Margaret A. Farley

When Is Termination of Pregnancy during the Third Trimester Morally Justifiable

The question whether to terminate pregnancy during the third trimester involves a moral conflict. We argue that such termination is morally justifiable if two conditions are fulfilled: first, that the fetus is afflicted with a condition that is either incompatible with postnatal survival for more than a few weeks or characterized by the total or virtual absence of cognitive function; and second, that highly reliable diagnostic procedures are available for determining prenatally that the fetus fulfills either of the two parts of the first condition. At present, one entity, anencephaly, clearly fulfills both conditions. We studied 10 cases involving fetuses with sonographically diagnosed anencephaly that were aborted during the third trimester. We also examined other fetal disorders and conclude that they do not clearly fulfill our two conditions for the justifiable termination of pregnancy in the third trimester.

New Patterns of Relationship: Beginnings of a Moral Revolution:

PATTERNS OF RELATIONSHIP between women and men are changing. Why they are changing, and how rapidly, are matters of debate. It may be that the chief forces for change are, e.g., economic. Industrialization and the accompanying trend toward smaller, independent families accounts in part for husbands having to share in domestic tasks which stand-in female members of larger, extended families would have assumed. Technological development, which eliminates the requirement of physical strength for many occupations, accounts for the decrease in sex differentiation in portions of the work force. Mass media make feminist ideas accessible to otherwise isolated women, facilitating an unprecedented broadening of the base of challenge from women no longer willing to live within past role definitions. Rising affluence eliminates the need for parents to choose to educate sons in preference to daughters. It may also be, however, that much of the change in patterns of relationship between men and women is more apparent than real. Some researchers claim, e.g., that despite the seeming loss of authority on the part of fathers, husbands still retain the preponderance of power in the family. Feminist interpreters of life in society and the churches call attention to the fact that since the 1920s women have lost more ground than they have gained in their struggle to share in the public world. Statistics show that in the United States womens growth numerically in the work force has not significantly changed their economic status vis-a-vis men. Whatever the actual changes already realized in womens and mens social roles, there can be no doubt that there is an important change in

Feminist Theology and Bioethics

The aim of this essay is to explore the connections between feminist theology and issues in the field of bioethics. I have construed the task largely as a descriptive one; that is, I shall try to indicate some basic contours of feminist theology and some ways in which the values it emphasizes bear on the vast network of ethical issues related to the biological sciences, technology, and medicine. In addition, and in order to press the question of possible contributions by feminist theology to bioethics, I shall focus on the particular implications of feminist theology for the development and use of reproductive technology.

Stem Cell Research – Religious Considerations

Scientific and technical advances continue to transform the ways we live, flourish, and die. In contemporary Western society, it is tempting to think of religion as either obstructionist or irrelevant in the face of these advances. Often when stunning new opportunities emerge for the treatment of disease and injury, religious groups (though not only religious groups) lead us into a quagmire of ethical problems. Yet religious traditions have endured largely because they help people to make sense of their lives. Major religious traditions become major because they offer some response to the large human questions of suffering and death, hope and transcendence, history and community, as well as the everyday issues of how we are to live together with some modicum of harmony and peace. Adherents to traditions of faith generally experience their shared beliefs and practices not as irrational but as part of the effort of reason to understand the actual and the possible in human life and all that is around it. Although religious sources of insight may reach beyond empirical data and logical reasoning, they need not ultimately do violence to either. As for moral discernment and deliberation, religious faith may at least shed light on questions it cannot answer on its own. A tradition is alive for believers only in so far as it can connect the faith of its past with the problems of its present and future.

The Church and The Family: An Ethical Task

There has been a kind of “turn to the family” on the part of the Christian churches in the past decade, manifesting a concern for what is judged to be the western family in “crisis.” Unfortunately, the voices of religion have had little more effect than the voices of psychology or sociology in either healing or empowering the family, and they have had perhaps less success in interpreting the difficulties which beset the contemporary family as an institution. This failure may represent simply the intractability of the problems which individuals and families face. It may also, however, represent an almost tragic perception on the part of many persons that the Christian tradition regarding family life is today too oppressive to yield a prophetic, a healing or a freeing word.

