Religion, reproduction and public policy: disentangling morality from Catholic theology

Dahl, Edgar

doi:10.1016/j.rbmo.2010.05.019

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Volume 21, Issue 7 , Pages 834-837, December 2010

Religion, reproduction and public policy: disentangling morality from Catholic theology

Institute of Medical Ethics, University of Muenster, Muenster, Germany

Received 24 March 2010; received in revised form 5 May 2010; accepted 26 May 2010. published online 02 August 2010.

Declaration: The authors report no financial or commercial conflicts of interest. This paper was delivered at Third International Conference on Science and Ethics of Human Assisted Reproduction and Stem Cell Research, 1–2 November 2007, Berlin, Germany.

Abstract

Many people look to religion to help resolve the serious moral and legal issues associated with assisted reproductive technologies. Doing so presupposes that religion is the cornerstone of ethics, but this assumption is not well founded. While various faiths are entitled to articulate their views on matters of human reproduction, the contradictions involved in doing so make it unwise to rely on religion in the formulation of law and policy. These contradictions – such as the indeterminacy about what revealed truths means – make moral secular philosophy a better guide for the protection of human welfare.

Keywords: church, ethics, public policy, religion, reproduction, state

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Edgar Dahl is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine and a lecturer at the Institute for Medical Ethics at the University of Muenster. He trained in philosophy and biology, and specialised in bioethics and earned his PhD with a doctoral thesis on ethical issues in xenotransplantation. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Human Bioethics at Monash University, The Hastings Center in New York and the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. His research interests include moral philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of law, philosophy of religion, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary ethics and bioethical issues such as physician-assisted suicide, preconception sex selection and human genetic enhancement.