. Kurr asked that the jurors be
told that her use of lethal force against Pena was justified if she had a reason-
able fear that he was going to kill, or cause serious bodily harm, to her or to
unborn baby.26
Kurr’s conviction was overturned on appeal. The higher court held
that Michigan’s unborn children’s protection act law established that deadly
force could be justified in defense of an unborn child of any age. “Indeed,
she may under the appropriate circumstances use deadly force to protect her
fetus even if she does not fear for her own life.” This holding undoubtedly
extends to third parties, too. A friend (or stranger) who happened upon Pena
assaulting Kurr could justifiably harm or kill Pena, based upon a reasonable
fear that he was going to kill Kurr, or her baby in utero.27
Thirty-eight states as well as the national government have enacted
laws specifically against fetal homicide, or feticide: the unjustified killing of
an unborn child. These laws identify the unborn child as a distinct victim;
the legal harm of killing the child is not part or derivative of any injury to
the mother. The tiny victim’s description in these laws ranges from “child in
utero” to “human being” to “person.” Harm to the woman carrying the child
25
Justification “involves conduct which would otherwise be criminal, but which
under the circumstances is socially acceptable and which deserves neither criminal
liability nor even censure” (W. LaFave, Criminal Law, 5th ed., Hornbook Series [St.
Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 2010], 471, quoting Paul Robinson). “Thus burning
a field in order to create a firebreak preventing a raging fire from reaching nearby
homes,” conduct which would otherwise be criminal mischief, is justified (LaFave,
Criminal Law, 471). Using lethal force against and even killing—both ordinarily seri-
ous crimes—are justified when done in self-defense or in defense of another. Justifi-
cation is very different from excuse. Excuse pertains to situations where the misconduct
is criminal and morally reprehensible, but where holding a particular person crimi-
nally responsible for the misconduct is judged to be inappropriate. Criminal acts are
excused not on the basis of the net value of any act, but due to characteristics of
the actor, usually some sort of extraordinary stress or diminished capacity. Paul Rob-
inson explains that “‘justified’ conduct is correct behavior that is encouraged or at
least tolerated…. An excuse represents a legal conclusion that the conduct is wrong,
undesirable” but that punishment is inappropriate. “Excuses do not destroy blame”
(LaFave, Criminal Law, 473). They do, however, reduce or eliminate culpability.
26
These facts are taken from a copy of the slip opinion in People v. Kurr, 654
N.W. 2d 651 (Mich. Ct. App. 2002), a copy of which is in the author’s possession.
27
To the obvious challenge that its reasoning would justify anti-abortion pro-
testors using force to interrupt abortions, the Kurr court simply cited Roe for the
proposition that such imminent harm to another’s life was “lawful.”
is not an element of these offenses. These laws include an explicit immunity
for women seeking to terminate their own pregnancies, because these laws
would otherwise naturally extend to abortions.
The federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA)28 of 2004 is
typical of these feticide laws. In pertinent part it says that “whoever” “caus-
es the death of or bodily injury to,” a “child who is in utero” is guilty of an
offense distinct from any accompanying offense against the women carrying
the child. This separate offense is subject to the same punishment as would
be the identical misconduct if it were committed against the “unborn child’s
mother”—which would be the same punishment as if the offense were com-
mitted against anyone else. A “child in utero” is, according to the federal law,
a “member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who
is carried in the womb.” Nothing in the federal act authorizes prosecution of
“any woman with respect to her own unborn child,” or of anyone perform-
ing a “lawful abortion.”29 This express reservation stops the UVVA from
limiting abortions to those justified by a threat to a woman’s life or of serious
bodily harm, which is where its plain meaning in light of justification princi-
ples would go.30 In sum: the unborn child has the same legal right not to be
28
Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (UVVA), 18 U.S.C. § 1841 (2004).
29
So Erica Basoria could not have been prosecuted as an accomplice to mur-
der under the UVVA, even if she had consented to Gerardo Flores’s stomping upon
her stomach. (In fact, Flores’s conviction implied that the jurors rejected Basoria’s
testimony about asking Flores to assault her.) The Flores court said that, “only if the
acts were consensual could appellant [Flores] argue that the statute treated him and
Ms. Basoria unequally by allowing the State to prosecute [him] but not Ms. Basoria
for the same acts,” (Flores, 245 S.W. 2d at 437).
30
This federal exemption goes further than Roe requires. In 1997 the Su-
preme Court of South Carolina affirmed Cornelia Whitner’s conviction for injuring
her own unborn child. She ingested crack cocaine during the third trimester of her
pregnancy, so extensively that her child was subsequently born with cocaine in his
system. Whitner was sentenced to eight years in prison for criminal child neglect.
Whitney claimed that her right of privacy—as affirmed in Roe v. Wade and other
cases—required reversal. She argued that the unborn child was not a rights-bearing
entity, and that the “state” had no interest of its own in the unborn child over and
against the pregnant woman’s wishes. She said that the law accorded “legal rights to
the unborn only where the mother’s or the parents’ interests in the potentiality of
life…are sought to be vindicated.” The Whitner court said that a criminal prosecution
vindicates precisely the public’s interest in a distinct “person’s” life and health. “If,
as Whitner suggests we should, we read [a parallel] case only as a vindication of the
mother’s interest in the life of her unborn child, there would be no basis for prose-
cuting a mother who kills her viable fetus by stabbing it, by shooting it, or by other
such means, yet a third party could be prosecuted for the very same acts” (Whitner
v. State, 492 S.E. 2d 777 [1997]).
killed as does everyone else in the jurisdiction, save the case where the child’s
mother procures a lawful abortion.
There have been many prosecutions under these laws. The most fa-
mous of these was surely that of Scott Peterson for killing his wife Laci
and their unborn son Conner on or about Christmas Eve, 2002.31 (Peter-
son is currently on death row in San Quentin Prison.) Every one of these
convictions challenged on appeal has been affirmed. Every one of those
appeals raised constitutional objections based on Roe. Each of the convicted
defendants who pursued these appeals maintained that treating the unborn
as homicide victims is to treat them as persons, and that treating the unborn
as persons violated Roe. All the appellate courts have correctly rejected this
claim. They have rightly cited what we have called Proposition Three, or the
Webster case, or both. They have said, provisionally at least, that legislators are
free to predicate the same right not to be killed of persons born and unborn,
so long as they do not “otherwise” violate Roe.32
These courts have failed wretchedly, however, to deal with the deep-
er Equal Protection challenge which Messrs. Holcomb, Boie, Bullock, and
Flores have made to their convictions. This is the challenge which we iden-
tified at the end of Part II, the challenge which depends upon the incapacity
of Proposition One to wall-off the abortion decision from ordinary justifi-
cation principles by denying that the unborn are “constitutional persons.”
In fact, these feticide laws make no mention whatsoever of “constitutional
persons.”
Barry Holcomb stated the challenge plainly. The court which af-
firmed his conviction said that “Holcomb argues that all intentional and
unjustified killings of pre-born children must be treated the same.”33 The
challenge is this: how can the law hold that a father is never justified in killing
his unborn child, while the identical act performed by the child’s mother—
producing the same harm, for the same reasons, executing the same choice
by the same behavior—is always justified? Or, rather, that the same act by the
mother is entirely exempt from the norms of justification?34
31
Section 1 of the federal UVVA says that it may be cited as “Laci and Con-
ner’s Law.”
32
I say “provisionally” because this affirmation is undercut by these courts’
treatment of the “deeper Equal Protection challenge,” which l next consider in the
text.
33
Holcomb, 956 S.W. at 292.
34
Roe v. Wade listed several reasons why women should enjoy an abortion
liberty. But no particular woman has to prove that any such reason obtains in her
case. So it is not the case that the abortion liberty amounts to a finely calibrated,
woman-specific application of justification principles. The abortion liberty represents
the abandonment of justification principles altogether.
After all, Conner Peterson’s demise is just the same harm, whether
it is perpetrated by his father or by his mother. The chosen object of the vast
majority of abortions is the same as the objective of the feticide defendant—
that the unborn child no longer exist, for the further object of avoiding the
burdens of being a parent.
Roe listed seven types of “distress” as reasons for abortions. Only
one of the seven had to do with carrying a child in the womb: “medical-
ly diagnosable harm” during pregnancy. The other reasons had to do with
anticipated burdens of raising a child; call this “post-natal distress.” These
burdens of child-rearing included (in Roe’s words) the prospect that “ma-
ternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life
and future.” In addition, “psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and
physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all
concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of
bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise,
to care for it” (153).
Only one of these post-natal “distresses” is distinctive to women.
But that one—“the stigma of unwed motherhood”—has evaporated since
1973. The remaining “distresses” are real enough. But they are not distinc-
tively maternal. None would morally justify any mother or father in harming
a child once born. The law is also settled and unequivocal: Roe’s list of paren-
tal “distresses” could never justify anyone killing anyone else.
Sometimes, the behavior by which a choice to terminate a child in
the womb is carried out is the same as an abortion (as with Airman Boie’s ad-
ministration of Misoprostol, or Gerardo Flores’s invited stomping). To this
skein of identity—same choice, same intention, same act, same harm, and
occasionally the same behavior—are added the same norms of justification.
Holcomb and the others are not arguing for fetal personhood; quite the con-
trary, they maintain that Roe necessarily reduces the unborn’s status to that of
some non-personal human entity. They do not seek to overturn Proposition
One. Each appellant nonetheless argues on behalf of an indubitable “con-
stitutional person,” namely, himself. Each argues that once the legislature has
decided to treat the unborn as homicide victims (under authority of what we
have called Proposition Three), the law may not hold him responsible while
completely exempting her for doing exactly the same thing. This discrimi-
nation (they say) violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of Equal
Protection of the law.
So far stated, their argument is sound. It is no rebuttal of it to simply
cite Roe v. Wade. Besides the fact that Roe held nothing about the challenge they
pose, the Court there made clear its opinion that elective abortions could not
be morally justified.
The challenge is therefore grave. It has not been met.
Among the attempted rebuttals is one commentator’s suggestion
that the “personhood of the fetus [be] determined entirely by the mother’s
subjective intent.” This argument is that when the mother chooses abortion,
the fetus is not a legal person, but when the father destroys the fetus, the vic-
tim is a person. This commentator charitably says: “though a legal fiction, the
regime is nevertheless workable.”35 “The regime” is a desperate flight from
reality. Whether any specific being is a human person has nothing to do with
the desires or needs of someone seeking to destroy it.
The notion that when Paul killed little Bill at 4:00 p.m. Thursday last it
was murder because Bill was a person but that when Julie killed little Bill at
4:00 p.m. Thursday last if was fine because Bill was not a person, makes no
legal or moral sense.
The Bullock court responded to the challenge by saying that “the mother is
not similarly situated to everyone else, as she alone is carrying the unborn
child.”36 This is true in an important but limited sense: the presence of a child
within the mother’s body gives rise to possibilities of justified use of force
that arise for no one else. Only the pregnant woman may face an imminent
threat of death or serious bodily harm due to the pregnancy itself. Ordinary
principles of justification would thus permit her to terminate her pregnancy,
and thus to knowingly end the unborn child’s life, if she reasonably feared
her own death or her own serious bodily injury.37
There is no point in denying the “uniqueness” of a mother’s rela-
tionship with her child. Nor is there profit in denying a father’s distinctive
bond with his daughter or son, or the special quality of any man’s love for a
woman. The relevant point is that, when it comes to violence, all such rela-
tionships are subject to the common governance of the same legal norms.
That is what equal justice under law means. Criminal law is the great equaliz-
er. Homicide statutes deal strictly in anonymous “persons.” If one “person
intentionally and without lawful justification causes the death of another per-
35
Douglas Curran, “Abandonment and Reconciliation: Addressing the Politi-
cal and Common Law Objections to Fetal Homicide Laws,” Duke Law Journal 58, no.
6 (2009): 1135.
36
Bullock, 913 A. 2d at 216.
37
One version of the pregnancy-is-unique justification for abortion-on-de-
mand holds that “even if the fetus [is] a person, a woman is justified in killing it be-
cause of what it does to her when it imposes a wrongful pregnancy, whatever might
be her personal reasons for doing so” (C. Ramsey, “Restructuring the Debate Over
Fetal Homicide Laws,” Ohio State Law Journal 67, no. 4 [2006]: 760). Roe v. Wade im-
poses no prerequisite of a “wrongful pregnancy,” however, much less one “imposed”
by the fetus. The abortion liberty there articulated extends even to pregnancies greet-
ed with joy by a mother who later changes her mind, for any reason or none, and has
an abortion.
son,” it is murder. Full stop. It matters not that the victim was a bad son or
husband, or that he was the greatest. It makes no difference that the murder-
er was prince of the city or the lowest of the low. Relationships, roles, one’s