Book Review: The Ethics of Gender:

chapter discussing elements of the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the particular ways that they transcend minimalist natural law claims and offer more specific guidance in various departments of human life. The book is impressive in many respects. It is thorough and precise about the specific problems associated with natural law theory, and the chapters on relativism and historicism exhibit impressive erudition and insight. Few books on natural law grapple so extensively and fairly with objectors as does this one, and its responses are admirable in their breadth and depth. There are some drawbacks to the book. Conspicuously absent is any discussion of evolutionary theory and its challenge to natural law theory. The reason why natural human inclinations possess normative moral import, according to a Thomistic account of natural law, is that they represent the ordering wisdom of God. If the natural inclinations are products of evolution occurring over millennia, however, and if the evolutionary process is correctly characterized as random and haphazard (which most evolutionary theorists claim), with no discernible divine direction involved, then the theological connection between the natural inclinations and divine providence is severed, and along with it any notion that the natural inclinations possess normative moral import. In my opinion, evolutionary theory strikes at the heart of a Thomistic account of natural law. It would have behooved S. to address this issue at length. Another shortcoming is the opacity surrounding S.’s bifurcation of the moral sphere into two dimensions: natural law, which supports the indispensable minimum for human existence; and formal revelation, which grounds an ethic of perfection that encompasses far more aspects of human life. Throughout the book, S. wants to limit the sphere of natural law only to those issues that bear upon the necessary minimal conditions for human existence. Yet in his discussions of practical moral issues he consistently goes beyond this limitation and renders moral judgments on these issues, based on his notion of natural law, without considering relevant biblical material. Thus, I wonder whether his bifurcation is artificial, as well as how these two spheres relate in practice. Despite these drawbacks, S. makes a number of valuable contributions to contemporary natural law theory. While the book is a demanding read, requiring considerable background in natural law theory, it is worth the effort.

WHEN ARE THIRD TRIMESTER PREGNANCY TERMINATIONS MORALLY JUSTIFIABLE

ABSTRACT Termination of pregnancy during the third trimester presents a moral conflict. The authors argue that third trimester pregnancy termination is a morally justifiable procedure if two conditions are fulfilled: 1) the fetus is afflicted with a condition that is either a) incompatible with postnatal survival of more than a few weeks, or b) characterized by the total or virtual absence of cognitive function; and 2) highly reliable diagnostic procedures are available for determining prenatally that the fetus fulfills either condition 1a or 1b. At the present time, one entity, anencephaly, clearly fulfills both conditions. Our experience with ten fetuses with sonographically diagnosed anencephaly, aborted during the third trimester, is presented. Ethical considerations in third-trimester pregnancy termination for anencephaly and other fetal defects are discussed.

Fragments for an Ethic of Commitment in Thomas Aquinas

The questions which have arisen with such urgency in our time regarding the meaning of commitment, the possibility and wisdom of commitment, the obligations of commitment, are not the questions of Thomas Aquinas. In fact, of all the problems in relation to which we might try to assess the significance of Aquinass teachings for contemporary ethics, the problem of commitment seems the least likely. In the works of Thomas we find no detailed treatment of interpersonal commitment, no theory of prereflective commitments, no careful delineation of social contract theory, only passing references to promise-keeping and only minimal concern for the role of commitment in marriage and in friendship. Even where attention is given by Aquinas to the instance of commitment which is the religious vow, there is little to satisfy a quest for a full and adequate ethic of commitment. Nonetheless, it is precisely the questions which are today raised about commitment that may serve to test the continuing fruitfulness of the ethical theory of many philosophers and theologians of the past and, perhaps, especially of Thomas Aquinas. For to open the question of commitment is to find ourselves in the midst of the traditional ethical and metaethical questions of freedom, of obligation, of interpersonal love, of moral goodness, of human temporality, of human destiny. It is, moreover, to find these questions situated within continuing questions about the nature of the human person, the validity of social institutions, the adequacy of theological formulations regarding the relations among human persons and between human persons and God. It has become commonplace, for example, to ask whether commitment constitutes an unwise limitation to human freedom, whether it functions to undermine and to stifle human love rather than to foster it and help it to be true, whether it must always be provisional at least in its incarnation in