Why the Bioethics Profession Isn’t Condemning Planned Parenthood

By Published on September 11, 2015

Drazen’s editorial is one small example of how highly ideological our medical intelligentsia has become—and how increasingly enthusiastic about morally questionable practices. To understand why this might be—why venerable journals like the NEJM are supportive of controversial policy agendas such as assisted suicide and medical rationing—we have only to grasp the ideas that now animate bioethics, the field that presumes to determine what is right and wrong in medicine and public policy.

Most bioethicists are reluctant to define the boundaries that designate when human life becomes morally relevant. That leaves some of the most extreme voices in the driver’s seat. Thus, the field’s predominant view endorses a discriminatory approach to valuing life (human or animal) based on each individual’s cognitive capacities. In this view, those who are demonstrably self-aware or able to value their own lives are deemed “persons.” Those insufficiently mature—embryos, fetuses, infants—or who have lost their mental capacities owing to illness or injury (such as Terri Schiavo or Alzheimer’s patients) are effectively “nonpersons,” deemed to have lesser moral worth than the rest of us.

This isn’t like arguing about heads of pins and the size of angels. Under the dominant strain of bioethics, nonpersons have no right to life. Access to abortion is not just about protecting a woman’s right to do what she pleases with her own body, although that is part of it. Abortion is also morally acceptable because the fetus is not deemed to be a person. For many in the field, this means that infanticide should also be permitted—and for the same reasons as abortion.

Read the article “Why the Bioethics Profession Isn’t Condemning Planned Parenthood” on weeklystandard.com.

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