character, and personal identity are irrelevant to killing and to justification.
The criminal law cares only about acts and results and objective harms. It is
built upon an unwavering conviction that everyone’s life counts the same.
The law of justification is not ignorant of pregnancy’s pains and trials, just
as it is not ignorant of the burdens people face more generally as parents, as
workers, as friends, as enemies, as neighbors, as strangers. It is simply that the
criminal law of justified killing puts all this aside.
The notion that Paul may be guilty of murdering his son little Bill but that
Julie cannot be guilty because she is little Bill’s mother makes no legal or
moral sense.
Several courts have relied upon the legal requirement that a pregnant woman
must consent to an abortion to distinguish the feticide situation. It is true that
consent makes a difference to how the law evaluates bodily intrusions. It is
also true that almost any assault upon an unborn child will involve an assault
upon the pregnant woman as well. That latter intrusion is a crime. It is pun-
ishable (in all our cases) along with the crime against the unborn child. There
may also be civil liability for depriving a woman of the relationship with her
child. It is nonetheless a bedrock principle of our criminal law that, while the
permissibility of certain touches and intimacies and physical contact depends
upon consent, no one can consent to one’s own murder, much less to the
murder of someone else.
The notion that it was OK for Paul to murder little Bill because Julie, Bill’s
mom and Paul’s wife, consented to it makes no legal or moral sense.
Some courts affirming feticide convictions—those in Bullock and Boie, for
example—have replied to Holcomb’s argument in another manner which
defies succinct summary. The Bullock court asserted—contrary to the plain
terms of the Pennsylvania feticide law—that “the statutory language does
not purport to define the concept of personhood or establish when life as a
human being begins and ends.”38 The Bullock court added (here relying upon
language from an earlier feticide appeal) that “whether an embryo is a human
being [is] irrelevant to criminal liability under the statute.”39 Quoting from a
different feticide case, Bullock said that “the statute only requires proof that,
whatever the entity within the mother’s womb is called, it had life and, be-
38
39
Bullock, 913 A. 2d at 213, quoting the Minnesota Supreme Court in State v.
Merrill, 450 N.W. 2d 318, 324 (1990).
cause of the acts of the defendant, it no longer does.”40 The Armed Forces
appellate court in Boie’s case adopted all this language, and concluded that
the issue was whether the “embryo” “had the properties of life and whether
[Boie] attempted to end that life by poisoning” his wife’s food.41
Justice Baer concurred in the Bullock result. He wrote separately to
“emphasize certain matters implicit” in the Court’s decision. Judge Baer “em-
phasized” that, although the conviction was in all respects indistinguishable
from that of killing the deceased mother, it “should not, and cannot, be inter-
preted as an attempt in any way to define, generally, a fetus as a life-in-being
or as endorsing the notion that the interruption of the reproductive process
is the killing of human life.”42
The misfortunes of this position are legion. For one thing, it is a
frank abandonment of Roe’s Propositions Two and Three (albeit due to dis-
may upon recognizing the collapse of Proposition One as a fence between
the abortion liberty and ordinary justification principles). Another problem is
the frank rejection of the plain meaning of these statutes. These laws plainly
recognize the unborn child as a rights-bearing human being, distinct from its
mother and equal in value to everyone else (with the Roe-mandated exception
for the pregnant woman). Pennsylvania’s lawmakers “called” the manslaugh-
ter victim in Bullock an “unborn child,” which they defined as a member of
the “species homo sapiens”—that is (according to any standard dictionary):
one of humankind, a human being. In Holcomb’s case, the murdered unborn
child was simply a “person.”
The “victim” in these judicial imaginings seems to be either an in-
ternal organ of the mother or her interest in some foreign biological “enti-
ty” within her. Upon what reasonable basis these courts nonetheless affirm
“manslaughter” and “murder” convictions is unstated, much less have any of
these courts explained how those who slay indeterminate “entities” may end
up on Death Row, adjacent to those who have slaughtered real folks.
These courts’ utterances make no legal or moral sense. If Paul kills a sub-per-
sonal human entity which we could call “little Bill,” and he receives a life
sentence for doing so, on what grounds is Julie immunized from all criminal
liability when she performs the identical act?
Re-describing the unborn child as a hapless, anonymous “entity” may lessen
the burden of justification for extinguishing it, on the view that pre-personal
40
Bullock, 913 A. 2d at 213, quoting People v. Ford, 581 N.E. 2d 1189, 1201
(Ill. App. 3d 1991).
41
Boie, 2011 WL 5986774.
42
“bill” is less intrinsically valuable than little Bill. But that devaluation does
nothing to close the gap between Paul and Julie.43
The last stand against the Holcomb challenge was given expression
by Justice Baer, concurring in Bullock. His stance is, however, implicit in all
these cases and amounts to a tacit confession that Holcomb’s challenge is un-
answerable without putting the scope of Roe’s abortion liberty into play. Baer
wrote: “Roe and its progeny remain the law in this nation and any attempt
based upon the legislature’s choice of language…to undermine its constitu-
tional imperative, is unavailing.”44
This is not nonsense. It is instead the declaration of a settled deter-
mination to retain the abortion liberty established by Roe as a brute judicial
stipulation impervious to moral criticism and, even, to the constitutional re-
quirements that no state deny to any person the Equal Protection of the laws.
IV
We saw in Parts I and II that the Roe Court’s conclusion about constitutional
persons—our Proposition One—was instrumentally necessary to keep ho-
micide and justification principles away from abortion. In Part III we saw
that the instrument is broken. Proposition One is a broken instrument. Jus-
tice Baer and the other feticide courts evidently recognize that the abortion
liberty is now dangerously exposed. They recognize that it is incompatible
with laws equally protecting the lives of unborn human individuals against
the whole world minus one (the mother). They see too that Roe opened the
door to these laws, and that it offers no grounds for rebutting these laws’
equal protection implications. Though these jurists so far offer no aid to im-
43
The Roe Court and these feticide courts may countenance a scarcely stated
view that no pregnant woman should suffer unwillingly for a “theory” (of when
life begins), especially for someone else’s (a legislator’s?) “theory.” This is evidently
to suppose that the harm involved in abortion is conceptual, that someone’s intel-
lectual scheme has been assaulted (see also note 17 above). This way of thinking
about thinking (if you will) is wrong, and dangerous. A “theory” of life is what one
believes to be the case—really, on the ground, in the flesh—about people, just as a
“theory” about torture or health care or unjustified killing is what one believes to be
someone’s moral due, and what counts as an injustice against him or her. If no one
should suffer for a “theory” of when persons begin, why should they bear any sacri-
fice for a “theory” of justice, which is an “entity” even more mysterious and ethereal
than any baby in the womb? Besides, there is no good reason to arraign only those
who would protect unborn persons as speculators and “theorists,” for any account
(“theory”) about when persons begin is inseparable from an account (“theory”) of
why we consider any putative person to be a rights-bearing individual.
44
prisoned men who—according to these judges—did not kill the “persons”
they were convicted of killing, they are ready to meet the danger at hand.
They are prepared to defend abortion and to completely abandon Roe’s Prop-
osition Two. They have decided to “resolve the difficult question of when life
begins.”45 They are prepared to say that life begins at birth.
As an unadorned piece of judicial philosophizing this declaration
will not do the job it is meant to do. Idle judicial theorizing lacks coercive
authority. Even occasional authoritative judicial sorties (such as affirming a
feticide conviction) will not cabin legislators possessed of the belief that
persons begin at conception. They must somehow be disabled from acing
upon that belief. The only way effectively to do that is to declare that the
Constitution establishes that persons begin at birth.46
The flaw in this strategy is that the claim that the Constitution stip-
ulates that persons do not begin before birth is so demonstrably false, that it
is transparent for the judicial philosophizing it is meant to dress up.
Let me explain.
Justice Blackmun wrote in Roe that the “Constitution does not define
‘person’ in so many words” (l57). Indeed, it does not. He then sought to ex-
tract a definition—or at least an answer to the question about the unborn—
by scanning the Constitution for references to “persons.” Blackmun found
many such references. All of them predicated certain duties or advantages
or eligibilities or penalties of “persons.” Blackmun’s inquiry yielded such in-
formation as that slaves are “persons” (in the Fugitive Slave Clause and in
the infamous three-fifths apportionment compromise), and that only older
“persons” could hold political offices (various age qualifications for Presi-
dent and members of Congress). But these stipulations have no tendency to
“define”—specify, explain—who or what a “person” is, any more than a law
saying that “no person may obtain a driver’s license before attaining eighteen
45
In saying that these judges “have decided to ‘resolve the difficult question
of when life begins,’” I do not mean to imply that they believe otherwise. Many may
truly believe that persons begin at birth. It is apparent, however, that all of them
believe that abortion liberty entails that the law hold that persons begin at birth (or
possibly at viability, if a particular defender of abortion liberty is willing to cede reg-
ulation of that small number of elective abortions done in the last trimester).
46
Such a declaration against fetal personhood would not solve all the prob-
lems of legal and moral incoherence surrounding feticide. But settling once and for
all that the unborn are to be treated legally as pre-personal “entities”—or as “poten-
tial” life—does reduce the threat which today’s unborn victims of violent acts pose
to the abortion-liberty regime. Disconcerted judges (among others) may even see
settling the matter once and for all as a long-term solution to the question about how
to coherently and cogently justify abortion rights.
years of age” establishes that the term “person” does not include pedestri-
ans, or children.
One reason why Justice Blackmun might have chosen this gross
methodology is that he thought the downside risk was very shallow. The Roe
majority seems to have presumed that the Fourteenth Amendment extended
to everyone, once he or she was born. The first words of the Fourteenth
Amendment say: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are
citizens” thereof. If read inattentively this provision could seem to be a dec-
laration that everyone born of woman is, for that reason alone, a “person.”
But that is not what those words say or imply.
The opening words of the Fourteenth Amendment could just as
naturally be read to mean that birth is an event in the course of a “per-
son’s” life, as it would be if persons begin at, say, conception. This opening
language could also naturally be read to mean that human individuals (bi-
ologically speaking) come to be at some point prior to the emergence of
genuinely “personal” existence. In this view, the elevation of a sub-personal
human organism to genuinely “personal” status would be established by the
appearance or acquisition of certain active capacities or experiences, such as
self-consciousness. Retired Justice Tom Clark wrote (in his article anticipat-
ing Roe) that the fetus’s “inability to interact with other human beings” meant
that it lacked “life.”47
On this view, one’s body comes to be before one comes to be. The
organism precedes the person. On this view, “persons” is a qualitative term.
Then the Constitution’s “all persons born” language could naturally be read
to mean that even infants (and adults) who lack the distinctive active capaci-
ties or experiences of “persons” are not constitutional persons. These unfor-
tunates would therefore lack—on Roe’s account—any right not to be killed.
Moreover: it is only in the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses
that the term “person” appears in its full extension: no state shall “deprive
any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny
to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” (em-
phasis added). In every other instance examined by Blackmun “person” is
accompanied by an adjectival predicate. “Person” is everywhere else qualified
by some attribute, status, or achievement, such as being “free” (not enslaved)
or as “holding an office,” being convicted of a crime, or having arrived at a
certain age. Even the opening words of the Fourteenth Amendment parcel
“persons” present into “citizen” and non-citizen categories. None of this
implies, however, that persons begin at birth.
The truth is that the Constitution nowhere tells us when persons be-
gin. The Constitution nowhere tells us who or what counts as a “person.” We
47
Clarke, “Religion, Morality, and Abortion,” 5.
need (for lack of a better term right now) a “theory” of life to identify any
“constitutional person.” If detectable “distress” is to thump any “theory”
of life, then no one’s right-to-life is very secure. We shall all then reside in a
Hobbesian state of nature, in which only the presumptuous would buy green
bananas.
Roe’s methodology is deficient in another important respect. None
of the opinions in Roe v. Wade considered the voluminous record of Congres-
sional debate of the Fourteenth Amendment itself. None of the opinions
considered the surviving records—also voluminous—of the state legislative
ratifications of the Amendment. None made reference to any federal judicial
decision indicating, shortly after ratification, what the common understand-
ing of “person” was.
In fact, these records confirm the meaning of “person” evident on
the face of the constitutional language: every—that is “any,” without excep-
tion—member of a natural kind or class, namely, “person” is constitutionally
entitled to Due Process of Law and to the Equal Protection of the laws. The
evidence that Fourteenth Amendment “persons” are everyone who is truly
a person is overwhelming. “Person” here (as elsewhere) in the Constitution
references a natural kind.48
A. Congress proposes
Ohio Representative Jon Bingham sponsored the Fourteenth Amendment in

