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Disputes in Bioethics tackles some of the most debated questions in contemporary scholarship about the beginning and end of life. This collection of essays takes up questions about the dawn of human life, including: Should we make children with three (or more) parents? Is it better never to have been born? and Why should the baby live? This volume also asks about the dusk of human life: Is "death with dignity" a dangerous euphemism? Should euthanasia be permitted for children? Does assisted suicide harm those who do not choose to die? Still other questions are asked concerning recent views that health care professionals should not have a right to conscientiously object to legal and accepted medical practices. Finally, the book addresses questions about separating conjoined twins as well as the issue of whether the species of an individual makes a difference for the individual’s moral status.
Christopher Kaczor critiques some of the most recent and influential positions in bioethics, while eschewing both consequentialism and principalism. Rooted in the Catholic principle that faith and reason are harmonious, this book shows how Catholic bioethical teaching is rationally defensible in terms that people of good will, secular or religious, can accept. Proceeding from a natural law perspective, Kaczor defends the inherent dignity of all human beings and argues that they merit the protection of their basic human goods because of that inherent dignity. Philosophers interested in applied ethics, as well as students and professors of law, will profit from reading Disputes in Bioethics. The book aims to be both philosophically sophisticated and accessible for students and experienced researchers alike.
"Disputes in Bioethics is accessible yet scholarly, and a very fine orientation around many key issues in contemporary bioethics." —Studies in Christian Ethics
"When a book treats bioethical questions in a manner consistent with the Catholic sanctity-of-life ethic, it deserves readership. Christopher Kaczor’s is such a book." —National Catholic Register
“I really learned from Disputes in Bioethics, not only about the issues but also from the clarity, deftness, concision, comprehensiveness, and biting wit of the arguments.” —Matthew R. Petrusek, co-editor of Value and Vulnerability
“Disputes in Bioethics is a real contribution to the field of analytic ethics, in defense of the Christian faith’s insistence that human beings are worthy of respect from conception until natural death.” —Kevin Flannery, S.J., author of Action and Character According to Aristotle
"Disputes in Bioethics addresses pressing topics in the medical arena. The book will interest students and scholars in medical ethics, nursing ethics, and moral theology." —Thomas Cavanaugh, author of Hippocrates’ Oath and Asclepius’ Snake
Christopher Kaczor is professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University. He is the author of a number of books, including A Defense of Dignity: Creating Life, Destroying Life, and Protecting the Rights of Conscience (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013).