IVF after cancer w pre-cancer sperm - Page 6

silentstar · #76 Mar 31, '11, 10:05 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Victorious

Has it occurred to anybody in this thread that all this wrangling comes of trying to rely on purely human resources to solve this problem? You cannot do evil in order to achieve good. Once you reach the point where you can only achieve good by sinning, that is how you know you have reached the end of your rope. That is the time to prostrate yourself before God and abandon yourself to Him in complete trust.

Or do we think He is somehow not omnipotent enough?

Taken to the extreme, that means you would not help persecuted people during a war or other oppressive action such as genocide, if that involved doing evil against the perpetrators. For example a minority group were the victim of genocide due to racism or religion, and I was helping them get out of the country by falsifying passports. Suppose I was caught by an official who said he would let me go free in return for me turning over the information on the 30 people whose passports I had falsified. When I had done that so they could leave the country, otherwise they would be the victims of certain death. If the choice came down to killing the official who was perpetrating genocide, and giving him information and letting 30 innocent victims (or even 1 victim) of genocide to die, I would kill the official assuming there were no repercussions. If I ran that kind of risk I'd be willing to risk suffering for myself but not the deaths of other people.

This scenario is extreme but in this age of terror it is not as extreme as it should be. Some people do face choices about (usually lesser) evils, like betraying family members who are involved in terror so they can't carry out plots to harm innocent people. The terrorists in the family might suffer serious consequences, but without informants there might be more terror attacks than have happened so far.

ClamDigger · #77 Mar 31, '11, 10:06 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by silentstar

Please show me where the Church states as fact that existing embryos must be destroyed. There are times when evil must be done to achieve good. Killing someone before he kills your child is one of them. It is wrong, as I understand it, to choose a wrong path of action and justify it b/c it has a good result. However there are times when the only choices involved are terrible. In that case I'm not sure the principle of not doing evil to achieve good applies as strongly, b/c there is not freedom of action.

**1ke** · #78 Mar 31, '11, 10:06 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by ClamDigger

but it's also a sin to not allow an embryo the chance at life.

No, it isn't.

ClamDigger · #79 Mar 31, '11, 10:09 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Victorious

I never said the Church states that.

Then what would you suggest we do with the embryos that have already been created? It is a sin to leave them to die and it is a sin to implant them, so what do you suggest be done: sin by leaving them to die or sin by allowing them to form into a life?

ClamDigger · #80 Mar 31, '11, 10:09 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1ke

No, it isn't.

So then using the morning-after pill must not be a sin?

**1ke** · #81 Mar 31, '11, 10:10 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by silentstar

Please show me where the Church states as fact that existing embryos must be destroyed.

No one has stated this as the Church's position.

Quote:

Originally Posted by silentstar

There are times when evil must be done to achieve good.

Au contraire. The Church does have a definitive teaching on the morality of acts:

1755 A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself (such as praying and fasting "in order to be seen by men"). The object of the choice can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety. There are some concrete acts - such as fornication - that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil.

1756 It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by silentstar

Killing someone before he kills your child is one of them. It is wrong, as I understand it, to choose a wrong path of action and justify it b/c it has a good result. However there are times when the only choices involved are terrible. In that case I'm not sure the principle of not doing evil to achieve good applies as strongly, b/c there is not freedom of action.

Your example is not an example of doing evil so that good may come of it.

Victorious · #82 Mar 31, '11, 10:11 am

Here is the relevant passage from the actual magisterial document (as opposed to mere debating within the National Catholic Bioethics Center):

Quote:

It has also been proposed, solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are otherwise condemned to destruction, that there could be a form of “prenatal adoption”. This proposal, praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life, presents however various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above. [Read the whole thing to find out what the problems mentioned above are.]

All things considered, it needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved. Therefore John Paul II made an “appeal to the conscience of the world’s scientific authorities and in particular to doctors, that the production of human embryos be halted, taking into account that there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons”.

Seems pretty clear to me!

silentstar · #83 Mar 31, '11, 10:13 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1ke

No one has stated this as the Church's position.

Au contraire. The Church does have a definitive teaching on the morality of acts:

1755 A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself (such as praying and fasting "in order to be seen by men"). The object of the choice can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety. There are some concrete acts - such as fornication - that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil.