the House of Representatives. During the debate over what is now Section
One he said that its coverage was “universal.” It applied, Bingham declared,
to “any human being.” Congressman Bingham’s counterpart in the Senate,
Senator Jacob Howard, emphasized that the amendment applied to every
member of the human family: Howard stated that “it establishes equality
before the law, and it gives to the humblest, the poorest, the most despised
of the race the same rights and the same protection before the law as it gives
to the most powerful, the most wealthy, or the most haughty.” Howard told
the Senate that Section One abolished “all class legislation…and [did] away
with the injustice of subjecting one caste of persons to a code not applicable
to others.” The predominant tenor was precisely to explain “section one” in
toto in two terms: everybody (without qualification) and impartial (and cognates:
non-arbitrary, equal, non-discriminatory).
48
Available space requires that this presentation of evidence be limited to a
very brief survey. I am certain, however, that the evidence presented in text speaks
for the vast bulk of all the surviving evidence.
Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens said in 1866 during
his House campaign that Section One meant that “the same laws must and
shall apply to every mortal, American, Irishman, African, German or Turk.”49
B. The states ratify50
On 31 January 1867, Pennsylvania Representative Kinney said: “[the amend-

ments] urge that we come back to those ideas of government enunciated in
the immortal Declaration of Independence….” Later in the debate, Repre-
sentative Allen said that Section One embodied the premise of the Decla-
ration. State Senator Browne recited the language of the Declaration in his
explanation and defense of the amendment, as did Representative Mann on
the House side. The common message was that “all men are created equal.”
Representative Day urged ratification to insure that “the rights to life, liberty,
and property; in short, the inalienable rights enunciated in the Declaration
of Independence, not…be accepted as ‘glittering generalities’ but as original,
self-evident truths, fundamental in their character and essential elements in
the groundwork of our Republican system of government.”
These proponents believed that everyone had natural rights, and
they repeatedly emphasized their belief that Section One protected these
fundamental rights. Senator Bingham spoke of the “birthright of every hu-
man being,” Representative Ewing, of “the common right of humanity.”
Senator Lowry declared that “every child of God shall stand upon equality
before the law, and shall have and enjoy equal and exact justice.” Toward the
end of the debate in the Senate, Senator Browne implored his colleagues to
recognize that respect for “the rights of man is fundamental to the national
existence.”
Typical of the relevant phrases as reported in newspapers covering
the Congressional debate and state ratifications were “all men”51; “all per-
49
Thaddeus Stevens, “The Pending Canvas!” (lecture, Bedford, PA, Septem-
ber 11, 1866).
50
Here I follow closely the research findings of constitutional historian James
E. Bond. I have relied in particular upon his “The Original Understanding of the
Fourteenth Amendment in Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania,” Akron Law Review 18,
no. 3 (1985): 435. See generally James E. Bond, No Easy Walk to Freedom: Reconstruction
and Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997).
51
“XXXIX Congress—First Session,” Coshocton Democrat, January 17, 1866
(quoted in George Thomas, “Newspapers and the Fourteenth Amendment: What
Did the American Public Know About Section 1?” Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues
18 [2009]: 27n91).
sons”52; “as equals before the law of God, nations and man.”53 Indiana Gov-
ernor Oliver Morton addressed a large crowd on July 18, 1866, and declared
that Section One “intended to throw the equal personal and proprietary pro-
tection of the law around every person who may be within the jurisdiction of
any State.”54 Two years later the New York Times said: “The equal protection
of the laws is guaranteed to all, without any exception.”55
C. Judicial decision
In one important judicial investigation of who counted as a “person,” a fed-

eral judge in Nebraska considered its extension to Native Americans:
The most natural, and therefore most reasonable, way is to attach
the same meaning to words and phrases when found in a statute
that is attached to them when and where found in general use.
If we do so in this instance, then the question cannot be open
to serious doubt. Webster describes a person as “a living soul;
a self-conscious being; a moral agent; especially a living human
being; a man, woman, or child; an individual of the human race.”
This is comprehensive enough, it would seem, to include even
an Indian…. On the whole, it seems to me quite evident that the
comprehensive language used in this section is intended to apply
to all mankind—as well the relators [that is, the “Indian” party] as
the more favored white race.56
D. The logic and structure of section one
The only way to make sense of Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment
is to understand that the word “person” is an exhaustive reference to a natu-
ral kind. The most prominent historian of the Amendment’s adoption writes
that “the only effect of the amendment was to prevent the states from dis-
criminating arbitrarily between different classes of citizens. As long as a state
52
“An Important Bill,” Bangor Whig and Courier, May 18, 1866 (quoted in
Thomas, “Newspapers and the Fourteenth Amendment,” 28n96).
53
“The Situation,” New York Times, June, 30 1867 (quoted in Thomas, “News-
papers and the Fourteenth Amendment,” 30n103).
54
“Abstract of Gov. Morton’s New-Albany Speech,” New York Times, July 23,
1866 (quoted in Thomas, “Newspapers and the Fourteenth Amendment,” 29n97).
55
“The Fourteenth Amendment,” New York Times, July 31, 1868 (quoted in
Thomas, “Newspapers and the Fourteenth Amendment,” 30n101).
56
Bear v. Crook, 25 F. Cases 695 (D. Neb. 1879).
treated its citizens equally, distinguishing between them only when there was
a basis in reason for doing so, the state would remain immune from federal
intervention pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment.”57 Though there are
many other references to “citizens” in like statements, many expressions of
the basic aim establish that it was laws “equal, impartial to all.”58 But all these
aspirations would be defeated, if it were possible for those exercising public
authority to “define” some human individuals as non-persons, or to stipu-
late that some human individuals be treated as “persons” for some purposes
but not for others, so as to evade the often inconvenient moral demands of
equality.
* * *
The constitutional text, its purpose, and the history of its ratification all show
that the “word ‘person’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment” is transparent
for the truth of the matter. This does not by itself establish that the unborn
(or, for that matter, any other specifiable group, such as Armenian-Ameri-
cans, southpaws, or dwarves) are Fourteenth Amendment persons.59 It es-
tablishes that they are constitutional persons if it is the case that they really
are persons.
According to Roe v. Wade, legislators but not judges are competent to
resolve the philosophical question about persons. The evidence marshaled in
this Part shows that this is to say that legislators but not judges are competent
to determine the matter of constitutional persons; that is, they are compe-
57
W. Nelson, The Fourteenth Amendment: From Political Principle to Judicial Doctrine
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 115.
58
Nelson, The Fourteenth Amendment, 117.
59
The question of constitutional coverage today is not dependent upon what
the ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment more precisely thought—or would think
today—about the status of, say, Native Americans, Chinese contract workers, mental-
ly or physically defective children, or the unborn. (Just as it is the case, for example,
that the meaning of “religion” in the First Amendment today does not depend upon
what the Founders thought or might think of Christian Science, Catholicism, Islam,
or Native-American spirituality.) The Constitution makers (in 1791 or 1868) meant
to establish and did establish an open-ended class or kind of beneficiaries. They did
not mean to establish nor did they establish a closed aggregate list of exemplars or
members. As a matter of fact, there is substantial evidence among the records of
state legislatures which ratified the Fourteenth Amendment that they understood the
word “person” to include the unborn (see Witherspoon, “Reexamining Roe: Nine-
teenth-Century Abortion Statutes and the Fourteenth Amendment,” St. Mary’s Law
Journal 29, no. 1 [1985]: 29).
tent to ascertain the scope of that class protected by the Equal Protection
and Due Process Clauses. Any legislator who conscientiously believes that
persons begin at conception is, so far considered and by dint of a sworn duty
to uphold the Constitution, obliged to equally protect the unborn from harm.
This is not at all—again, so far considered—a matter of “reversing” Roe or
of usurping the role of the judiciary. It is rather a case of legislators making
the most sense they can of the Constitution, once Roe’s reasoning has mani-
festly imploded.
Against this duty, Judge Baer and others similarly disposed might
throw up their own declaration that the unborn possess only “potential” life,
and that the Constitution itself establishes this in-between status for the child
in utero. The evidence marshaled here shows, however, that such a declaration
could only be issued by someone culpably ignorant of or indifferent to the
truth about the Constitution. Indeed, such a declaration would be transpar-
ent for Baer-like judicial willfulness: any legislative attempt to “undermine
[Roe’s] constitutional imperative, is unavailing.”
Just so.
V. Conclusion
When the Supreme Court reaffirmed in 1992 what it called the “central hold-
ing” of Roe v. Wade the Justices adhered to very little of Justice Blackmun’s
reasoning. The decisive “joint opinion” of Kennedy, O’Connor, and Souter
instead took refuge in two facts. The first was the fact that Roe established
in 1973 a very wide abortion liberty. The second fact affirmed in Planned
Parenthood v. Casey was this: “[F]or two decades of economic and social devel-
opments people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that
define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the
availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.” The joint
opinion writers added that “the ability of women to participate equally in the
economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to
control their reproductive lives.”60
The question about unborn constitutional persons is suppressed.61
Evidently, the Roe initiative has gotten too big to fail.
Casey’s alleged necessity for abortion rights is really beside the point.
For those who believe that persons begin at live birth, Casey supplies much
60
Casey, 505 U.S. at 836. President Obama expressed the same thought in his
January 23, 2012 remarks upon the 39th anniversary of Roe: “As we remember this
historic anniversary, we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters
have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”
61
President Obama did not mention the unborn, either.
more than they need to affirm Roe’s “constitutional imperative.” For those
who believe that persons begin at conception, the million and more persons
sacrificed annually is way too high a price to pay for “backup contraception,”
a price which they know no one would endorse if it were payable in more
visible persons like you and me.
For those who are unsure or who have not yet thought about it, jus-
tice requires, not unreflective acquiescence in Casey’s claim about structural
justice (or injustice, depending on whether the unborn are really persons).
Justice requires that those undecided figure out the truth about the unborn,
and then join one or the other side accordingly.
—University of Notre Dame

The New Regime of Marriage Law:
Its Significance for Catholic Life
Joseph Boyle
During the last decade the marriage laws in many jurisdictions, including
Canada where I live, have been changed so as to allow couples of the same
sex to be deemed to be married, that is, given the opportunity to marry legally
with the result that same sex couples have the legal status—comprised of the
legal rights, liberties, and duties that together specify it—which was enjoyed
previously only by heterosexual married couples. This trend in the marriage
law in Western countries seems unlikely to be reversed in the near future, and,
indeed, appears more likely to continue—and perhaps to accelerate—in the
present political and jurisprudential climate that so favors equality. This new
legal regime seems likely to become the new normal.
This change in the law is understood by both its proponents and
opponents to be significant. Proponents highlight the greater equality created
between same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Opponents highlight the radical
implications of the new regime for the social forms within which people un-
derstand and carry out very basic relationships, including sexual and family
relationships and child rearing. These relationships play a central role in per-
sonal and communal life, and, within the traditional monotheistic religions,
including Catholicism, in understanding the relationship of human beings to
God.
As a result, Catholics, along with others sharing their evaluation of
what is at stake in marriage, have reason to take the measure of this change in
the law of marriage, its implications, and the consequences of the new social
reality caused by that change. Doing this will allow for the needed assessment
of the steps that are to be taken to deal with this new reality, particularly as it
affects their own understanding and practice of Christian marriage.
Such an assessment will rely on some of the considerations that fig-
ure in a strictly philosophical evaluation of the new regime of marriage law.
But the evaluation I undertake here begins with a premise which secular re-
flection generally should avoid—namely, the normative dominance for Cath-
olics of the Catholic teaching about and practice of marriage.
It might appear that the change in the civil law of marriage should
be of little concern to Catholics, because the new regime of marriage does
not pretend to alter the marriage practices of Catholics and other tradition-
© Joseph Boyle, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2015)

Joseph Boyle 87
ally minded people; the change is in the law, and so only in the secular prac-
tice of marriage within modern pluralistic societies. This change leaves intact
the marriage practices of the various faith communities by allowing them to
continue to marry in accord with their own practices and to refuse to give
religious sanction to publicly ratified same sex marriages.1 The proposal, in
short, is that the source for concern evaporates if one keeps separate the
requirements of the practices of communities such as religions and those of
a modern pluralistic political society.
But Catholics and others concerned about the implications of the
new regime of marriage do not deny the secular purpose of the change.
Rather, they are rightly concerned with this new legal reality as they reason-
ably are in respect to any social and legal developments in the larger society
having potential profoundly to affect their interests and practices. In this
paper, to elaborate this concern, I propose to state briefly the meaning of
the practice of marriage as understood in the Catholic Church as well as the
social reality of redefined marriage, and then put them together for careful
inspection, and finally draw some practical conclusions.
I. Catholic Teaching on Sexual Morality and Marriage
Catholicism, like other traditional forms of Christianity, holds that within

marriage—understood as an irrevocable commitment between a man and a
woman to share life completely—marital intercourse can be humanly fulfill-
ing and morally good. Moreover, it is only within that commitment to share
a common life that sexual activity is good. So, contrary to much of contem-
porary opinion, Catholic teaching holds that the sexual acts of those who are
not married are morally wrong, and that includes sexual acts between persons
of the same sex.
Clearly, the ground for limiting sexual activity to marriage is con-
nected to its reproductive potential. The relationship of marriage provides a
suitable context for begetting and for raising children, in which their rights
and welfare can be effectively fostered. The distinctively Catholic specifica-
tion of this ground is the Catholic conviction that morally good sexual acts
are limited to those that are open to procreation, in themselves apt for pro-
creation, as often formulated in Church teaching.
In short, marriage, understood as a human good that can be realized
only in a lifelong relationship between a man and a woman involving sexual
activity and the prospect of procreation, provides the context for morally
good sex because of the normative link between sexual activity and procre-
This is explicit in the Canadian statute concerning same sex marriage; see
1
Civil Marriage Act, SC 2005, c 33, pmbl. and s 3.

