Bioethics and Human Life

BIOETHICS

Utilitarianism

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Consequentialism

Takes into account consequences that are different to life’s support.

CHARACTERISTICS OF BIOETHICS

• Positive: related to personal conditions and circumstances.
• Negative (prohibition): some are non-conditional and others are relative (avoiding less evil).

GENERAL BIOETHICAL PRINCIPLES (Belmont’s report)

• You shall represent human life at all levels.
• Respect human dignity.
• Both an embryo and an adult person must have independence of their life.
• Procure the good and avoid malfeasance.

HUMAN LIFE

• ‘A human being is a rational individual’.
• Rational Soul: men need to think in order to live (thinking is fundamental).
• Body: relation between human intelligence and body morphology.

ABORTION

• The death of an embryo’s life.
• The Church considers any form of abortion a crime.
• The Church encourages families to go through any difficulty for their unborn life, as it is a blessing.
• Science & philosophers say: when there is another DNA (different from mother and father) there’s a separate human being that will self-develop like a person.
• A human embryo has a human soul from the moment of conception. Therefore, he/she has the same right to human life.
• The State cannot recognize the practice of abortion because no one can kill innocents.
• CASE OF POSSIBLE DEATH OF THE MOTHER WHILE GIVING BIRTH: the only legitimate measure is to try to save both lives and help the weakest.
• CASE OF HIGH RISK OF MOTHER’S DEATH WHILE PREGNANT: only due to an important illness or the fact that a mother’s operation might endanger the child’s life – the treatment does not mean to kill the child.

INVITRO FERTILIZATION (IVF)

Fertilization of an egg/eggs outside the body.

1. The Church doesn’t like the word ‘artificial’ because everything that is not natural has a moral connotation and raises a particular problem.
2. That it doesn’t follow a natural process.
3. The problem is that it’s conceived outside the maternal uterus.
4. Having children is a gift that nature and God gives you. If God made you sterile it’s because of something.
5. It is morally accepted, through deep individual analysis of each case.

EUTHANASIA

‘Good for death’ in Greek (gentle death). Types:

1. ACTIVE: overt, deliberate killing of a patient. i.e. injecting a morphine overdose.
2. PASSIVE: withdrawing treatment while the disease process takes its course of death. You don’t ‘kill’, you let him die.
3. PHYSICIAN ASSISTED SUICIDE: variation of voluntary active euthanasia. The patient causes his/her own death.