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Pillar

The Human Person

The first pillar of a decent society is respect for the human person, which recognizes that all individual human beings have dignity simply because of the kind of being they are: animals whose rational faculties allow them to know, love, reason, and communicate. It also recognizes that human beings are persons, members of the human family who flourish in a community that respects their fundamental rights and who long to discover transcendent truths about the nature of reality.

On Dying Well: Ben Sasse and the Vocation of Suffering 

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The Evolving HHS Mandate: A Play in Three Acts (So Far)

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A play in three acts, each consisting of a meeting between the CEO of a religious charity and the agent representing her health insurance company.

Women and Abortion: Getting to the Heart of the Matter

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Pro-abortion groups promote stories that present abortion as an empowering experience, but those in post-abortion recovery ministries know a different reality. Many women and men are deeply wounded by their experience of abortion.

Renting Wombs is a Human Wrong, not a Human Right

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The Council of Europe has rejected a report recommending the legalization of surrogacy. This decision is a victory for human rights: Despite arguments that surrogacy is “compassionate,” its history of contentious litigation and documented human rights abuses make clear that it is a grave wrong.

The Ideological Diversity of the Pro-Life Movement

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Daniel K. Williams’s Defenders of the Unborn offers an in-depth history of the pro-life movement in the years before and after abortion’s legalization. Williams does his readers a great service by highlighting the ideological diversity of pro-life activists throughout the movement’s history.

IVF, Designer Babies, and Commodifying Human Life

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IVF has created more problems than it has solved, especially helping to create the mindset that human life is a commodity to be used and manipulated. This mindset has been instrumental in paving the way for the approval of research involving the genetic modification of human embryos in the UK, research poised to usher in a host of ethical and legal issues we can only begin to imagine.

Moral Complicity at Court: Who Decides?

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American history is rife with examples of conscientious objectors whose right to religious freedom was respected, even if it conflicted with governmental interests. The Little Sisters of the Poor deserve the same respect, and all Americans who value religious liberty have the duty to stand with them.
Public Discourse

Freedom of Conscience and New “LGBT Rights” in International Human Rights Law

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“LGBT rights” are being elevated above conscience rights when the two come into conflict—but this trend is to the detriment of human rights, which can stand the test of time only when they are grounded in transcendent, fixed authority.
Public Discourse

Ex Machina, Artificial Intelligence, and the Ethical Dangers–or Benefits?–of New Technology

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Very soon, the classic scenarios of artificial intelligence from science fiction will become reality. Recognizing the moral and ethical concerns such achievements will raise can help us begin to address them. Whether the development of new technology will be good or bad will depend on how we use it.
Public Discourse

Immigrants, Assimilation, and Religion

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Our nation faces an assimilation crisis as many Middle Eastern immigrants reject our culture, which they perceive as libertine. We could improve the situation through a renewed commitment to our founding principles, particularly the reunification of faith and reason.
Public Discourse

Setting the Record Straight on Texas’s Abortion-Safety Law

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The Supreme Court is a vote away from unraveling years of incremental pro-life legislation as it examines the case surrounding Texas’ abortion-safety law HB2. But holding the abortion industry to a high standard of care should not be controversial, as the health of real women is at stake.
Public Discourse

Girls Just Want to Be Born

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The global pro-life movement will continue to speak out and defend the girl child. We must work to oppose all acts of gender based violence, protect women’s and girls’ lives, and seek consistent non-discriminatory life-affirming laws and policies.
Public Discourse

The Hippocratic Oath: Quaint Relic or Solemn Vow?

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Despite its naysayers, the original Hippocratic oath remains an enduring icon of medical ethics because it eschews the unbound and nebulous principles of modern bioethics in favor of traditional virtues and transcendent truths.
Public Discourse

The Fight over Abortion in the UN’s New International Development Agenda

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Pro-life countries must arm themselves against the UN’s intense pressure toward population control, while at the same time supporting and holding the UN accountable to its legitimate development objectives.
Public Discourse

What Conservatives Can Learn from the Liberal Case against Assisted Suicide

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A new book written from a liberal humanist perspective provides insight for conservatives who want to make a more broadly compelling case against euthanasia. It also suggests a basis for an effective coalition between liberals and conservatives.
Public Discourse

From “Physician Knows Best” to the Cult of Autonomy: A Seismic Shift in Bioethics

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As American medical ethics shifted from a model of paternalistic beneficence to a model of patient autonomy, self-determination became enshrined as the paramount value—ironically to the detriment of our society’s most vulnerable members.
Public Discourse

Margaret Sanger’s Eugenics Heyday in the Federal Government

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On both the state and federal level, long-acting reversible contraceptives are being pushed as a means to reduce the birth rate of the poor. These initiatives will have a disproportionate impact on the childbearing of racial minorities.
Public Discourse

“Medical Futility”: Help or Hobgoblin in End-of-Life Discussions?

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Because it is often used imprecisely, the term “futile” can cause confusion and exacerbate conflict in disagreements about end-of-life care. It is more helpful for patients, families, and physicians to discuss the benefits and burdens of medical procedures.
Public Discourse

50 Years of Sex Changes, Mental Disorders, and Too Many Suicides

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Early pioneers in gender-reassignment surgery and recent clinical studies agree that a majority of transgender people suffer from co-occurring psychological disorders, leading tragically high numbers to commit suicide. Outlawing psychotherapy for transgender people may be politically correct, but it shows a reckless disregard for human lives.
Public Discourse

Life, Liberty, and Modern Bioethics: A Reply to Cooper and Nuckols

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In its zeal to deal with suffering, modern bioethics fails to account for the rights of the sufferer. There is no law that can legitimize taking a life too soon.
Public Discourse

Balancing the Rights of Patients and Doctors: Another Perspective on a Tragic Case

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When assessing the case of Christopher Dunn, in which some key details remain hazy, we ought to give his physicians and hospital ethics committee the benefit of the doubt.
Public Discourse

Liberty and SOGI Laws: An Impossible and Unsustainable “Compromise”

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Big Business and Big Law are using Big Government to impose their cultural values on small businesses and ordinary Americans. Indiana does not need to create new laws on sexual orientation or gender identity for people who identify as sexual minorities to be treated justly. The best way to protect all Hoosiers is for Indiana not to adopt a SOGI policy at all.
Public Discourse

A Tragic Case of Modern Bioethics: Denying Life-Sustaining Treatment to a Patient Who Wanted to Live

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In deciding to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from an alert and cognizant patient who was pleading for his life, a Texas hospital’s ethics committee stole from him the two most fundamental rights enumerated in our Constitution: life and liberty.
Public Discourse

Europe, Multiculturalism, and Nihilism

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Europe can only emerge from its downward spiral by putting religious faith and respect for history and tradition at the center of our communal and personal lives.
Public Discourse

No Room for Sanity at the Inn: Stifling Democratic Debate over Same-Sex Marriage

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Democracy and common sense teach us to seek the truth by listening to one another. If we will not even provide a room for people who want to talk with one another because we do not like what they say, then democracy is impossible.

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