88 The New Regime of Marriage Law
ation. Within marriage thus conceived the spouses’ sexual intercourse serves
real human goods, most centrally the couple’s own fulfillment as parents in
intending, having and raising children and their mutual love and commitment
as spouses. The children who come to be from these acts are a fulfillment of,
and a blessing upon, the love of the spouses, and can be loved and respected
from the start.
Thus, Catholic teaching recognizes that marriage is not only about
having and raising children. The unity of the spouses in marital love is a basic
human good that can be realized whether or not they have children; it can be
fostered and celebrated by their marital sexual acts, even when they are infer-
tile and known to be. But the expression of marital love in sexual acts must
respect the procreative orientation of marital intercourse, at least insofar as
spouses should do nothing to make their marital acts infertile. That respect
for the procreative orientation of their sexual acts is required to maintain the
integrity of their love just as marital.2
The links between morally good sex, openness to procreation and
marriage are evident in the basic Scriptural sources of Christian teaching.
The Christian notion of marriage as understood by the Catholic Church in-
volves a commitment of spouses to an indissoluble and total sharing of the
whole life in which they become “one flesh.” This one flesh unity of spouses
refers to an organic activity that the spouses perform not individually but as a
cooperating couple, and that activity is procreation. They together, not he or
she, procreate. So the one flesh unity of the spouses as a couple refers not to
sexual activity as such, but to acts that are of themselves apt for procreation.3
Many couples are capable of acting with procreative intent, and
many do act with this intention (as did Abraham and Sarah even in old age);
and even an infertile heterosexual couple can act with openness to procre-
ation, in the sense specified above.
Same-sex couples cannot perform acts of this kind. This implies
that same-sex couples cannot be married within the Catholic Church. Their
sexual actions cannot be a sacrament of the relationship between Christ and
his bride, the Church: for the common organic activity of a reproducing
couple’s being one flesh is part of what represents this relationship: Christ
2
See The Catechism of the Catholic Church, with modification from the Editio Typica,
promulgated by Pope John Paul II (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 1601–66, 2331–
400 (henceforth, CCC); for a theological account that greatly influenced my summa-
ry, see Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 2, Living a Christian Life (Quincy
Il: Franciscan Press, 1992), 553–752.
3
For the notion of one flesh unity, see G. Grisez, Living A Christian Life, 570.
This conception is developed in Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P.
George, What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (New York, London: Encounter
Books, 2012), chap. 2 and appendix.
Joseph Boyle 89
and the Church do together what neither can do alone—constitute the com-
munion of the new covenant and give the worthy worship of humanity to
the Father. Thus, the incapacity of same-sex relationships to be a sacrament
of the Church is not simply a religious incapacity, because it is rooted in
the inability of same-sex couples to engage in the human action capable of
naturally expressing what the Sacrament of Matrimony reveals: the one flesh
unity of marital intercourse expresses naturally the union between Christ and
the Church.
In short, according to Catholic teaching, same-sex couples cannot
participate in the good of marriage, since they cannot perform the distinctive
acts whereby a couple becomes a one flesh unity. Similarly, the inability of
same-sex couples to engage in acts that are apt for procreation implies that
their sexual acts are wrong for the same reason that any non-marital sexual
sin is wrong: they are not marital acts. The Catholic judgment that homo-
sexual acts are wrong is not a unique taboo or prejudice about sex between
couples of the same sex, but a specification of a general moral view: that
sexual acts are good and right only when they are genuinely marital acts.
It is perhaps worth underlining what the Catholic teaching on same-
sex marriage does not say or imply: it does not deny the goodness of any
authentic friendship that may exist between partners in sexual relationships
that exclude procreation. What the Catholic conception of sexual morality
and marriage does deny is that such friendship, whether among persons of
the same or of opposite sexes, is marital. It also implies that the sexual acts
they may perform cannot be integral to, or supportive of, that friendship as a
human good that is irreducible to the friendship of pleasure. This implication
also holds for the sexual acts of heterosexual couples that involve rejecting
the procreative meaning of marriage.
Similarly, the Catholic judgment that sexual sins outside marriage
are gravely wrong applies to all such actions, not uniquely to those of same-
sex couples. Sexual sins are treated as serious because of the importance of
marriage and of the proper use of sex within the Christian conception of
human life. Marriage is especially important in Christianity for a number of
reasons: notably, the familial conception of the relationship between God
and humans; the understanding of human reproduction as cooperation in
God’s creation; and the sacramental conception of marriage and one flesh
unity as revealing the relationship between Christ and his bride, the Church.
This judgment of the gravity of sexual sin is not inconsistent with
the Catholic practice of gentle forgiveness which is built upon the recogni-
tion that the guilt, the personal imputability, of all the grave sins of the flesh
to which, in one form or another, most humans are sometimes tempted, can
be mitigated in some degree because of human weakness.
There is no ground in Catholic teaching for extending sympathetic
understanding, tolerance, or forgiveness to some apparent sinners but not to
other similar sinners as well. Perhaps Catholics have become too tolerant of
promiscuous sex, adultery, re-marriage after divorce, and so on. But whatever
the correct balance of considerations for tolerance and for disapproval of
the actions of people in the above categories (a balance that applies even
when they are not repentant), that balance should apply as well to those en-
gaged in sexual acts with a partner of the same sex.
Catholic teaching and practice also implies that those apparently en-
gaging in sexual sins, like all others doing what is objectively wrong, should
not for that reason be denied the human rights shared by all human beings.
Wrongs intentionally inflicted on others or on the public good as such may
be lawfully resisted, but only in ways that fairly respect the human rights of
all involved. This applies to those engaged in sexual relations with a partner
of the same sex. This respect for the human dignity of all—presumptive
sinners included—implies important limits on the actions that can be rightly
undertaken to oppose or curtail sexual activities between those of the same
sex.
II. The Social Meaning of Same Sex Marriage
The connections between marriage, sex, and procreation sketched in the pre-
vious section are widely rejected nowadays, and at least in some measure are
disputed by some Catholics and other Christians. This contemporary senti-
ment forms part of the context within which the new regime of marriage
has its social meaning.
Contraception and abortion have allowed heterosexual activity to be
carried on with an intention to exclude pregnancy or to end it, more easily
now than in former times. Moreover, artificial reproduction allows procre-
ation without sexual intercourse, and so allows forms of parenthood with-
out spousal intercourse. So, sexual activity and reproduction have seemed to
become less connected than in earlier times: the reproductive outcomes of
sexual intercourse can be prevented and reproduction can happen without
sexual intercourse. Moreover, prior changes in marriage law, for example, the
movement towards no fault divorce, have weakened the presumption in favor
of the permanence of marriage that is implied in the Catholic view. Exclusiv-
ity is also weakened by this trend, since it can be ended by divorce.
In spite of these factors, marriage and sexual activity (if not procre-
ation) may still seem connected, since extra-marital sexual activity is often
dangerous, exploitive, or unsatisfying. But a social and legal arrangement set
up simply as the remedy for exploitive, unsatisfying, or dangerous sex is not
Joseph Boyle 91
marriage as that is widely understood. The exclusivity of marriage and the
presumption of permanence that requires divorce to end the relationship
impose duties on parties to such an arrangement that have no evident basis
in the requirements of limiting exploitive or unsafe sex. A couple interested
in the protections afforded by these limitations but lacking an interest in an
exclusive or permanent relationship would have reason to reject public impo-
sition of such duties on them. Moreover, although clearly not marriage, this
kind of regulation of sexual behavior deals with some of what marriage law
has historically directed.
This overlap with marriage indicates an area in which concerns about
equality affect marriage, for this regulatory possibility indicates a domain of
public interest in which the benefits of the regulatory arrangement might be
of interest not only to heterosexual married couples but also to same-sex and
opposite-sex couples who are not married. Limiting the protections of these
limitations appears unfair: if the benefits of a society’s regulation of sexual
behavior are not available to those interested in same-sex relationships as
well as to those wanting heterosexual sexual activity, public arrangements for
regulating sexual activity would be unfairly denied to the former.
In short, the technological, social, and legal context for the new re-
gime of marriage law is largely set by factors unfriendly to Catholic under-
standing and practice of marriage. In particular, much in the current practice
of marriage, and in marriage law as it existed prior to the new legal regime,
erodes for many people the tight normative connection between sexual in-
tercourse, procreation, and marriage. This departure provides the immediate
context within which the new regime of marriage law has developed.
Within this context, the social reality it establishes can be clarified
by contrasting marriage with other possible legal arrangements for dealing
publicly with the fact that among those who engage in sexual relationships
many also form common households and beget children.
One possible arrangement is an abstract possibility (apparently likely
to remain abstract) favored by some libertarians: the withdrawal of political
society from marriage. This is the idea that government could decline to
provide any specific legal privileges, rights, and duties to arrangements hav-
ing specifically sexual and reproductive functions. Any recognition of such
arrangements would be at the discretion of smaller communities such as
religions or ethnic groups within the polity. By such an act political society
would simply be abandoning the field, leaving marriage practices to other
communities within it.
Such a public policy would fail to give legal force to the rights, privi-
leges, and duties of parents and so to the corresponding interests of children
that justify these duties and rights. Of course, many rights and interests of
children might be protected by other legislation such as public welfare pro-
visions. But it is difficult to imagine how such a system could work without
significant involvement by those involved in begetting and rearing their chil-
dren. This possible public policy would ignore this fact and the interest of
children in both clear family membership and the loving attention of parents.
That arrangement cannot be a just allocation of responsibilities between
families and political society. Families and their members have some rights
that political society should recognize, not pretend to create. So, political and
legal withdrawal from marriage practice is bound to be unjust. Moreover,
such a withdrawal would likely be politically impossible as well, since the ben-
efits to a trans-generational community such as political society of married
couples having and properly raising children are impossible to seriously deny
or overlook.
For such reasons as these, the libertarian proposal is open to serious
criticism and is unlikely to succeed.4 Its relevance here is that what it propos-
es would not be a redefinition of marriage but a refusal of political society
to establish public regulation of marriage practices. The new regime of mar-
riage law revises the idea of marriage for public purposes; it certainly does not
withdraw from a public regulation of marital practice.
A similar view is also worth considering: that political society and
law treat all stable households as significant social groups having all the legal
rights and privileges needed to carry out the various dimensions of main-
taining a common household. The mutual support of those cooperating in
maintaining a household and looking after one another certainly is socially
significant. Evidence for this is provided by the fact that even in cases where
those cooperating in maintaining a household do so on a strictly transient or
contractual basis, various public interests may be engaged. But in cases where
the partners are not simply in a transient house-holding relationship and are
committed to cooperating in the kinds of mutual aid associated with living
together, they embrace certain duties to one another that have social and not
merely personal significance. The mutual aid provided includes the safety and
security of the home, maintaining healthy living conditions and so on. These
basic communities and those in them clearly deserve legal recognition of the
rights and liberties required to carry out mutual aid and support. So, legal
recognition is required for such things as social and employment benefits,
appropriate roles in health care decisions, and the sharing and dividing of
assets upon the household’s dissolution.
The legal recognition of such an arrangement, as I have delineated
it, would not establish a form of marriage since that recognition does not
essentially depend upon anything sexual that might unite those in such alli-
ances, nor upon the begetting or raising of children. As noted above, these
4
For a developed refutation, see Girgis et al., What is Marriage, chap. 3.
Joseph Boyle 93
two sets of connections—sexual acts and marriage and marriage and pro-
creation—are central to the practice of Christian marriage, and to marriage
as widely understood in our society; sexual activity exclusive to the couple
remains part of the redefined marriage regime.
The recent idea of “civil unions” seems to involve much of the
legal content that defines this possibility, and clearly civil unions could exist
in a legal regime that also included the law of marriage, redefined or not.
Civil unions were suggested as an alternative to redefining marriage so as to
avoid the need to redefine it while addressing some obvious and legitimate
concerns of gay couples. The current idea of civil marriage seems unstable,
however, just insofar as it includes a sexual relationship between the parties
united as part of what makes their union eligible for legal standing. More-
over, supposing that cooperation in maintaining a household is a ground
for legal recognition, limiting the benefits of that recognition to couples in
a sexual relationship unfairly denies them to those who are not in a sexual
relationship. Members of such a household would have the same legitimate
interest for example, in being accorded rights to speak for the other members
when needed, and have the same interest in public regulation of dividing
assets when the house-holding agreement ends.
The new regime of marriage law does not simply cut marriage loose
from its legal standing, nor does it simply recognize another category for
legally recognizing the social importance of groups cooperating for basic
human purposes. As the Canadian Marriage Act of 2005 indicates, the new re-
gime means to be a regime precisely of public marriage. This is clear from the
fact that the amendment to the old law is limited to removing the limitation
to a man and a woman the parties to marriage: “Marriage, for civil purposes,
is the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others” (Part 1, 2).
The Act also provides for divorce (Part 2, 7, 7).
By allowing any two persons, not only a man and a woman, to marry,
the new legal regime preserves the connection between marriage and sexu-
al relationship. The exclusive union includes a sexual relationship. But the
change obviously alters the way in which marriage, just as sexual, is a repro-
ductive and child rearing union. It does not alter the legally recognized rights
and duties married people have because of the reproductive and child rearing
aspect of their relationship, even if these rights and duties will be activated
only if there is reproduction or its intent, or child rearing. But it does extend
to couples who can reproduce only by making use of third party gametes or
surrogacy the presumption that their union provides a proper social content
for reproduction, different in no way from those whose reproduction is car-
ried out entirely within the couple by its own act. The extension of marital
status to couples who cannot reproduce themselves, without third party gam-
etes and often other forms of surrogacy, makes normative the dissociation
of reproduction from the marital intercourse of spouses.
There are, of course, other non-reproductive ways to have a family:
both heterosexual and same sex couples can have a family by adoption or by
bringing a partner’s previously existing children into the community of the
relationship. As in the reproductive case, the new marriage law extends to
same-sex couples the presumption that their union provides a suitable envi-
ronment for child rearing, not simply the best that can be done for a child in
unfortunate circumstances.
To recapitulate: The new legal regime of marriage gives legal stand-
ing to unions that are explicitly sexual, and precisely because they are sexual.
The exclusivity of the relationship, and the permanence allowed in the easy
divorce regime that has developed, assume an intimate, committed relation-
ship. Moreover, whether or not any married couple reproduces or engages
in child rearing or does not, all of them have rights and duties connected to
reproduction and child rearing, including those establishing presumptions
that their union provides a suitable environment for reproducing and child
rearing. So, redefined marriage is a legal regime dealing with the essentials of
marriage and establishes a practice contrary to the Catholic practice and oth-
er traditional practices. It is not the neutral, multicultural compromise which
some suppose it to be.
III. The Challenge of this New Social Reality to Catholic

