Ethics in Religion Commons^™

Quality Of Life, Sanctity Of Creation: Palliative Or Apotheosis?, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This Article will suggest an approach to facilitate decision-making where the concepts of quality of life and sanctity of life appear to clash. It is hoped that a reconciliation of these two ideas will provide an alternative to the increasing federal intervention in the process of family decision-making vis-a-vis handicapped infants.

The construct will combine deontological standards with situational, or consequential, ethics. This unique synthesis will then be placed within a sphere of expanded family advisers-medical, social, spiritual, legal, etc.-who are called into being with the birth of a genetically defective newborn. The force of the construct arises from the …

Sexuality, Privacy And The New Biology, George P. Smith Ii, Roberto Iraola

Scholarly Articles

This Article investigates two alternative methods of human conception: Specifically, the artificial insemination of unmarried women for either their own personal purposes of pregnancy without the benefit of marriage or as surrogates for infertile women. Surrogation is evaluated, then, as an analytic complement to the sexual privacy of women who are expressing their sexual freedom through unconventional means to become pregnant.

The conclusion drawn is that an unmarried woman’s fundamental right to privacy or procreation does not encompass a right to either artificial insemination or surrogation. To allow unfettered access to these two methods of conception would - quite simply …

The Razor’S Edge Of Human Bonding: Artificial Fathers And Surrogate Mothers, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

This article will examine the plight of the artificial father and surrogate mother by focusing on how the law views artificial insemination. From this focus, the author will explore alternative responses for dealing with problems involving surrogate mothers, donor insemination, and infertility and show their symbiotic, if not direct, relation to the problem of infertility.

Intrusions Of A Parvenu: Science, Religion, And The New Biology, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

Both religion and the law must seriously consider artificial insemination so that dogma and laws are formed to incorporate the process. Science has brought the procedure to a society unequipped to deal with the religious and legal implications of birth through artificial insemination in any of its forms. Not all religions or jurisdictions can be expected to treat the process exactly alike, but there must be an effort on the part of each organization to react to the situation facing them so that their citizens will have some guidance.

Section II of this article illuminates the path science is on …

The Promise Of Abundant Life: Patenting A Magnificent Obsession, George P. Smith Ii

Scholarly Articles

The purpose of this essay will be to explore the parameters of the scientific imperative to explore truth. The scope of this inquiry is shaped in part by the United States patent laws and administrative interpretations and, more specifically, by the United States Supreme Court in its recent holding allowing the new forms of life created in a laboratory to be patented. The ultimate purpose of this piece, then, is to refute the arrogance of power theory expressed as being implicit in the investigations of the vast potential for the positive achievement of good through harnessing the "New Biology." Thus, …