Posted on 08/11/2004 6:34:48 AM PDT by NYer
If you are not Roman Catholic, then you don't have to be concerned with the Church's position on IVF. Otherwise, just look at the stem cell debate to wonder why people have issues with IVF and the industry itself.
If that is so, the case should be filed under "tough luck".
Only if the parents instruct them to flush them all. I know one Christian couple who is in the process of having their third child and will keep implanting their frozen embryos until there are none left. One can also choose to donate the frozen embryos to another infertile couple looking to have a child. IVF doesn't have to be selfish but the clinics simply make it so easy to discard the unused embryos that many people do so (it's like an abortion with no surgery). It's the destruction of embryos that is wrong.
It's astoundingly selfish from my POV because there are thousands of EXISTING children who need homes and families, and because I don't feel the need to have a "blood child" of my own.
Life is full of selfish acts. Using your income to make yourself comfortable rather than donating it to feed starving children in a third world country is selfish, too. This line of reasoning isn't all that different from the reasoning socialist would use to justify controlling our incomes.
I don't see the inherent problem with helping the sperm and egg get together. In the case of the couple mented above, the husband lacks the plumbing to get his sperm out of his testicles but everything else is fine. One also needs to realize that a substantial number of fertilized eggs within a woman never reach the embryo or implantation stage, either, so simply citing the number of embroys that don't survive doesn't really mean anything. But I do fully agree that purposeful destruction of unwanted embryos is the moral equivalent of abortion and I consider abortion to be infanticide.
In the big scheme of things, I think IVF is a mixed bad. On the one hand, a substantial number of embryos are destroyed by parents who don't want them and that can make people more indifferent to abortion. On the other hand, when parents have a picture of their child as an embryo as the first picture in their child's photo album, I can't help but think that really brings home the message that a child is alive and important from fertilization. The people undergoing IVF place a lot of hope in those fertilized eggs and I think that helps emphasize where the life of a child really begins.
How do you know that oral sex, for example, is unnatural?
As I said above, being corrected on the history, my response is "tough luck". Sometimes, you just can't do everything you want to do. Unfortunately, looking at Baby-Boomer "Me" society today, this idea is utterly foreign to many people.
Too destroy some human lives for the purpose of achieving other human life is nothing short of utilitarian, a philosophy put into practice by the Nazi's.
Too have engaged in such a process is gravely wrong, so grave most people who have done it, are not going to admit it.
How could a PROCESS that results in the procreation of my beautiful children be so wrong? It is.
It is the same kind of mentality that begets the idea that it would be okay to forcibly take one person's internal organ's to save or improve the life another.
Won't happen you say?
It is already occurring in a number of countries around the world.
Once a society begins to accept some utilitatian ideas, it isn't long before others follow.
Just because God tells humans to multiply, it does not follow that IVF or any other form of reproduction is ethical. That it is a non sequitur. If we were to use your reasoning, the rapist could use this same divine command to justify his actions when such actions led to conception. The immorality of IVF is not principally based on the fact that many embryos are lost in the process. Even if all the embryos could always be saved, IVF would still be unethical, for other reasons.
When you spend a lifetime with your child, that one act of sex that preceded him becomes as important as a mote of dust.
Take that kind of reasoning and apply it to rape, and you will quickly see that it fails. Whether or not the importance of the manner in which a child was conceived becomes smaller in one's mind as the child grows up and one becomes further removed from it in time, that does not change the morality of the act. If the child was conceived by an act of rape, the act of rape was still wrong, no matter how important or unimportant that seems 30 years later. The question is not how important it is to do what is ethical. The question is whether IVF is ethical.
- A8
You are the one who brought up semen. I was just explaining Catholic teaching about morals in marriage.
It seems like you're scared that engaging in oral and/or anal sex will turn you gay. Don't worry, unless you have those type of tendencies already, it won't turn you into a poofter.
Scared? No. I firmly believe that men who indulge in these homsexual acts with women are already homosexual wannabees. The desire to be a girly-boy was already present when you first indulged in it. The indulgence didn't make you a girly-boy.
So, then, you would have no problem French-kissing another man. A mouth is the same whether on a man or woman. Right?
No, I would, because french-kissing is something that should be reserved for one's spouse. However, other types of kissing are perfectly acceptable as signs of normal affection to either a man or woman. I kiss my dad and father-in-law.
Sure. Vice is what makes the world fun. I'm quite proud to consider myself a hedonist.
Well, I had you pegged from the get-go.
I consider it a lot more fun to love my wife and not have to fear diseases or damnation.
What other reasons?
It is so good to hear from H the C.
I may be wrong, but I believe Lance wasn't married at the time, and may not even have met his future wife.
Let's assume for the moment that the above is true. He just knew that he wouldn't be a bio father unless he did something about it before the operation.
I'm assuming this doesn't change the answer.
So let's go further if you've got the patience for another nuance:
-- What if science figures out a way to extract sperm from the male without masturabation (instead of taking blood, "taking sperm")? I don't think the procedure exists today, but if Lance had that done would he be wrong?