Thought and Practice
Catholics—whether couples, parents, or grandparents concerned for their

own marriages and those of their children and grandchildren, or priests and
bishops concerned about the people entrusted to their care by Jesus—have a
non-optional interest in preserving the reality of Catholic marriage as a live
option within the Catholic community and as an element of the Church’s
evangelical outreach. To be a live option, Christian marriage must be taught,
explained, and celebrated within the Christian community as an important
element of Christian belief and practice. These requirements will remain ab-
stract unless the essential contours of Christian marriage are clearly present
in the culture and available to those called to married life. This availability
requires the existence of practices supporting Christian marriage, not simply
decisions or rules, but elements of the fabric of a culture, expressing the
social forms within which human goods are understood, life plans articu-
lated and choices taken. Established practices provide the live options from
among which people excogitate the materials that shape their lives. Because
practices provide the horizon within which people make choices, and since
Joseph Boyle 95
that horizon can limit options or provide temptations, the theoretical clarity
achieved in clear teaching in sermons, catechisms, and marriage instruction
courses is not sufficient. Consequently, to the extent that the practice of
Christian marriage is not sharply and practically differentiated from other
forms of sexual, reproductive, and child-rearing relationships, the prospects
of Christian marriage as a live option are compromised.
Plainly, the efforts of Christians to articulate and live out Christian
married life are affected, for better or for worse, by the practices of non-ec-
clesial communities among whom Christians live. Political society is the most
important of these communities because Christians cannot avoid participat-
ing in it, and, in respect to marriage law, simply cannot avoid complying with
its relevant provisions. Consequently, legally recognized marriage practices
similar to, or supportive of, those of the Church are reasonably welcomed
by Catholics, as the marriage laws of medieval Christendom were. Those
of modern secular societies have become increasingly dissimilar to Catholic
practice, but, although Church leaders have thought they found some support
in these practices for Christian marriage, that support has grown gradually,
although perhaps imperceptibly, thinner especially during the last half centu-
ry. The recent technology-driven separation of procreation and sexual activ-
ity, together with more permissive legal treatment of divorce, have rendered
modern marriage practice even less compatible with, much less supportive
of, Catholic marital practice. That trend continues with the new regime of
marriage: public marriage is redefined with the effect of legally removing the
presumption that reproduction is to be carried out by the personal acts of
a husband and wife, but is instead properly by actions involving third party
gametes and surrogacy.
This incompatibility between redefined marriage and the Catho-
lic conception is not a strict contradiction, since the two concepts apply to
somewhat distinct realities. Granting this, the incompatibility constitutes a se-
rious challenge to Catholic practice, since what the law rules public marriage
to be will surely affect the practices of those in the polity, and these practices
will surely affect what people, including Catholics, will take marriage to be: if
marriage is widely understood as defined publically, then it will be difficult to
understand the distinctive aspects of Catholic marriage as more than a cultic
specification of marriage as widely understood. Such an understanding will
render the defining features of Christian marriage—such things as fidelity,
indissolubility, openness to children as the fruit of the couple’s lovemaking—
compelling only as one community’s way of dealing with sex and reproduc-
tion. They can hardly have the normative power of unconditional demands
of God’s command, and of the rational requirements of sharing a common
life open to new life.
This, I believe, is the most significant challenge for Christians made
apparent by the redefinition of marriage. The unique goodness of marriage
as understood in the Church can hardly be articulated or communicated
if it is practically indistinguishable from sexual unions that are essentially
non-marital. To preserve Christian marriage as a distinct social form, Catho-
lics must set more distance between secular practices and their own than has
been required since the time of the early Church. For early Christians that
distance was an obvious fact; but for us, it seems, a new pedagogy is required.
That may involve ending the cooperation with secular marriage that
has characterized Church policy in recent centuries. If Catholic clergy preside
over a wedding that is both a Catholic marriage and an instance of public
marriage, then blurring the difference between these two realities is hard to
avoid. That role of the clergy seems to harm, not support, marriage, and
should perhaps be reconsidered. The problem is not that Catholic clergy
must remain exempt from performing same-sex weddings; that, given the
Catholic conception of marriage, is the only coherent possibility. Rather, the
problem is that the functioning of Catholic clergy and representatives in any
way that suggests that Catholic marriage is a specification of redefined con-
temporary marriage communicates what is false.
Obviously, any political society can and sometimes must design and
alter certain practices by which people cooperate in maintaining households,
in having and raising children, and in dealing with sexual intimacy and close
friendship. When alterations are made that are compatible with Christian life
and faith, Christians will surely be benefitted by these political decisions, and
the Church can cooperate with or co-opt the realities they create. But when
political decisions are made that redefine practices in opposition to the rel-
evant Christian practice, they challenge Christian life by offering options that
compete with its practices.
That challenge goes beyond marriage law and marital practice nar-
rowly understood. The new law of marriage not only puts out a public law
inconsistent with Catholic practice in the way explained, but also is itself
unjust in the light of Catholic teaching on the way human life is to be trans-
mitted. To the extent the marriage law is substantially unjust, and not simply
an alternative to the Catholic practice of marriage, there are grounds for
objection to the new legal regime, and so alienation of Catholics from the
law. Giving public-spirited support to a law that is contrary to the Catholic
conception of how political society should deal with important human goods
about which there is deep division in society should become more difficult as
that opposition becomes clearer.
This argument that the new law of marriage is unjust can be ex-
plained as follows. The new regime of marriage law treats same sex-couples
equally to heterosexual couples, that is, they enjoy equally the legal status of
Joseph Boyle 97
marriage; that status is specified by the rights, liberties, and duties that togeth-
er comprise being legally married.
Perhaps, the equality achieved in the new marriage regime is meant
to serve a larger egalitarian goal than this equality of legal status; perhaps the
public affirmation of the equal goodness of same-sex and heterosexual rela-
tionships is a goal for some who support the change. However, that further
goal of some supporters of the new law of marriage cannot be the equal
benefit the new law can provide, since the new marriage law simply extends
to same-sex couple the status of being married. The rights and duties con-
ferred imply no such value judgment by political society.
Moreover, if that were the goal of the new law of marriage, its pur-
suit would be unjust, since making value judgments about sexual relation-
ships, just as sexual relationships, seems outside the proper authority of polit-
ical society. Endorsing the sexual choices of same-sex couples is not a proper
goal of public policy, because the goals of political society do not embrace
the endorsement of sexual activity as such. In addition to the difficulties of
fair enforcement of such regulation, sexual activity as such is private and
indeed intimate, not public except in some of its results. Thus societies such
as ours can and should regulate much that affects sexual activities and much
about their context and outcomes. The possible outcomes of sexual acts,
primarily bringing children into existence, call for regulation of child rearing
and reproduction, and the social arrangements of people cooperating closely
in living together raise genuinely social issues, but not the sexual acts as such,
which are themselves reasonably deemed to be private. It is not the business
of the government to approve or disapprove of people’s intimate behavior
just as such—not to approve, disapprove or rank the sexual acts of same-sex
or opposite-sex couples.
Therefore, the move to equality involved in the new marriage law
must be justified by the public need to extend marital rights to same sex cou-
ples. That need is not established. In a Catholic conception of the role of law
and political action, the new regime of marriage fails to serve the common
good, especially by overlooking the interests of children who come to be
under this regime.
There plainly is a public interest in the various forms of households
people form. Even the transient cooperation of a few people in sharing
housing is bound to attract legal regulation. But as already suggested, politi-
cal society has a more robust interest in recognizing couples and other small
groups who create and maintain a stable common household and in living
together cooperate in some of the basics of living, dealing with such essen-
tials of life as nourishment, rest, coping with illness, keeping warm, cool and
clean as required, and so on. Those cooperating in such things in a stable way
deserve public recognition of the liberties needed for the cooperation, and
likewise of rights and duties over matters such as property, health care and
the dissolution of the cooperation. This specific public interest has often
historically been addressed through marriage and its public regulation, but it
is independent of any sexual, reproductive or child-rearing activities of the
people involved. It would exist in respect to those maintaining a stable house-
hold, such as committed celibates or siblings, who had no interest in sexual
activity, reproduction or child-rearing.
The rights and duties of stable house-holders would be sufficient for
interests of those couples, same-sex or heterosexual, who have no intention
of reproducing or of raising children. Thus, to the extent same-sex couples
have no reproductive intention, to that same extent is it difficult to under-
stand the point of the equality in which same-sex advocates are interested
except as the moral endorsement of their lifestyle, which I have suggested is
an improper goal for legislation. The same reasoning applies to heterosexual
couples who intend not to reproduce.
Households in which reproduction and child rearing occur or are
anticipated engage another public interest—the interest of society in pro-
tecting children and providing support and protection for them on the part
of parents or others who raise them and by society more generally. Parents
and married couples intending to be parents have a set of rights, duties and
privileges required for this function, in addition to whatever rights they have
because they maintain a common household. These rights, duties and privi-
leges are in turn based on interests of potential or existent children, and of
the community in protecting them and guaranteeing its existence over gener-
ations.
Like other rights and duties, the marital rights and duties specifi-
cally connected with reproduction and child rearing are often inoperative,
since the conditions calling for a required action by the couple or by others
in respecting the couple’s interests as married often do not obtain. These
rights come into play in a clear way when a couple undertakes to reproduce;
and only when there is a child in the relationship—either from the couple’s
reproductive activities, or by adoption, or by introduction into the relation-
ship of a child for whom one party already has responsibility—does the full
effect of the rights and duties of marital status come into play. Clearly, the
fact that the full panoply of marital rights and duties does not come into play
throughout a marriage is not puzzling or problematic. That fact would ren-
der the legal articulation of these rights and duties problematic only if their
possession unfairly harmed other couples or compromised the interests of
children on which they are based. Thus, for example, the marital rights and
duties of infertile couples, including elderly couples, provide no challenge to
other couples or children even if the actions required by duties or required
of others by rights do not arise.
Joseph Boyle 99
But this fact about marital rights and duties, and rights and duties
more generally, does not show that they have no effect prior to the actual
existence of children. Most obviously, the requirements of exclusivity and
permanence (however weakened in modern marriage practices) impose ob-
ligations on those who are married prior to the existence of children, and
these obligations are at least partly grounded in the fact that an intimate
marital union constitutes an appropriate setting for having children. Marital
status, therefore, not only addresses the interests of children already exiting,
but those of children who will come to be. The common belief that children
are much better off if they are born in a family constituted by a married cou-
ple supports this.
Once a child exists within a relationship, the rights and duties need-
ed for proper child rearing are in play. Thus, an unmarried couple which
reproduces, including by making use of third-party donors or surrogates, will
have responsibilities to the child they bring into being, and that responsibility
calls for the parental rights and duties of marriage, if the couple accepts the
responsibility for the child, by maintaining a stable and exclusive relationship.
The same holds for a couple in which one partner brings an already existing
child into a relationship. Likewise, the parents of adopted children should
have these rights, supposing adoption by an unmarried couple were legally
possible and necessary for a child’s welfare. This consideration applies to
same-sex as well as heterosexual relationships. This is not to say that the
situation of adopted children or of those brought into a relationship by one
of the partners is ideal. But supposing the couple is functioning as parents
raising the child, it seems harmful to the child and unfair to the couple for
society to fail to recognize this important social function.
However, the requirements for protecting children’s interests when a
child is actually present do not provide a ground for ascribing marital rights
prior to the existence of a child, particularly an anticipated child. Those rights
and duties are contingent on the interests of the children who might come
to be, as already noted above in discussing the role of marital status in set-
ting the environment for reproduction. Those interests must be taken into
account, and not subsumed under those of existing children in need.
In the Catholic conception of the rights of children, the interests of
the children who will come to be are ignored by legal arrangements favoring
reproduction that is not by the personal actions of the parents, and especially
not by actions involving third-party involvement in the reproductive process.
In heterosexual marriage, children ordinarily come to be by the fer-
tile sexual intercourse of the parents. That provides for the child’s and soci-
ety’s interest in knowing who the child is from a biological point of view. The
child is from the couple, from their fertile sexual action that passes on to their
child each parent’s genetic contribution. For this reason, the aspects of mari-
tal status grounded in these interests of children are reasonably conferred on
those committed heterosexual couples who intend or anticipate reproducing.
These rights and duties facilitate the creation of the context in which chil-
dren can thrive; they do that by priviledging a form of reproduction that is
itself in the child’s interest. If, as seems to be the case, children fare best in
households in which they are raised by their biological mother and father, the
logic of applying marital rights to a heterosexual couple prior to their having
children is strengthened.
The picture becomes more complex, however, when artificial re-
production is introduced into such a couple’s reproduction. If there is no
third party provision of gametes or surrogacy, then the biological and familial
identity of the child is preserved. But there is a morally significant difference,
since the process of reproduction becomes more like a productive process
that includes the possibility that a newly conceived child will be rejected for
reasons of “quality control.” Often these techniques require the creation of
multiple embryos, only some of which will live. By contrast, in procreation
through the natural intercourse of spouses the child comes to be from the
precise action by which couples express their love and unity, the child is, in
the best cases at least, the product and embodiment of that love. This is not
so in cases of artificial reproduction, where there inevitably is some objecti-
fication of the child.5
Plainly, such concerns about abortion and about respect for human
life in its beginnings are not reflected in current legal and medical practice.
Artificial reproduction, including that involving gametes provided by third
parties, is widely available and dealt with independently of marriage law. The
result is that the child-welfare based rationale for according marital status to
heterosexual couples is weakened. But it is not overturned since very often
no recourse is taken to artificial reproduction, much less to that involving the
use of third party gametes.
By contrast, in cases of same-sex reproduction, the reproduction
cannot be the act of the couple alone; it necessarily involves artificial repro-
duction with genetic contribution from a third party. That fact is important
for the interests of potential offspring. Clarity about the new person’s iden-
tity is compromised, which often becomes a cause of concern in the lives of
5
See CCC 2274–75, 2373–79; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
“Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Pro-
creation” (“Donum Vitae”), in Origins 16 (March 19, 1987), 697–711, provides a full
account of relevant Catholic teaching on respect for newly conceived human beings
and artificial reproduction; see also Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “In-
struction Dignitas Personae, On Certain Bioethical Questions,” (June 20, 2008), 18–23,
available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/
rc_con_cfaith_doc_20081208_dignitas-personae_en.html.
Joseph Boyle 101
those produced from donor sperm or eggs. Public interest in knowing the
biological identity and lineage of individuals is also compromised. This pro-
vides a reason—in addition to the objectification and risk to the lives of the
newly conceived—why same-sex reproduction does not serve the interests
of possible children whom the couple might create. And in the same-sex cas-
es reproduction necessarily involves third party involvement. Therefore, the
marital status that allows for setting a suitable environment for a child should
not be accorded to such couples, not because they cannot use that status
for that purpose, but because political society should not be aiding them in
an effort that can be justified only by the interests of their possible children
and is not. Of course, once there is a child, the couple should have the legal
means to carry out its responsibilities to that dependent person.
To sum up this section: the redefinition of marriage cannot be sim-
ply a social accommodation, which unaffected citizens can reasonably ignore,
for the interests of some people and groups. What another person or group
values or counts as legitimate may rightly matter little to most of us in most
situations. But others’ views and values cannot be simply ignored or set aside
when one is joined with them in a community, especially one in which a
person cannot but function, such as a polity. In particular, one cannot be
indifferent to the official acts of one’s government, since these are public
acts of the political community. As acts of a community, such things as leg-
islative and judicial decisions call for our support in various ways, minimally
by obeying them as they apply to us. In the new marriage law, the challenge
to Catholic marriage is clear: it provides an alternative that can practically
compete for the allegiance of citizens including Catholics. Moreover, if one
thinks conscientiously that the law is unjust, one cannot avoid dealing with
that wrong: for one will at the very least be tempted to accept the wrong if
one has generally appropriate sentiments of identification with one’s com-
munity, and otherwise one must be prepared for more or less alienation from
one’s political community. So we can either pretend that the change is super-
ficial and accept the counsel of complacency, or we can get alienated. Nice
options. But Catholics must face them if Catholic marriage is to prosper.
IV. Some Practical Implications
So, the essential challenge Catholics may not ignore and must deal with is
grounded in a social fact: what counts as marriage in the new law of mar-
riage is not as such marriage. The challenge in this fact lies in its impact on
the Catholic community’s understanding and conduct of one of its central
practices. That challenge is evangelical, catechetical, and pastoral in the first
instance. But the challenge also requires a reassessment of the political stance
of Catholics towards a culture in which the interests of possible children are
overlooked to satisfy the interests of others.
In other words, the foregoing analysis has not been an argument in
the spirit of Christian sectarianism. Catholics understand the Christian duty
to preach the Gospel and to remind everyone of those requirements of the
natural law that protect the goods of persons that will be perfected in Christ’s
kingdom. Catholics therefore should be concerned to show the goodness of
marriage to others and to contribute to public life in ways that will lead to
social practices that can invite people into genuine marriage.
But the special challenge that has arisen, or better, has become man-
ifest, in the redefinition of marriage is that political society is taking steps
which Catholics cannot in conscience support and whose effects on Catholic
life cannot be countered except by the Church’s clarifying the reality of mar-
riage. The need to clarify the Christian practice of marriage requires actions
directed in the first instance to the Catholic community itself. The revelatory
combination of words and deeds that would be appropriate in protecting,
clarifying and manifesting the Christian community’s practice of marriage in
our social situation does not appear to exist.
Catholics believe that Christian marriage as understood by the
Church is good for everybody, not only for Catholics but for all spouses and
potential spouses, for all children, and for all the non-married with whom
families interact. Part of what is appealing about Christianity should be the
special and clear goodness of Christian marriage.
By manifesting that, Catholics will most effectively give witness that
marriage is not merely a sexually satisfying affectionate union among a com-
mitted couple, and not a social form for enabling those who wish to repro-
duce to do so on terms that overlook the interests of the children who will
come to be from their efforts. These are certainly public and not narrowly
Catholic or Christian concerns, but the relevant truths are hard to make vis-
ible if publicly articulated independently of a robust practice of Christian
marriage by Catholics. Only the manifest goodness of marriage will over-
come the widespread sentiment that Catholic opposition to the new marriage
regime is seeking to impose Catholic rules on those who wish to do as they
please in matters of sexual, reproductive, and child-rearing relationships
So, the main and immediate issue for Catholics is our own concep-
tion of, and practice of, marriage, now more difficult to communicate and
live than ever; and from this follows the clear moral implication that Catho-
lics—clerical and lay citizens, politicians and judges alike—should avoid sup-
porting the legal fiction that marriage is a stable and sexual relationship that
may be reproductive on terms set by the couples without due consideration
for possible children.
Joseph Boyle 103
—University of Toronto
Suffering, Enhancement,
and Human Goods
Christopher Tollefsen
A well-intentioned concern for the alleviation of suffering—the “relief of

