Sex, without babies? Behold the origin of our conundrums in reproductive ethics! Our culture developed the technology to separate the sexual act from procreation, classically with the extramarital use of the Pill (in the sexual revolution), and thus was unleashed a host of problems that have plagued us ever since. So the argument goes.¹ We would have no reproductive ethical dilemmas had we kept together the sexual act and procreation.

As a medical student, I did Obstetrics Gynecology training in 1973. Afterward, I pursued a career in Internal Medicine and Nephrology and, other than with my wife and two sons, never entered a delivery room or cared for either of the two persons combined in a single pregnancy. The timing of my Obstetrics education, however, must have been propitious. The date should hearken back to a year that still lives in infamy—the year of Roe v. Wade.

Editor’s Note: The goal of this column is to address ethical dilemmas faced by patients, families and healthcare professionals, offering careful analysis and recommendations that are consistent with biblical standards. The following ethical analysis is a commentary on a legal case that has caused some controversy in the clinical ethics community.

Column editor: Robert D. Orr, MD, CM, Consultant in Clinical Ethics, CBHD.

Question

This past weekend a passionate but relatively small percentage of Americans marked "Sanctity of Life Sunday" and lament the 35^th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion on demand. Understood as a single-issue movement focused on abortion, or perhaps a bioethics movement focused on abortion, euthanasia, and embryonic stem cell destruction, the "sanctity of life" cause is not exactly flourishing in election-year America, circa 2008.