Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 098: Universal Morality and the Natural Law

When functioning properly, this moral compass (a.k.a. our “conscience”), not only encourages us from within to “do good and avoid evil,” but also sets off internal alarm bells when we are tempted to carry out evil acts.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 097: Is It Wrong for Me Now to Buy Health Insurance?

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Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 096: Perversions and Purposes in Human Sexuality

The deep-seated sex instinct moves men and women to embrace great sacrifices, such as are required in marriage and procreation, for the fulfillment of this remarkable human drive.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 095: The Morality and Wisdom of Incremental Legislation

Many commentators have observed how dramatic progress has occurred in changing public opinion on abortion in the United States in recent years because of this incremental approach.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 094: Going Too Far with DNR?

These judgments are tricky to make, because the specifics of each case differ, and those specifics change with time and disease progression. DNR’s should be put in place only when the circumstances warrant it, that is to say, on a case-by-case, patient-specific basis.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 093: Facing the Downstream Effects of Same-Sex Parenting

A compassionate society seeks to help and assist orphaned children, but no reasonable society intentionally deprives those children of a mother or a father.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 092: Debating Birth Control in the Public Square

If it is true that contraception is often harmful to individuals and families, to marriage and to women’s health, then it clearly has broader public policy implications, and is, objectively speaking, not merely a “personal matter.”

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 091: The Pill as Health Care?

The Pill, when chosen strictly for these contraceptive purposes, fails the test of being healthcare because it does not heal or restore any broken system of the human body. On the contrary, it actually breaks a smoothly working system — the reproductive system — by disrupting the delicate balance of hormonal cycles regulating a woman’s reproductive well-being and fecundity.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 090: Taboos and Tattoos

…Questions about vanity lead to similar concerns about modesty. Modesty in its essential meaning involves the decision to not draw undue attention to ourselves.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 89: Thinking Clearly About Consciousness and Abortion

Regardless of whether we might or might not be able to manifest consciousness at a particular moment (as when we are asleep, under anesthesia, in a coma, or growing at early timepoints in utero), our humanity is still present and deserving of unconditional respect.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationNovember 30, 2012Embryos, Abortion

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 088: Talking Americans Down from the Assisted-Suicide Ledge

Suicide hotlines are open 24 hours a day because we seek to prevent as many deaths as we can. We treat as heroes those who walk along bridges or climb tall buildings and try to talk people down.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 087: Deciding About Dialysis

Weighing benefits and burdens is at the heart of the question of starting, continuing or stopping dialysis.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 086: Loving Those with Disabilities

The true measure of the greatness of a society will always be in terms of how it treats its weakest members, and the authenticity of our own love will be measured by our compassion and acceptance of the disabled and the powerless.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 085: The Embryo That Grew Up

Upon fusion with a sperm, however, the egg qua egg no longer exists, and an embryo, a human being at the earliest stage of his or her existence… will be simultaneously engendered and launched onto the trajectory of ‘growing up,’ representing a new entity that can live for more than a hundred years.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationJuly 30, 2012Embryos

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 084: What About Ventilators?

When should we place a loved one on a ventilator? The answer depends on whether the use of a ventilator in a particular case can be considered ‘ordinary’ or ‘extraordinary.’

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 083: Powerlessness, or the Hidden Power in Our Suffering?

By spiritually embracing in God that specific path to death, our freedom is elevated to new heights; indeed, we “achieve control” in the most important way possible, through willed surrender and radical gift in our innermost depths.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 082: Black & White or Gray?

…when we sort out the relevant details and seek to purify our own motives, and when we become willing to submit to the binding character of absolute moral prohibitions, the gray haze can dissipate, and we can see the real moral lines that were there all along.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 081: Federal Mandates and the Crushing of Religious Freedom

Critics of every persuasion quickly condemned the HHS mandate as a particularly egregious violation both of religious freedom and the rights of conscience.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 080: Nickels, Dimes and Family Size

At times, then, our justifications for avoiding a pregnancy may merit further reflection and scrutiny on our part.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 079: The Premarital Sex “Test Drive”

A sexual ‘test drive’ mentality is essentially exploitative in nature, reducing a potential spouse to someone who is easily replaced by a ‘better’ model. When we take a car for a test drive, and don't like it, we can just return the keys and move on to the next model. But people are not cars that we can just exploit and cast aside.

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