man’s estate,” in Francis Bacon’s words—motivates much of modern sci-
ence, medicine, and biomedical research.1 Such commonality is possible be-
cause man’s estate is one of suffering, pervasive suffering. It includes the
suffering of disease and disability, obviously, and this is the focus of those
parts of medicine that seek to cure. But it also includes the suffering brought
about by both our mortality and our awareness of that mortality; by our
limitations in the face of nature, including our own biological nature; by our
persistently bad choices, bearing both upon ourselves and on others, and by
the corresponding bad choices of those others; and by the fact that our reach
always exceeds our grasp, leaving us frustrated in our desires and pursuits.
Suffering follows upon each of these features of our condition, and
we are quick to respond with the resources of modern medicine and biotech-
nology: we cure what disease and disability we can; we seek to provide relief
for incurable suffering; some seek to end the lives of those whose suffering
is intolerable; and the most visionary of us look to the days when the sources
of our suffering will have been more thoroughly addressed, not only by the
elimination of disease and disability, but also by the indefinite extension of
the human life span, and the vast increase of our capacities, such that all that
we desire lies within reach.
But if concern for suffering runs like a thread through the entirety
of our medical and biotechnological world, how is it that this world is so
riven with disagreement? If there is a common enemy—human suffering—
why cannot we all just rally around the flag, and defeat it together? It is surely
not the case that so-called bio-conservatives want to suffer, though this car-
icature seems sometimes to be drawn by their opponents; so why are there
bio-conservatives, people who shout “stop!” at some efforts, at least, to end
suffering?2
1
F. Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (Annandale, VA: Shenandoah Bible
Ministries, 2009), 38.
2
Bostrum and Savulescu take the “biopolitical fault line” between “trans-
humanists” and “bioconservatives” to provide both the political and intellectual
frames within which debate over human enhancement and other forward looking
© Christopher Tollefsen, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2015)
Christopher Tollefsen 105
There are certainly many reasons; but in this essay I focus on the
phenomenon and concept of suffering, and the role suffering plays in some
of the crucial contemporary disputes over medical research, practice, and
biotechnology. These disputes include not just disagreements between dev-
otees of enhancement and the transformation of human nature on the one
hand, and bio-conservative resisters on the other, but also disagreements
between proponents of embryonic stem cell use, unrestricted reproductive
freedom, and a right to die, on the one hand, and advocates for the protec-
tion of unborn human life, strictly marital/sexual reproduction, and protec-
tion for the dying, on the other. For I think underlying disagreements about
suffering are at play here too.
Those disagreements concern, in particular, disputes about the na-
ture of suffering and the means acceptable to alleviate it; disagreement about
whether aspirations to eliminate suffering entirely are reasonable or not; and
an intellectual, cultural and spiritual gap, of considerable depth, between
those who understand suffering from a religious, and often Christian, per-
spective, and those who do not. I will discuss each of these disagreements,
and will end my discussion with a treatment of the last, the upshot of which
is not just a gap, I shall argue, but a chasm, between the progressive and (at
least some parts of) the conservative wings of contemporary debate over
biomedical research.
What Suffering Is Not
As Franco Carnevale points out,3 suffering and pain are often identified as
the same reality. A similar conflation can be seen, I think, between suffering
and both the frustration of interests, and the infliction of harm. But the four
realities are not the same at all.
Two features of suffering are responsible for the misidentification
of suffering with the realities of pain, frustration of interest, or harm. The
first feature, which, as Steven Edwards observes,4 is central to Eric Cassell’s
seminal account of suffering, is its experiential aspect.5 It does not seem
possible to suffer without being aware of it in some way, and in its experien-
medical technologies are played out (J. Savulescu and N. Bostrom, “Introduction:
Human Enhancement Ethics: The State of the Debate,” in Human Enhancement, ed. J.
Savulescu and N. Bostrom [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009], 1).
3
Franco Carnevale, “A Conceptual and Moral Analysis of Suffering,” Nursing
Ethics 16 (2009): 173–83.
4
Steven Edwards, SJ, “Three Concepts of Suffering,” Medicine, Health Care,
and Philosophy 6 (2003): 59–66.
5
E.J. Cassell, The Nature of Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
106 Suffering, Enhancement, and Human Goods
tial aspect, suffering is distinctly undesirable. The second is the connection
of suffering to things going awry in some way. It seems difficult to think of
someone suffering at what is in its entirety recognized as good news; something
must be wrong with the picture for someone to be truly suffering.
The experiential aspect leads to the association of suffering with
pain. I think there are important similarities between the two, but pain is ex-
perienced by some beings that, I will suggest below, are not capable of suffer-
ing. Further, even among those who are so capable, pain can be experienced
without suffering, as is, for example, the pain of a long distance runner. And
pain is not necessary for suffering: the suffering of grief is often, and rightly,
used as a counterexample to accounts of suffering-as-pain.
On the other hand, the more objective side of suffering can give
rise to thinking of suffering as identical to harm. Some such account seems
necessary for those who wish to say, for example, that a patient in a pvs,
or a critically disabled neonate, “suffers.” Such patients are in various ways
severely deficient as regards important human goods such as health, ratio-
nal functioning, or relationships with others. But their lack of self-conscious
experience of these privations makes it implausible to say that they suffer,
except in the more primitive sense that they are passive with respect to these
harms—they “suffer” these harms insofar as such harms are visited upon
them, but they do not suffer at these harms. (I do not, however, deny that
these are harms.)
For those for whom the only good is that in which one takes an in-
terest—call this the Interest View of the human good—then all harm is frus-
tration of interests.6 So if harm and suffering are identical, and if harm is the
frustration of interests, then suffering is the frustration of interests. How-
ever, “taking” an interest seems neither necessary nor sufficient for having an
interest: trees have an interest in light, though they take no interest in it, and
we can take an interest in many things that are not in our real interests. And
harm seems much more likely to involve what is contrary to that in which we
have an interest, than that in which we take an interest. Indeed, if harm were
to be understood as frustration of that in which one has an interest, then I
would have no objection to the Interest View as such. But the Interest View
is more typically associated with the claim that infants, fetuses, pvs patients,
and so on cannot be harmed because they take no interest in anything.7
Having interests is a fundamental feature of any organism, and seems so
deeply related, conceptually, to that which is good for the organism—what
6
I have addressed the Interest View at length in C. Tollefsen, “Fetal Persons,
Fetal Interests, and Human Goods,” in Persons, Moral Worth, and Embryos, ed. S. Napi-
er (Doredrecht, the Netherlands: Springer Academic Press, 2011), 163–85.
7
As, for example, in B. Steinbock, Life Before Birth (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1992).
fulfills its natural potentialities, and thus contributes to its flourishing—that
it would do serious damage to our conceptual scheme to refuse to talk of the
harm to the plant that comes from its lack of sunlight. Nevertheless, we re-
sist, reasonably, I think, the inclination to describe the plant as suffering from
its lack of sun.8 So harm, properly understood, and suffering, are different
phenomena, though, I will argue, they are related.
Let us return to the phenomenon of pain; although different from
suffering, I think it is analogous. Pain has an obvious experiential component;
it would be silly to think someone was in pain though they had no experience
of it. But pain cannot be understood solely in terms of its experiential nature;
rather, I think it needs also to be understood functionally, in terms of the role
that it plays in a creature’s biological economy. When we so situate pain, we
see that in fact pain plays an important instrumental role in an organism’s life:
without pain, we would be ill equipped to know when our bodies were beset
by a potential threat, whether injury or illness. And pain plays an obvious
motivational role in leading us to address such threats. Animals too can expe-
rience pain, and are thereby enabled to undertake a search for a remedy for
what ails them. Organisms typically have other ways of addressing threats to
their well-being; but pain seems essential to anything with consciousness as
making present the need to do something, if there is something to be done.9
In consequence, pain cannot be considered an intrinsic evil: it is a
sign of at least some proper functioning of an organism that it experiences
pain, and without pain, important interests would not be served. Too much
pain can be debilitating, and can make it impossible even to act. But most, if
not all, features of our organic lives that serve important biological functions
can malfunction, or over-function, to the detriment of the organism. So the
fact that pain can itself bring about harm or loss of functioning, even though
it is not itself a harm, does not show that pain is intrinsically bad, or that it is
not of instrumental importance.
Suffering is similar to pain in its capacity for drawing our attention
to something that is not right, and in motivating the sufferer to correct what
is wrong. Unlike pain, however, which draws attention to that which is going
wrong as regards one’s bodily functioning, suffering draws a more cognitive
form of attention to deviations from what is normatively desirable.
Human beings are capable of recognizing, in certain experiences,
some of which involve pain or ill-health, but many of which do not, that
we are in one or another state of disharmony: whether within ourselves,
as a result of illness or wrongdoing; or with others, when our relationships
8
This objection was also made in D. Marquis, “Justifying the Rights of Preg-
nancy: The Interest View,” Criminal Justice Ethics 94 (1994): 67–81.
9
My account of pain is indebted to that in P. Lee, “Interrogational Torture,”
The American Journal of Jurisprudence 51 (2006): 131–47.
are strained or severed; or with the larger universe or its Creator, when we
are “not right” with either. In my view, suffering is in part constituted by an
awareness on our part of a harmony that should exist, whether in our phys-
ical or mental being, or our moral being, or our social relations, or between
ourselves and God, and a further awareness that that harmony is currently
being damaged, inadequately realized, or violated. In consequence, suffering
often includes feelings of alienation, of abandonment, or loss, as we feel the
absence of a wholeness that we know should characterize things, but does
not.
The difference between suffering and pain is most apparent when
the forms of harmony that are sundered do not encompass the physical or-
der: grief at the loss of a loved one, or at a fight we have had; the suffering
experienced as a result of our poor moral choices or loss of self-control;
our sense that our lives do not manifest the meaning we believe they should.
But even the suffering that is experienced at illness, and sometimes (though
not always) prompted by pain, is different from the pain itself. For there is
suffering only in the awareness that the fact of illness itself is an indication
of disorderedness, that things are not as they should be as regards my bodily
existence in the world. No animal, I believe, has this awareness; and so while
both the dog and the human may experience pain as they suffer from cancer,
only the human experiences this as out of keeping with the way things should
be with her body, and thus as suffering.
So suffering is both a cognitive experience of, and points to, the fact
that something has gone wrong. My account thus overlaps in an important
way with the harm account of suffering: suffering is not identical to the
harm that occurs in an agent’s life, but it is dependent upon that harm: it is
the cognitive experience of the harm as other than what should be. And it is
in its possessing both an experiential and an objective aspect that suffering is
thereby enabled to play an important motivational role for agents for whom
things have gone wrong: suffering can prompt, in a way that a mere recogni-
tion might not, the search for a solution to the problem.
It might therefore seem obvious that the way to address suffering is
simply to fix the harm. But identifying what it is that needs to be fixed can be
complicated, as the following points will illustrate.
First, the forms of disharmony to which we are subject are both
intra- and inter-personal. The former are realized in forms of conflict be-
tween different aspects of our self, including our practical self. Perhaps our
emotions are not well-ordered in accordance with our choices, or we are
subject to weakness of will. Intra-personal disharmony is also brought about
by illness, disability, and decline, insofar as these affect our own integrated
functioning, and we are aware of the gap between what is and what should
be. Interpersonal forms of disharmony are on display when our relations
with others are disrupted or distorted, and the communities of which we are
a part start to break down. Interpersonal disharmony also includes, in some
sense, disharmony between ourselves and whatever more ultimate source of
meaning we recognize, as when we are alienated from God, and can even in-
clude, perhaps, our alienation from the universe, brought on by our sense of
meaninglessness and contingency. But the boundaries between the intra and
the inter-personal forms of suffering we experience can be blurred, and we
can also be in error about what we are really suffering, as when we internalize,
or project, a disorderedness inappropriately.
Second, consider the various sources of suffering. We are well fa-
miliar with suffering that is brought about by realities that are not chosen
or willed, but simply happen: the suffering caused by disease, and natural
disaster, human limitation, the fact of death, and the like. But another source
of genuine suffering is in our own choices and actions. As agents, we are
often responsible for the deviation in our lives from how things ought to be
to how things in fact are, both intra- and inter-personally. Our choices lead
to disruption with friends, poor performance, inadequate self-control, and
the like. In these cases, the disorderedness of the sufferer’s choice is a con-
stitutive feature of the suffering itself. And a further source of suffering is
the choices of others; their choices can also be responsible for the disruption
that we experience, a reality that leaves us with different options from when
the choices in question are our own. As we shall see, different sources call for
different kinds of response; yet it is also true here that the boundaries can be
blurry, and that all three kinds of sources can interact in the suffering of a
person.
A third point concerns the possibility of suffering that is itself dis-
ordered. An agent’s awareness of something as normatively awry can be mis-
taken. Rejection of the Interest View of the human good means that not ev-
erything that one takes an interest in really is good, and not every frustration
of such interests really is a harm. Accordingly, I think, some experiences of a
disorder—hence some experiences of suffering—are themselves disordered.
All these points have consequences for how one should relieve some
form or other of suffering. For example, it can be tempting to relieve suf-
fering by providing or obtaining that the lack of which is frustrating the
agent. The agent wants or desires X, finds this difficult or impossible, and
experiences the frustration as suffering. But when X is in fact not something
that is good for the agent, even though she takes an interest in it, it would be
wrong to address the phenomenon of suffering by giving the agent what she
wants. That way of treating the problem thwarts an important human good,
the good of knowledge, of being in touch with the way things really are, a
good that includes practical knowledge as well, the good of knowing what is
really good, what is really to be desired and pursued.
I think the possibility of disordered suffering is overlooked, ignored,
or rejected in much biomedical literature precisely because of an adoption
of something like the Interest View. To take one example: there are desires
in the domain of human reproduction that are reasonable, the frustration
of which gives rise to genuine suffering. How that suffering should be ad-
dressed is an important moral question—surely not every way of addressing
infertility is equally reasonable. But the idea that there could be some wants
in this domain which could be disordered is given extremely short shrift by
enthusiasts of a future in which all children will be screened, altered, or cre-
ated to order; for them, the frustration of any reproductive desire at all must
be remedied.10 Suffering is not to be critiqued, but only to be fixed.
The issue of disordered suffering draws our attention to the need to
respect the objective aspect of suffering. To treat only the experiential aspect
of suffering without dealing with its root causes will often be to miss out on
constitutive aspects of our well-being. But, because the sources of disharmo-
ny and suffering are multiple, there will be no one way in which root causes
can be addressed; and it will sometimes be the case that those root causes are
ultimately out of our control. So, for example, when the source of suffering
is to be found in our choices, then we will miss out on goods such as friend-
ship, virtue, and skilled performance if we illicitly seek to make changes in
what others are doing, rather than ourselves, by failing to re-order our rela-
tionships to others, or to exercise discipline over ourselves, or to develop our
capacities and skills, so as to pursue genuine fulfillment.
On the other hand, where the source of our suffering is in the choic-
es of others, we shall go wrong by thinking either that we are the problem
or that we have sufficient power over the situation that we can effect a change
in the choices of others. One part of an adequate response to suffering,
therefore, must involve not fixing the problem, but, if possible and necessary,
removing oneself from it as a source of suffering. But where suffering is
brought about by what is both inevitable and inescapable, then suffering will
require some other response, and this raises the following question: what is the
appropriate way to address inescapable suffering?
I can here merely record what I think is the correct philosophical
answer to this question: where things are bad, and inevitably so, it is at least
better than the alternative to salvage our knowledge that this is the case.
Knowledge generally is an important good that should not be spurned for
The works of John Robertson and Ronald Green are instructive for their
10
encompassing accounts of reproductive liberty and rights, and their embrace of fu-
ture reproductive techniques; see J.A. Robertson, Children of Choice: Freedom and the
New Reproductive Technologies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); see
also R. Green, Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Choice (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2008).
the sake of merely feeling good; but knowledge of our, and the world’s, nor-
mative condition is especially important knowledge, even if not always very
pleasant. Given that we are not gods, and cannot fix everything, knowledge
of what needs to be fixed might, at any rate, be the next best thing. Igno-
rance or bliss in the face of massive disorderedness on a personal, social, and
perhaps metaphysical scale seems to me a poor solution to the problem of
inevitable suffering; a solution that achieves no real goods, while abandoning
the one, knowledge, that is genuinely available.
Nor—and I again merely record rather than argue—is the correct
response to inevitable suffering ever to end the existence of the sufferer; his
life is not the problem, but remains a great good, even when he is the subject
of many other harms. I will return to these issues in the second part of the
paper.
The effort to remind us, in talking about enhancement and biomed-
ical progress more generally, of the objective side of suffering, and the need
to avoid concentrating solely on the experiential side, is characteristic, I think,
of the strain of literature on enhancement that takes concern with authen-
ticity as its starting point. For example, The President’s Council on Bioethics
directs us both to the importance of human agency in the achievement of
human goods such as virtue and friendship, and to the importance of knowl-
edge over ignorance, even when the truths known are cold and hard.11 At-
tempts to address ruptures with loved ones by falsely coming to believe that
the loss is no big thing, to deal with past trauma by memory-affecting phar-
maceuticals, or to substitute external intervention for choice, where choice
is an important constitutive feature of some good, might alleviate suffering,
but do so at a great moral cost, in the Council’s vision. An opportunity to
repair what is broken, or to recognize and live with the truth, or to choose
and act rather than passively receive, can be lost.
Carl Elliott also points to this issue when he writes about the way
in which Prozac can alleviate existential anxiety at the cost of disabling the
agent from seeing that something is wrong:
Suppose you are a psychiatrist and you have a patient who has
precisely this sense of alienation; say, an accountant living in
Downers Grove, Illinois, who comes to himself one day and says,
Jesus Christ, is this it? A Snapper lawn mower and a house in the
suburbs? Should you, his psychiatrist, try to rid him of his alien-
L. Kass, ed., Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, A Re-
11
port of the President’s Council on Bioethics (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003).
ation by prescribing Prozac? Or do you secretly think that maybe,
as bad off as he is, he is better off than his neighbors?12
I think the authenticity approach is complementary to the focus on
suffering I am laying out here. The two approaches have in common the
thought that when suffering is “existential,” that is, constituted by human
choice, or the truth about the world, including other human beings in it, then
it is a mistake to “enhance” out of it. To do so diminishes our pursuit of the
genuine human goods that suffering directs us to—virtue, renewed socia-
bility and knowledge—by making our pursuit of such goods inauthentic in
self-stultifying ways.13
Of course, there are enthusiasts of the post-human who hope that
we can do just this where these goods are concerned. Julian Savulescu and
Ingmar Perrson, for example, have argued in a number of recent essays for
the imperative of putting “moral enhancement” ahead of other enhance-
ment agendas, such as cognitive enhancement.14 It is necessary, they think, to
improve the moral character of the species en masse, lest the few sociopaths
willing to wreak massive destruction on us have their way. Such sociopaths
are a danger, and we should attempt to thwart them as much as possible; but
moral virtue, friendship, and even, in a certain way, knowledge of our place in
the universe and acceptance of that, are all goods that require choices. They
cannot be obtained by something done to an agent, but rather are only pos-
sible through what is done by an agent. And as long as these goods depend
upon what agents choose to do, there will always be suffering, for agents, if
they can choose well, will also always be able to choose poorly, and often will
in fact do so; and there will always also be a need for suffering to provide
motivation for good, rather than bad, choices. Thus, to enhance out of this
suffering altogether is to enhance out of the possibility of these goods at all.
To sum up so far: suffering is an important feature of human life
insofar as it, like pain, directs our attention to what has gone wrong and mo-
tivates us to address that. However, suffering operates in a broader context
than pain, one which requires some sense of what normatively ought to be
the case. Suffering is instrumentally important for the achievement of human
goods; if we did not suffer at our own vice, illness, or existential predicament,
12
C. Elliott, “The Tyranny of Happiness: Ethics and Cosmetic Psychophar-
macology,” in Enhancing Human Traits: Ethical and Social Implications, ed. E. Parens
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2000), 180.
13
Of course, some suffering is caused by the consequences of bad choices: a
smoker develops lung cancer for example. Here it is reasonable to alleviate suffering
by curing the cancer, which does not in itself rectify the agent’s will.
14
I. Perrson and J. Savulescu, “The Perils of Cognitive Enhancement and the
Urgent Imperative to Enhance the Moral Character of Humanity,” Journal of Applied
Philosophy 25 (2008): 162–77.
we would often or always be unmotivated to seek to rectify these conditions.
And the rectification of such conditions resists certain kinds of biomedical
interventions, insofar as they take from us the need and ability to choose for
the sake of the goods towards which suffering directs us; or the need and
ability to integrate our judgments, choices, and emotions with reality; or the
need to honestly acknowledge the limitations to our agency; or insofar as
they invite us to eliminate the subject who is suffering.
Still, many proposed ways in which human beings might be aided
or enhanced seem to pose no threat to any of these aspects of the human
good; they pose no threat to our agency, or to our knowledge, or to the life
of those suffering. Indeed, many proposals venture to go in precisely the
opposite direction, enhancing our ability to act and know, in ways that might
only serve to enhance our enjoyment of real human goods. So before turning
to the second part of my discussion, gratuitous suffering, I want to make two
points about the range of conceivable enhancements that might seem, by the
account so far, both desirable and morally permissible.
First, many proposed enhancements envisage changing reality in
ways that my proposals suggest would indeed be permissible in themselves:
making our bodies more resistant to disease and decay, our minds less in-
clined to wander, our sensory modalities sharper: all such enhancements or
changes would make us better equipped for the pursuit of certain goods, at
least to the extent that there were no corresponding negative side effects.
So as goals of enhancement, such proposals threaten no constitutive aspect
of the human good. Nor, I believe, do any such enhancements genuinely
threaten or promise to transform human nature.15 That nature, I believe, is
adequately captured by Aristotle’s claim that we are rational animals (where
rationality encompasses practical agency) and enhancements to our bodies,
senses, and mental capacities do not result in any substantial change in the
Aristotelian sense.
But, second, if these proposals do not, as ends, seem all that prob-
lematic to me, the means that they would—at least for the most part, and
possibly inevitably—require seem very problematic indeed. Few of the pro-
posed enhancements will be achieved or implemented on a large scale, I
think, without, first, some significant amount of lethal research on embryos,
and second, some significant amount of in vitro manipulation of embryos. I
have argued at length elsewhere against both such means and shall not here
recapitulate those arguments.16 But a consequence, which provides a helpful
15
Some possibilities do threaten human goods, and thus human nature, how-
ever; see R. Anderson and C. Tollefsen, “Biotech Enhancement and the Natural
Law,” The New Atlantis 20 (2008): 79–103.
16
R.P. George and C. Tollefsen, Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (New York:
Doubleday, 2008).
segue into the second part of my paper, is this: many forms of suffering
which proponents of enhancement and post-humanism might reasonably
hope to see eliminated would, in a morally upright world, never be done away
with; and this is in addition to the forms of suffering that I have already ar-
gued are not eliminable. So suffering is, if we act morally, inevitable, a deep
feature of the human condition. And what, one might ask, can be the value
of that?
Inevitable Suffering
It seems to be a significant part of the human condition that some forms of

