Bioethics Yearbook: Theological Developments in Bioethics: 1992–1994

300 Pages·21.145 MB·English

by  B. Andrew Lustig (auth.), B. Andrew Lustig (eds.)

Bioethics Yearbook
VOLUME 5
THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN BIOETHICS:
1992-1994
Bioethics Yearbook
VOLUMES
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
Bioethics Yearbook
VOLUME 5
THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN BIOETHICS:
1992-1994
THE CENTER FOR MEDICAL ETHICS AND HEALTH POLICY
Baylor College of Medicine
The Institute of Religion
Rice University
Houston, Texas, U.S.A.
Edited by
B. Andrew Lustig
Editorial Advisory Board
Baruch A. Brody
H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.
Laurence B. McCullough
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-90-481-4802-8 ISBN 978-94-017-0904-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-0904-0
ISSN 0926-261X
Printed on acid-free paper
AlI Rights Reserved
© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
OriginalIy published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
B. ANDREW LUSTIG
Recent Trends in Theological Bioethics 1
JOSEPH BOYLE
The Roman Catholic Tradition and Bioethics 11
COURTNEY S. CAMPBELL
Ecclesiology and Ethics: An LDS Response 33
CROMWELL CRAWFORD
Hindu Developments in Bioethics 55
ELLIOT N. DORFF
Review of Recent Work in Jewish Bioethics 75
JUDITH A. GRANBOIS AND DAVID H. SMITH
The Anglican Communion and Bioethics 93
GEORGE KHUSHF
Bioethics and the Pentecostal Traditions: Christianity as an
Alternative Healing System 123
PAUL NELSON
Bioethics and the Lutheran Communion 143
GAMAL I. SEROUR
Islamic Developments in Bioethics 171
ROBERT L. SHELTON
Biomedical Ethics in Methodist Traditions 189
PAUL D. SIMMONS
Baptist-Evangelical Medical Ethics 221
M. GENE SMALLEY
Jehovah's Witnesses: Help with Bioethical Issues 259
ALLEN VERHEY
Bioethics in the Reformed Tradition 269
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 283
GENERAL INDEX 285
INDEX OF AUTHORS, BOOKS, AND DOCUMENTS 289
B. ANDREW LUSTIG
RECENT TRENDS IN THEOLOGICAL BIOETHICS
The Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, in conjunction with Kluwer
Academic Publishers, is pleased to offer this fifth volume in our Bioethics
Yearbook series. The Yearbook series has alternated between a biennial volume
summarizing recent theological discussion on specific topics in bioethics and
a biennial volume summarizing recent regional bioethics discussion. Volume
One surveyed theological developments from 1988 until the end of 1990.
Volume Three summarized theological discussions from the beginning of 1991
through 1992. The present volume surveys theological developments from the
beginning of 1993 through 1994.
In this volume, as in Volumes One and Three, we have invited scholars
of significant reputation to chronicle and, if they wish, to interpret recent
bioethics discussions in a large number of religious traditions. Volume Five
includes surveys of developments in the following traditions: Roman
Catholicism, the Latter-day Saints, Hinduism, Judaism, the Anglican
Communion, Pentecostalism, Lutheranism, Islam, Methodism, Baptist
Evangelicalism, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Refonned Tradition. Regrettably,
we were unable to solicit timely commentaries for Volume Five on recent
Eastern Orthodox and Buddhist developments, but we have, for the first time
in the Yearbook series, included essays on Pentecostal and Jehovah's Witness
discussions.
As with earlier volumes, in order to retain a uniformity to the
discussions within Volume Five, as well as among volumes in the series, we
have asked our authors to order their remarks, whenever possible, according to
the following list of topics: new reproductive technologies, abortion, maternal
fetal conflicts, care of severely disabled newborns, consent to treatment and
experimentation, confidentiality, equitable access to health care, ethical
concerns raised by cost-containment measures, decisions to withhold or
withdraw life-sustaining treatment, assisted suicide and euthanasia, the
definition of death, and organ donation and transplantation. Each author has
addressed only those topics on the list that have been discussed in his or her
tradition within the two-year time period under scrutiny. In addition, authors
were free to conunent on issues not on the list in a fmal broad category, "other
. "
Issues.
B. Andrew Lustig (Ed.), Bioethics Yearbook: Volume 5,1-9.
el 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
2 B. ANDREW LUSTIG
Each biennial theological Yearbook is an effort to meet the need for a
single volume that provides comprehensive and timely summaries of
discussions in various religious traditions on specific topics in bioethics. We
have commissioned our expert commentators to survey recent trends and
developments in their traditions - both formal statements by official bodies
and study groups, as well as less formal discussions that reflect the intellectual
currents animating the continuing dialogue on particular issues. At the same
time, we again left it to the discretion of our authors to place 1992-1994
developments in broader context by including those background documents and
discussions they deemed necessary to clarify recent concerns. This latitude is
especially important in the case of our first time contributors - George Khusf
on Pentecostal bioethics and Gene Smalley on Jehovah's Witness
developments.
Besides offering up-to-date summaries of recent discussion, our
authors have also provided useful bibliographical references to an extensive
number of documents, many of which would otherwise prove difficult for
individual scholars to know about, much less to assemble. In reading about
developments in various traditions, readers will perceive characteristic
similarities and differences in denominational approaches taken in basic
theological methods as well as conclusions drawn on specific topics.
Methodologically, there are differences in the degrees of bindingness associated
with various documents, which reflect underlying differences in ecclesiology,
pneumatology, and relevant sources of theological and moral authority. There
are also significant differences both between and within denominations in
discussion on particular issues. These intra denominational differences may
reflect shifts in emphasis at the level of method. They also may emerge in
response to new empirical developments; i.e., novel circumstances in research
and therapy may move theological ethics from broadly theoretical musings to