1756 It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.

Your example is not an example of doing evil so that good may come of it.

so it sounds like you are saying 'doing evil to achieve good' means doing acts that the Church says are always objectively wrong b/c they will or may produce good outcomes. That is different from what I thought you and victorious meant.

ClamDigger · #84 Mar 31, '11, 10:14 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Victorious

Here is the relevant passage from the actual magisterial document (as opposed to mere debating within the National Catholic Bioethics Center):

Seems pretty clear to me!

What do you suggest we do with the embryos that have already been formed?

Victorious · #85 Mar 31, '11, 10:16 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by ClamDigger

Then what would you suggest we do with the embryos that have already been created? It is a sin to leave them to die and it is a sin to implant them, so what do you suggest be done: sin by leaving them to die or sin by allowing them to form into a life?

I don't see what we can do. But then, neither could soon-to-be-blessed John Paul II, so I am in good company.

**1ke** · #86 Mar 31, '11, 10:17 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by ClamDigger

So then using the morning-after pill must not be a sin?

(a) The morning after pill does not kill an embryo. Its immorality lies elsewhere.

(b) The topic of this discussion is frozen embryos, not embryos inside their mothers

Dignitas Personae makes it clear that implanting or adopting these embryos is morally problematic and makes equally clear destroying embryos through experimentation and stem cell research is not a moral option.

From Dignitas Personae, there is "no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons".

Natural death occurs if the embryos are taken out of cryostasis (or if such facilities experience some sort of power failure or disaster) or if the embryos remain frozen more than 5 years.

Mary Gail 36 · #87 Mar 31, '11, 10:20 am

I hate to debate these things...but here goes...

Quote:

Cryopreservation is incompatible with the respect owed to human embryos; it presupposes their production in vitro; it exposes them to the serious risk of death or physical harm, since a high percentage does not survive the process of freezing and thawing; it deprives them at least temporarily of maternal reception and gestation; it places them in a situation in which they are susceptible to further offense and manipulation.[36]

The majority of embryos that are not used remain “orphans”. Their parents do not ask for them and at times all trace of the parents is lost. This is why there are thousands upon thousands of frozen embryos in almost all countries where in vitro fertilization takes place.

19. With regard to the large number of frozen embryos already in existence the question becomes: what to do with them? Some of those who pose this question do not grasp its ethical nature, motivated as they are by laws in some countries that require cryopreservation centers to empty their storage tanks periodically. Others, however, are aware that a grave injustice has been perpetrated and wonder how best to respond to the duty of resolving it.

In the very specific case of Serap's sister in law, we are not discussing frozen embryos that are frozen perpetually and orphaned. We are discussing a mother impanting her own children.

Ths sinful part was the IVF and the freezing. I don't believe that rescuing one's own children is sinful.

Victorious · #88 Mar 31, '11, 10:22 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by silentstar

so it sounds like you are saying 'doing evil to achieve good' means doing acts that the Church says are always objectively wrong b/c they will or may produce good outcomes. That is different from what I thought you and victorious meant.

Yes. Objectively evil acts are always and everywhere wrong, and may never be done even to bring about a good result. The Church says that all of these laboratory techniques of conception and implantation are inherently and objectively evil, regardless of the purpose. That is why we cannot adopt frozen embryos.

**1ke** · #89 Mar 31, '11, 10:22 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by ClamDigger

Then what would you suggest we do with the embryos that have already been created? It is a sin to leave them to die and it is a sin to implant them, so what do you suggest be done: sin by leaving them to die or sin by allowing them to form into a life?

They have already "formed a life" as these are already-conceived babies.

It is a sin to destroy them and, based on Dignitas Personae, implanting them is not a moral option.

As Dignitas Personae indicates, there is no good solution.

One could consider allowing them to die without experimentation or direct action to kill them-- they are no longer viable after (I believe) 5 years in storage due to deterioration of the cells.

**1ke** · #90 Mar 31, '11, 10:23 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mary Gail 36

I hate to debate these things...but here goes...

In the very specific case of Serap's sister in law, we are not discussing frozen embryos that are frozen perpetually and orphaned. We are discussing a mother impanting her own children.

Ths sinful part was the IVF and the freezing. I don't believe that rescuing one's own children is sinful.

The implanting is also sinful.