In Vitro Fertilization
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” With these words, Socrates stated the creed of reflective men and women and set the task for ethics: to seek, with the help of reason, a consistent and defensible approach to life and its moral dilemmas (Walters 22). Ethical inquiry is important to us when we are unsure of the direction in which we are heading. “New philosophy calls all in doubt,” wrote John Donne in the wake of the Copernican Revolution and of Charles I’s violent death, suggesting that new thoughts had challenged old practices (Donne). Today, new practices in the biomedical sciences are challenging old thoughts: “New medicine calls all in doubt” (Walters 22).
Few moral convictions are more deeply ingrained than that of the sanctity of life. If plausible once, however, the view that life is a “sacred process” (initiated, sustained, and finally halted by God) is now more difficult to maintain (Baier 1-4). Recent advances in the biomedical......
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