focused analyses of new possibilities.
On the one hand, as I have noted in earlier volumes, these similarities
and differences, both between and within traditions of theological reflection,
may lead interested readers to muse about larger matters of fundamental
theology to account for such agreement and divergence. Yet an immediate word
of caution remains in order. A yearbook, if successful, achieves the important
but limited purpose that its name implies. Volume Five, as other volumes in the
Bioethics Yearbook series, is offered primarily as a summary and analysis of
recent ethical discussion on specific topics. For scholars and others interested
in more fundamental matters, this volume may serve the exemplify theological
tendencies in concrete fashion. But no single volume in this series should be
misinterpreted as an effort to discuss issues of foundational theology or
ecclesiology in a sustained or systematic way.
RECENT TRENDS IN THEOLOGICAL BIOETHICS 3
On the other hand, from the vantage point of having edited three
theological volumes in the Yearbook series, it may be useful at this juncture to
consider, at least briefly, how communities of faith have addressed particular
issues during the past six years, in order to assess how discussions between and
within commwrities of faith reveal features that differ from secular approaches.
While it is to be expected that fundamental differences in moral method will
often lead to different conclusions among traditions in their judgments on
particular topics, it is equally clear that theological conclusions, although
nuanced differently among communities of faith, often reveal broadly shared
characteristics that stand in stark contrast to the moral minimalisrn at work in
many secular approaches. Such similarities should not be all that surprising. For
the convictions at work in theological ethics often eventuate in a discernible
consensus among theological traditions that nonetheless remain distinct in
matters of ecclesiology and authority. Theological arguments will often
function in richer and more robust fashion than the lowest-common
denominator, procedurally driven arguments common to secular perspectives.
Let me consider, then, four topics - new reproductive technologies
and practices, abortion, physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, and equitable
acc.ess to health care - which have generated significant discussion both within
and across theological traditions during the last six years.
A. New Reproductive Technologies and Practices.
Among Christian denominations, only Roman Catholicism, as officially
presented in recent docwnents, proscribes both artificial contraception and new
reproductive practices on act-centered natural law grounds ([2], [3]). While
many theological perspectives view procreation as a general mandate, specific
acts of artificial contraception are deemed by most Christian traditions (e.g.,
[17], [19]), along with Hinduism [6] and Islam ([10], [11]), as responsible
choices that can be exercised by spouses.
Even within the Roman Catholic tradition, significant intramural
discussion proceeds concerning the sources of authority that should be
determinative in moral discussions. The so-called "inseparability principle",
which sees conjugal intimacy and procreative potential as features necessarily
present in each act of marital intercourse, leads to uniform judgments against
artificial contraception and most practices of assisted reproduction. Ongoing
debate within the Roman Catholic scholarly community, however, concerns the
fundamental status of the inseparability principle itself and differing judgments
about its relevance as a moral criterion. Thus, a specific set of issues -
contraception and new reproductive practices - exemplify the robust character
of the debate within this tradition and between it and others - about the
4 B. ANDREW LUSTIG
normativity of the natural as a source of moral authority, about the way that the
overall context of marriage is itself a relevant contributor to moral judgments
about particular acts, and about the legitimacy of different voices, especially the
experience of married persons, in helping to determine the "sense of the
faithfuI" that has been consistently affIrmed since the time of the Second
Vatican Council.
Among other Christian denominations, as well as in the Hindu, Jewish,
and Islamic communities, there are commonly voiced reservations regarding the
legitimacy of new reproductive practices, such as artificial insemination by
donor (AID), that involve donor gametes. Although the authoritativeness of
particular conclusions is subject to question, a generally negative judgment is
made regarding the acceptability of third-party involvement because of its
potential disruptiveness of the marital bond (e.g., [7], pp. 90-91) and/or
because of the right of the newborn to knowledge of hislher "legitimate
ancestIy" ([10], p. 110). Commercial surrogacy is widely rejected, although the
brunt of the opposition is often directed more forcefully at the commercial
aspects of that practice than its intrinsic features.
Because new reproductive practices and techniques often involve the
technical manipulation of early embryos, the moral status of embryos emerges
as an item of significant discussion and debate. Roman Catholic ([2], [3]) and
Eastern Orthodox COIllIllClltators [9] share the judgment that any destruction of
embryos constitutes a species of homicide. For other religious traditions,
especially Protestant Christianity and certain strains of Judaism, the
manipulation of embryos prior to implantation may well be acceptable,
although the specifically theological grounds for that position will require
greater elaboration in future discussion. Some statements distinguish sharply
between the research use of "spare embryos" initially intended for in-vitro
fertilization from the use of embryos created expressly for non-therapeutic
purposes, with the latter proscribed. Other statements, however, allow the use
of embryos for research, regardless of the circumstances of their provenance,
for up to 14 days, until the formation of the primitive streak. The latter position,
which closely parallels a number of recent secular recommendations, is linked
to a general acknowledgment that embryos have some "moral status" and are
deserving of "moral concern and respect". What is not well-developed, in terms
irreducible to utiIitarianism, is the moral force of such phrases or their specific
theological warrants, if any.