disharmony are beyond our repair. This is certainly true if the moral limita-
tions to the prospects of human enhancement that must be acknowledged
are honored. But what can be the value of suffering at the end of life when
there is no hope for recovery? And the suffering caused by human wicked-
ness, poverty, tyranny, and hatred, seem without any value and can lead to
despair, when one cannot see any way that such existential forms of dis-
harmony could be alleviated (especially if, like me, one rejects the Savules-
cu-Perrson approach). Despair in these cases can have further and familiar
consequences. For example, at the end of life, the belief that there is no value
in suffering can lead to a willingness and desire to end the life of the person
suffering, in hopes that they will thereby be made better off. Indeed, one
might think: if there really is inevitable, horrible, and gratuitous suffering,
then we live in a disenchanted universe, in which there can be no good other
than what we take an interest in. And if this is so, nearly everything I have
said about the alleviation of suffering must be rejected: of course we have an
interest in eliminating the experience of suffering or the life of the sufferer
if that is the best that we can do. And thus we arrive at the position of en-
thusiasts of both enhancement and euthanasia like John Harris who simply
cannot seem to believe that there are those who would rather suffer! Well, good
luck to them, Harris more or less says, as long as they do not try to stop me/
us from doing what we want!17
In this second, briefer, part of my paper, I want to raise the issue of
inevitable suffering again from a specifically religious standpoint. I think it
is important to do so, not for the resolution of any significant issue between
bio-conservatives and the bio- progressives, but rather to show just how
great the distance is between the two camps. There are two radically different
17
See, as representative of Harris’s attitudes towards euthanasia and bio-con-
servatives, respectively, J. Harris, The Value of Life: An Introduction to Medical Ethics
(New York: Routledge, 1990), and J. Harris, Enhancing Evolution (Princeton, NJ: Princ-
eton University Press, 2007).
standpoints here. From one, suffering is simply the worst thing—the worst
thing to cause, and the worst thing to allow. It is only reasonable and noble,
to those living in a disenchanted universe, to take the ultimate elimination
of suffering as their goal, or to take, where necessary, the elimination of the
one suffering as a means to that goal, provided certain conditions are met.
In the long run, therefore, the elimination of death, and the moral, cognitive,
and social enhancement of the race to the point where only happiness is on
the horizon; in the short run, euthanasia for those whose lives are too full of
suffering to be genuinely of value or who ask for it to provide relief from
their suffering.
From the other standpoint, as I shall show, these efforts, agendas,
and commitments seem, and will always seem, the grossest form of idolatry.
I have given a philosophical account of suffering, and tried to show
how it can play an important role in the practical economy of our lives. But
from the Christian standpoint, there is more to say. The Christian tradition,
drawing on revelation, teaches that we are called to a share of eternal life, in
the Kingdom of Heaven and as adopted members of God’s triune family.18
This end was not available to us in our original fallen condition: after Adam
and Eve’s sin, mankind was decisively alienated from God. In the narrative of
the Old Testament, God attempted repeatedly to overcome this alienation by
calling his chosen people back to Him and their covenant with Him; but the
reconciliation was incomplete. Thus, Christ became man to effect the deep-
est possible reconciliation between human beings and God: the Incarnation
made him one of us, his death atoned for all mankind’s sins; and by rising
from the dead, he gave new life to all. On our part, we enter by adoption into
the divine family, and share in Christ’s death and resurrection, in the sacra-
ments of Baptism and the Eucharist.
Christ’s work of reconciling God and Man was not something that
occurred simply by God’s willing that it should be so: Christ was sent by his
Father with a task, a mission, to call sinners back to his Father, a mission that
Christ worked energetically and creatively at in hopes of success. Yet that
mission was not experienced in Christ’s lifetime as a success, and without
faith, must look more like a failure.19 Christ’s constant recollection of sinful
humanity back to God was met with scoffing, with insults, and with disbelief.
Those he did attract were among the least educated and appealing of his so-
18
For an account of the Kingdom as the end of man, and discussion of how
that end is related to membership in the divine family, see G. Grisez, “The True Ul-
timate End of Human Beings: The Kingdom, Not God Alone,” Theological Studies 69
(2008): 38–61.
19
See G. Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles (Chi-
cago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), 540, for a description of what Jesus’s life
looks like if one is without faith.
ciety. Eventually, even his own people turned on him, called for his execution,
and cheered his death. The harmony he sought to bring was rejected; and the
fruits of that rejection were visited upon him physically, on the Cross, and
spiritually, as he experienced in his final hours a sense of abandonment even
from the Father, by whom he had been sent. In other words, Christ’s living
out of his mission of reconciliation was characterized by massive suffering
in consequence of an experience of many of the same sorts of failure that
characterize our own experience of suffering.
For the Christian, Christ’s suffering is seen as related to our own in
two ways. First Christ’s suffering was itself redeemed—he was made whole,
being risen from the dead in a glorified body. Thus, out of the greatest bro-
kenness—the Son of God, crucified on a Cross by his own people—was
brought forth a more profound harmony than could reasonably have been
expected or hoped for: God did something new. We are invited to share in
that new thing, the resurrection of the body and the redemption of all sin
and suffering.
Second, we are ourselves called to participate in Christ’s redemptive
work. For while the way has been paved by his sacrifice, the work of calling
forth all humanity to share in the fruits of that sacrifice is ever continuing.
Each member of Christ’s Church has been given a task, or calling—a voca-
tion. Our vocation is a path of good deeds, chosen by the Father, for each of
us to live out in following Christ, and sharing in his redemptive work.
But just as Christ’s redemptive work was unavoidably accompanied
by suffering, our cooperation with him in that redemptive work is also so
accompanied. And so, we share not just in the work, but in the sufferings of
Christ, which, insofar as they are tied to the work, can also be said to be in-
complete. Thus St. Paul can speak meaningfully of completing “those things
that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ” (Col. 1:24). Suffering on this
perspective is thus not meaningless, but is a particular way in which Chris-
tians may share in Christ’s work, a way concomitant with our following our
personal vocation. Moreover, since the communion of Christians with Christ
just is the Church, that shared communion in suffering is itself partially con-
stitutive of the Church.20
To this extent it is true that at least some bio-conservatives—those
who are Christian and are motivated by the above account—do embrace
suffering in some sense. Moreover, understanding the historical role that suf-
fering played in the redemption of humankind leaves such persons unwilling
to imagine a world short of the kingdom where suffering has been entirely
I am indebted for this insight to M.T. Lysaught, “Suffering in Commu-
20
nion with Christ: Sacraments, Dying Faithfully, and End of Life Care,” in Living Well
and Dying Faithfully: Christian Practices for End-of-Life Care, ed. R. Payne and J. Swinton
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 59–85.
eliminated; to desire such a world would seem, in some sense, to be an aban-
donment of the Savior and of the Church.
But does this account miss the point of those struck by the gratu-
itous suffering of this world? For not all suffering is brought on precisely
because of a Christian’s willingness to do the work she is called to do; some
suffer, through illness, natural catastrophe, poverty, or oppression, for no
reason, seemingly at random. What can be said of this?
A few very brief remarks must be made in response to this query.
The first is this: the entire world is broken in consequence of Adam’s fall: all
creation groans to be liberated from its bondage (Rom. 8:21–22). This claim
has an aspect of mystery to it: how has all creation been so affected by sin?
And thus there is an element of mystery to gratuitous suffering as well: this
consequence of the world’s brokenness on us also cannot be fully compre-
hended.
But, second, all sufferings are among those which Christ came to
redeem, and which he takes upon his own shoulders in taking up his cross;
his redemptive work knows no bounds, and encompasses all that is broken.
Accordingly, if Christians share in his redemptive work, they too take on the
sufferings of all, not just their own sufferings incurred as a result of follow-
ing Christ: all suffering may be seen as incurred by that vocation. The Chris-
tian vocation thus involves suffering with the suffering other, and striving
in prayer and good works to make that suffering part of the completion of
Christ’s mission.
Third, and finally: those who themselves suffer for no good reason,
in addition to knowing that Christ and his Church shoulder that suffering in
solidarity with them, can know also that they too are being asked to accept
with patience, and a knowledge that God will bring good out of all evils,
something that cannot be fully understood. This is part of the vocation of
the suffering, by the acceptance of which they complete Christ’s work. And to
reject this, by rejecting entirely the possibility of suffering in one’s own per-
son, would indeed, on the Christian account, be to lose something of value.
All these points underwrite the commitment, again, not of all
bio-conservatives, but of a significant number, to live with suffering, a com-
mitment that is necessary if one is to reject, as such conservatives do, the
means that would be necessary to even come close to eliminating suffering
as we know it. From the standpoint of secular, progressive bioethics, of
course, such a commitment looks like the height of folly and unreason. But
that simply means that there are limits to the reconciliation that philosophical
argument can bring about between these two camps.
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Quaestiones

