The ethics of fertility treatments are struggling to keep up with rapid-fire advances in biotechnology. The case of Nadya Suleman, the “Octomom” who gave birth to octuplets in January 2009 through reproductive technology, is just an extreme example of the ethical dilemmas that parents, medical professionals and religious leaders are facing.
Thirty-five years after abortion became legal in the U.S., the perennial hot-button issue is shifting in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The nation’s abortion rate has fallen to its lowest level since 1974. The procedures that are performed are done, increasingly, at an earlier stage of pregnancy than in the past. Hollywood is releasing “life-affirming” films [...]
The earliest stages of the development of human beings, from conception through the period shortly after birth, are fraught with life-and-death issues. Whether concerned about the fate or welfare of a particular embryo, fetus or baby, or hoping to benefit from a reproductive technology or stem cell research, countless individuals and families in every part [...]
Religion and adoption are both, at core, about identity. And increasingly, religious issues are complicating adoption. That’s because of the increase in international and interfaith adoptions, in adoptions between races, and in adoptions by singles and gay couples. At the same time, a significant proportion of adoption agencies are faith-based, which has led to conflicts [...]
The National Center for Transgender Equality estimates that between one-quarter of 1 percent and 1 percent of the U.S. population is transgender – their gender identity or expression differs from the biological features they were born with. That’s 750,000 to 3 million people in the United States.
Lately, though, more of them are going public about [...]
Each day countless Americans and their families face the decisions and dilemmas that arise as people with serious diseases and injuries move toward death in a nation with:
a costly, fragmented and highly technological medical system;
an extremely diverse religious and spiritual character; and
a very litigious legal culture.
Disputes occurring at the end of [...]
March 31 will mark the second anniversary of Terri Schiavo’s death, which plunged the nation into a heated debate over who has the right to end a life. While the intensity of the debate has lessened since the days leading up to Schiavo’s death, it continues as patients, families, physicians, ethicists, legislators, judges and clergy [...]
Terminally ill patients have the right to refuse treatment. Do they also have the right to demand treatment with unproven experimental drugs if no approved treatments exist? This question is gaining increasing attention as patient advocates press for a legal right to unapproved drugs and critics counter that such access would hamper and even halt [...]
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