I would think yes on account of natural law (no procreative and unitive act was involved), but the power of the logic weakens, especially if his sperm is inserted into the wife's womb.
Thanks for the answer.
I had no idea. I bet a lot of Catholic husbands in difficult conception situations don't even know that perforated condoms exist.
Ok, manly-man, is it only "climaxing" in a woman's mouth the part you have trouble with? Anything short of that is ok? [This isn't a churlish question, I have a point to make]
Um, no. You said:
The purposeful ejaculation of semen outside of one's wife's vagina is always a mortal sin.
So, who is bringing up semen?
No. I firmly believe that men who indulge in these homsexual acts with women are already homosexual wannabees.
Your definitions are as flawed as your "logic." A sexual act between a man and a woman is, by definiton, heterosexual.
In any event, the vast majority of American men indulge in these so-called "homosexual acts." So, following your logic, America is a majority-homosexual country. That makes YOU the deviant.
I consider it a lot more fun to love my wife and not have to fear diseases or damnation.
It really does come down to fear for your ilk. Fear of sex. Fear of disease. Fear of "damnation."
The fear of STD's is especially prevalent among religious people. It's almost clinically phobic.
Obviously you are too busy or unwilling to read the rest of the thread or fail to see any shades of gray in the posts.
I have NEVER written a word in support of destroying fertilized eggs and many others have discussed the other options available. I fully support those other options and regret that all too often, fertilized eggs are destroyed.
The step to raiding for organs is a big one, mostly because it involves an absolutely unwilling party. I unfortunately get the idea that some on this thread are against organ DONATION however, because it isn't "natural"...I don't accuse you of that, I merely include it as an observation on the thread.
I have no doubt about your sincerity, just a quibble with your broad brush.
Gardening is evil?
Is it me, or does modern man have a disturbing obsession with sex?
Reminds me of the Bloom County strip where they decided that they were damaging the environment. It ended with them all hanging in harnesses from tree limbs to avoid accidently smashing bugs when they walked on the ground.
The last line was the realization that they were breathing and murdering billions of microbes...
First from looking at the purpose of things. The penis is designed to fit the woman's vagina, not her mouth or anus. It is only in the vagina that it can accomplish its task of impregnating her, not in her mouth or anus.
The arguement from pleasure, that it can be used to give pleasure in any orrifice thus does not hold up. The pleasure is ancilliary to the primary purpose, which is attempted impregnation. If the male orgasm was meant to primarily give pleasure without attempted impregnation in each act of intercourse, then men would have been designed more like women, with a set time per month for impregnation, but with an ability to acheive orgasm at any time or multiple times in one act.
Second, from looking at the mutuality of the act. Human desire for pleasure in sex is to satisfy oneself by satisfying one's partner, because in sex you give yourself to the other person as an instrument to cause their ultimate pleasure in orgasm. On the other hand, in consumated oral sex, a woman pleasures a man while deriving nothing for herself in return, and the man gives nothing to her in return.
So both in its frustration of the purpose of the sexual faculties, and its laying aside the mutuality necessary for a sexual relationship, it comes up wrong.
And since I'm sure you'll bring it up next, the same observations are what make consumated female oral sex acceptable within the confines of a consummated act of intercourse. First, the climax of the woman is not tied to the actual act of impregnation. A woman can climax many times prior to the man with no affect (well, not entirely no affect, but you understand what I mean!) on the man's ability to climax in the normal way. Also some women, in fact, for a variety of reasons, do not receive orgasm from intercourse. But the mutuality of the act dictates that they should receive an orgasm if the man has since that is the secondary purpose of sex. Therefore, the man has a duty, in fact, to pleasure his wife outside of intercourse either manually or orally, either before or after his own climax, if he has been or expects that he will be unable to cause his wife's orgasm during the actual act of intercourse.
Does that all make sense? I'm not asking you to agree with it, but only to agree that I have a logical basis for my beliefs in accepting the teachings of the Catholic Church.
By this standard, if you'd known what Osama was up to five years ago and had a chance to shoot him, it would have been morally wrong to do so -- which strikes me as absurd on its face.
All unnatural things are not wrong, but all unnatural human acts are because we are meant to behave in certain ways and not in others.
That is the basis of natural law theory. You are free to disagree with it, I suppose, though I would wonder what you substitute into its place. Earth-Firsters mistakenly twist this to make unnatural things (i.e. human inventions) wrong. There is nothing inherently wrong in any human invention. They are just inanimate objects and procedures. Its the uses they are put to by humans which create good and evil, right and wrong.
Right and wrong are determined by human acts, not human objects.
Correct, - right and wrong are determined by human acts, not human objects.
-- Things created by humans are not wrong, nor are socalled "unnatural" human acts which are harmless to others.
When we behave in certain harmless ways and not in others, it is not the business of society to condem our acts.
See the US Constitution for details.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.