Vol. 5, No. 2 Spring 2015

Introduction to Catholic Bioethics

The Call to Holiness and Personal Vocation

Bioethics: Ethico-Centric Interdisciplinarity

How Are We To Make Good Moral Choices and

Human Embryology: Science Politics versus Science Facts

Constitutional and Other Persons

Suffering, Enhancement, and Human Goods

Introduction to Catholic Bioethics

1) Because of God’s traits, holiness connotes moral excellence.

© Germain Grisez, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2015)

Vatican II begins its chapter, “The universal vocation to holiness in the

3) Pursuing holiness organizes one’s entire life as an answer to

Commenting on Vatican II’s teaching on the perfection of charity, John Paul

5) Several factors explain most Catholics’ ignorance

—Mount Saint Mary’s University

Interdisciplinarity: Differentiated by the Questions it Asks

If the overarching questions pertain to applied ethics, progress towards their

Four Types of Questions

I said above that the interdisciplinarity of bioethics is represented by the ques-

asks whether by their use we are “medicating away” our consciences.

A final type of inquiry involved in bioethics is what I call prescriptive-reg-

The questions raised in my opening paragraphs can now be answered. First,

relevance of analytical ethics to the problems of bioethics,” Journal of Medicine and

—St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, Denver

Natural Law andVirtue

There is today, in large measure because of the widespread influence of

—John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family

embryonic development extensively in De Generatione Animalium.

Figure 1: Preimplantation development. (A) The one-cell embryo or zygote forms at

—University of Utah, School of Medicine

Over the course of twenty years

The beauty of a rose:

Science flowers in illuminated darkness

Ephemeral constructs, compelling, beautiful

Over the course of twenty years

With open eyes, the mind finds

Yet an uncertain certainty abounds

Constitutional and Other Persons1

Reprinted and modified from G. Bradley, “Constitutional and Other Per-

Ohio Representative Jon Bingham sponsored the Fourteenth Amendment in

B. The states ratify50

On 31 January 1867, Pennsylvania Representative Kinney said: “[the amend-

In one important judicial investigation of who counted as a “person,” a fed-

D. The logic and structure of section one

—University of Notre Dame

© Joseph Boyle, Quaestiones Disputatae, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2015)

I. Catholic Teaching on Sexual Morality and Marriage

Catholicism, like other traditional forms of Christianity, holds that within

Civil Marriage Act, SC 2005, c 33, pmbl. and s 3.

II. The Social Meaning of Same Sex Marriage

III. The Challenge of this New Social Reality to Catholic

Catholics—whether couples, parents, or grandparents concerned for their

IV. Some Practical Implications

A well-intentioned concern for the alleviation of suffering—the “relief of

What Suffering Is Not

It seems to be a significant part of the human condition that some forms of

—University of South Carolina

Forthcoming for Spring & Summer 2015

Knowing the Natural Law

The Beautiful, the True, & the Good

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