Steven Mosher paints a horrifying picture of the grim reality of the "One Child" policy in China. As a U.S. State Department representative in Guangdong Province in 1980, Mosher witnessed first-hand the forced abortions of women who committed the "crime" of becoming pregnant for the second time.
Since then, Mosher has become president of the Population Research Institute, a pro-life educational organization "dedicated to protecting and defending human life, ending human rights abuses committed in the name of family planning, and dispelling the myth of overpopulation." PRI has documented the thousands of forced late-term abortions and millions of coerced sterilizations in China, with important implications for targeted population control measures in other developing countries.
According to Mosher, "Population control encourages domestic tyranny of a very personal and deadly sort." This is what happens when alarmist views of overpopulation are somehow translated into public policies that view people as pestilence. Rather than focus on the root issues of poverty through education and economic development, coercive population control measures seek to cure the "disease" by killing the patient.
Human Life Review Article
YouTube Video
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Making Moral Decisions in Medicine
Our guest blogger this week is Matt Tabbut, a second-year med student (and Cedarville alumnus) at Chicago's Rosalind Franklin University.
At this stage of my medical education, I have begun to look at some practical ethics case studies. There are a few beacons, or waypoints, that I use to help guide me in making decisions. Consider the following.
1. Faith - As a Christian, my faith plays a vital role in moral living. This worldview based on Biblical principles and mandates serves as an anchor or foundation upon which to make ethical determinations. At the heart of Scripture is the concept of loving God and loving others. Thus, the Bible establishes immutable, transcendent, and absolute principles that serve as the ultimate authority in my moral and ethical dealings.
2. Reason - Reason is at the heart of all philosophical thought. However, reason alone (i.e. not tempered by a foundation based on principles - see point 1) is a slippery slope leading to consequences that we may not perceive or be willing to accept. But in my moral deliberations, I should not only be able to provide supporting arguments from faith, but should also be able to communicate arguments from reason that can be accepted more universally.
3. Precedent – A good argument can often be made from analogy, and history can help to clarify ethical dilemmas. Finding correlations with other related situations may shed light on the current problem.
4. Instinct - At least in the negative sense, this is sometimes called the "yuk factor," - another way of describing our gut reaction. Though decisions cannot be made solely on feeling, our gut reaction can give insight as we look other well-founded arguments.
At this stage of my medical education, I have begun to look at some practical ethics case studies. There are a few beacons, or waypoints, that I use to help guide me in making decisions. Consider the following.
1. Faith - As a Christian, my faith plays a vital role in moral living. This worldview based on Biblical principles and mandates serves as an anchor or foundation upon which to make ethical determinations. At the heart of Scripture is the concept of loving God and loving others. Thus, the Bible establishes immutable, transcendent, and absolute principles that serve as the ultimate authority in my moral and ethical dealings.
2. Reason - Reason is at the heart of all philosophical thought. However, reason alone (i.e. not tempered by a foundation based on principles - see point 1) is a slippery slope leading to consequences that we may not perceive or be willing to accept. But in my moral deliberations, I should not only be able to provide supporting arguments from faith, but should also be able to communicate arguments from reason that can be accepted more universally.
3. Precedent – A good argument can often be made from analogy, and history can help to clarify ethical dilemmas. Finding correlations with other related situations may shed light on the current problem.
4. Instinct - At least in the negative sense, this is sometimes called the "yuk factor," - another way of describing our gut reaction. Though decisions cannot be made solely on feeling, our gut reaction can give insight as we look other well-founded arguments.
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