The permissibility of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide is actively debated worldwide. Writers such as Ruth Macklin and Steven Pinker have argued that dignity is not a useful concept in bioethics and cannot be used legitimately by either side in the debate. In this essay, the author expands on a defense of the human person based in dignity and rooted in the work of Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) and Gabriel Marcel. He defends the idea, introduced by John F. Crosby, that a human person has dignity because of her “unrepeatableness,” a concept known as incommunicability. The author argues that the concept of dignity—far from being abstract, useless, or dangerous, as some writers have recently claimed—is a practical and vital protection for persons. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.3 (Autumn 2010): 529–546.

The HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine Gardasil (Merck & Co.) was licensed for use by the FDA on June 8, 2006. The Centers for Disease Control and major physician professional organizations have recommended routine universal vaccination in young girls. However, questions remain regarding the safety and efficacy of the vaccine in this age group. Also, vaccine use will not eliminate the need for routine Pap screening, and it may not decrease future cervical cancer rates. This paper surveys the natural history of HPV infection as well as the controversies surrounding the vaccine’s use as currently recommended. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.3 (Autumn 2010): 459–469.

In his book Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics: A Virtue Approach to Craniotomy and Tubal Pregnancies, Martin Rhonheimer offers a virtue approach to vital conflicts in medical ethics. These vital conflicts are those medical situations involving pregnancy in which, if nothing is done, both the mother and her child will die. When analyzed by means of his understanding of the virtue of justice, Rhonheimer concludes that the so-called direct killing of children in the womb or in the fallopian tube is permissible since the child’s death is neither a means to saving the mother’s life nor an end sought for itself and is, therefore, not unjust. Because such a death is not unjust, it is also not a moral evil since only an unjust death can be called a moral evil. The author offers a critique of both his understanding of justice and what constitutes the “object” of the moral act. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.3 (Autumn 2010): 471–480.

Genetic engineering promises to change the human condition by changing certain human characteristics. Why not take control of such changes and secure positive outcomes, making use of our progressing knowledge about human genetic make-up and our increasingly sophisticated skills? This paper elaborates the meanings of the word “change,” a cornerstone of the enhancement debate, focusing not on technicalities of genetic engineering but on philosophical implications of its implementation. The paper then turns to some of the complexities and difficulties of the debate. Finally, it takes up a strictly philosophical investigation of what we mean by “change” as far as a basic structure of the human being (the human person) is concerned, and examines what conclusions can be drawn for genetic enhancement. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.4 (Winter 2010): 723–740.

Researches over many years have examined whether levonorgestrel emergency contraception (Plan B, Next Choice) has a postfertilization effect. In a recent article in the Catholic Health Association’s journal Health Progress, Sandra Reznik, MD, asserts that “levonorgestrel acts to prevent pregnancy before, and only before, fertilization occurs.” A companion article by Ron Hamel, PhD, argues for the moral certainty that Plan B is not an abortifacient. Reznik fails to address the principal model supporting a potential postfertil­ization mechanism of action, specifically, that preovulatory administration of levonorgestrel disrupts the delicate ratio of estrogen and progesterone essential to healthy endometrial development and induces the equivalent of luteal phase insufficiency, thereby jeopardizing implantation. Hamel’s argument for moral certitude is similarly inadequate. This article critically reviews both articles and the sources on which they rely. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.4 (Winter 2010): 741–772.

Since America was founded, faith informed its moral genius. From the Declaration of Independence to the work of Martin Luther King Jr., belief in God positively shaped the moral awareness of the nation. This article suggests that political discourse emerging in the middle of the twentieth century, which effectively prohibits the mention of faith in serious political conversation, is having devastating consequences on the moral capacity of contemporary society. It suggests that such faith-less political discourse contradicts America’s founding logic. This article also reasserts the Catholic claim that truth can be known and that in the face of faith-less political discourse, Catholics are morally bound to seek complete truth, which requires faith. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.4 (Winter 2010): 687–693.

In the 2008 Instruction Dignitas personae (The Dignity of the Person), the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith presented once again the teaching of the Church on in vitro fertilization. Much of this teaching was contained in the earlier Instruction Donum vitae (The Gift of Life, 1987), but the new document brings the teaching of the Church up to date. Because the teaching is not accepted in the secular scientific community and is often unknown in the Catholic community, this article explores the process of IVF, the view of the Church concerning it, and the fundamental principles underlying the Church’s teaching. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.4 (Winter 2010): 709–722.

At a Body Worlds exhibition, human corpses are displayed as museum pieces for educational purposes. The bodies are preserved by plastination, a technique invented by Gunther von Hagens and engineered at the Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg, Germany. Because of the wide controversy surrounding the displays, it is necessary to study how justice obtains. Understood from a Thomistic perspective, the use of a plastinate by Body Worlds is unjust because it dishonors the donor. The goodness of that use fails in terms of object, end, and circumstance. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.4 (Winter 2010): 667–676.

Life-support technology may become a death-prolonging horror, and some people may fear that an over-intellectualized interpretation of traditional moral teaching has led us astray from what a compassionate God wills for the dying. The author addresses this fear. Those who defend “orthodox” teaching on end-of-life issues have a serious obligation not to obscure the compassion implicit in the traditional distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means. There is no medical or moral obligation to prolong dying or make it more burdensome with interventions that offer little benefit, and there is nothing immoral about pain relief. What is prohibited is killing: any action or omission that has the express or implicit purpose of ending a life. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.4 (Winter 2010): 695–705.

The approach of liberal political philosopher John Rawls on the issue of abortion relied on his construct of “public reason,” in which citizens in a pluralistic democracy restrict the use of deliberative arguments and reasons that are drawn from their “irreconcilable comprehensive doctrines,” including their religious worldviews. From this reasoning, Rawls concludes that a just society is one that includes the legal right to abortion. However, the author contends that the use of another of Rawls’s theories—“justice as fairness”—leads to an alternative conclusion: that legally sanctioned abortion represents the unjust persecution of a specific population—the unborn. Further, this same theoretical approach supports the egalitarian application of Catholic social thought to protect the fetus as a uniquely vulnerable position in society. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 10.4 (Winter 2010): 677–686.

The author uses the central insight of the principle of double effect—that the distinction between intended effects and foreseen side effects is morally significant—to distinguish contraception from natural family planning (NFP). After summarizing the contralife argument against contraception, the author identifies limitations of arguments presented by Pope John Paul II and by Martin Rhonheimer. To show that the contralife argument does not apply to NFP, the author argues that agents do not intend every effect that motivates their actions. This argument supplements the action theory of Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and other proponents of new natural law theory. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.1 (Spring 2011): 83–97.

The doctrine of double effect has a firm, respected position within Roman Catholic medical ethics. Neil M. Gorsuch, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, believes that this doctrine also enjoys a central place within U.S. law. This essay examines and assesses Gorsuch’s thesis. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.1 (Spring 2011): 31–40.