Hmm. Thanks for the soothing words.
There is a clinic just down the road. They offer low cost sterilization, but I am not too sure I trust their methods...
:)
Posted on 01/14/2004 6:49:28 AM PST by new cruelty
I recently saw the movie "Cheaper by the Dozen." In it, the father, played by Steve Martin, states that he has had a vasectomy. This has caused some discussion among friends, especially because some people think that after 12 children one logically should have a vasectomy. Why does the Church teach that sterilization is wrong? — A reader in Ashburn
Before addressing the morality of sterilization, we must first remember that each person is a precious human being made in God’s image and likeness with both a body and a soul. Vatican II’s "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World" asserted, "Man, though made of body and soul is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day" (no. 14). St. Paul also reminds us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19) and therefore we should not degrade our bodily dignity by allowing the body to participate in the act of sin. Moreover, such sin hurts the body of the Church.
Therefore, we are responsible to care for our bodily needs with proper nourishment, rest, exercise and hygiene. A person must not do anything to purposefully harm the body or its functions. For example, at times, we take medicine — over-the-counter as well as prescribed — to preserve our bodily health. However, we must not bring harm to our body by abusing legitimate drugs or using drugs known to be harmful.
Circumstances arise when a person may need surgery. To preserve the well-being of the whole body and really the whole person, an organ that is diseased or functioning in a way that harms the body may be removed or altered. For instance, surgery to remove an appendix that is about to rupture is perfectly moral as is surgery to remove a mole which appears to be pre-cancerous. However, cutting off a perfectly healthy hand, thereby destroying not only that bodily part but also its functions, is an act of mutilation and is morally wrong.
With this brief outline of principles, we can turn to sterilization. Here a distinction is made between direct and indirect sterilization.
Direct sterilization means that the purpose of the procedure was simply to destroy the normal functioning of a healthy organ so as to prevent the future conception of children. The most effective and least dangerous method of permanent sterilization is through vasectomy for a man and ligation of the fallopian tubes for a woman. Such direct sterilization is an act of mutilation and is therefore considered morally wrong. Regarding unlawful ways of regulating births, Pope Paul VI in his encyclical "Humanae Vitae" (1968) asserted, "Equally to be condemned ... is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary" (no. 14). The Catechism also states, "Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law" (no. 2297).
Indirect sterilization is morally permissible. Here surgery, or drug or radiation therapy, is not intended to destroy the functioning of a healthy organ or to prevent the conception of children. Rather, the direct intention is to remove or to combat a diseased organ; unfortunately, the surgery or therapy may "indirectly" result in the person being sterilized. For instance, if a woman is diagnosed with a cancerous uterus, the performance of a hysterectomy is perfectly legitimate and moral. The direct effect is to remove the diseased organ and preserve the health of the woman’s body; the indirect effect is that she will be rendered sterile and never be able to bear children again. The same would be true if one of a woman’s ovaries or if one of a man’s testes were cancerous or functioning in a way that is harmful to overall bodily well-being. The caution in this discussion to uphold the morality is that the operation is truly therapeutic in character and arises from a real pathological need.
Lastly, further caution must be taken concerning the role of the state in this area. Pope Pius XI in his encyclical "Casti connubii" (1930) warned, "For there are those who, overly solicitous about the ends of eugenics, not only give certain salutary counsels for more certainly procuring the health and vigor of the future offspring ... but also place eugenics before every other end of a higher order; and by public authority wish to prohibit from marriage all those from whom, according to the norms and conjecture of their science, they think that a defective and corrupt offspring will be generated because of hereditary transmission, even if these same persons are naturally fitted for entering upon matrimony. Why, they even wish such persons even against their will to be deprived by law of that natural faculty through the operation of physicians."
Pope Pius XI was prophetic in his teaching, since shortly thereafter the world witnessed the eugenics program of Nazi Germany which included massive sterilization of those deemed "undesirable." In our world, various civil governments still toy with the idea of sterilization to solve welfare problems. Perhaps we may reach the point where health insurance companies pressure individuals to be sterilized rather than risk having children which may require high care.
Pope John Paul II warned in his encyclical "The Gospel of Life" ("Evangelium Vitae") of "scientifically and systematically programmed threats" against life. He continued, " ... We are in fact faced by an objective ‘conspiracy against life,’ involving even international institutions, engaged in encouraging and carrying out actual campaigns to make contraception, sterilization and abortion widely available. Nor can it be denied that the mass media are often implicated in this conspiracy, by lending credit to that culture which presents recourse to contraception, sterilization, abortion and even euthanasia as a mark of progress and a victory of freedom, while depicting as enemies of freedom and progress those positions which are unreservedly pro-life" (no. 17).
In all, the Catholic teaching on this issue respects the dignity of the individual in both his person and action.
Fr. Saunders is pastor of Our Lady of Hope Parish in Potomac Falls and a professor of catechetics and theology at Notre Dame Graduate School in Alexandria.
Hmm. Thanks for the soothing words.
There is a clinic just down the road. They offer low cost sterilization, but I am not too sure I trust their methods...
:)
Okay, so if we want to end government corruption, we just sterilize all politicans, lobbiests, journalists, bureaucrats and lawyers.
You mean poverty is genetic? Silly me: I thought it had to do with making poor choices in life.
There IS a genetic link to poverty, but not to anywhere near all cases of poverty. You can take a young couple with very high IQs and excellent health (i.e. very good genes), set them to having lots of babies starting in their teens, before they have any education or any way to earn a decent living, and chances are very high that not only they, but their grown children, will live in poverty. Take the same couple, have them wait 10-15 years, finish their educations, get some good work experience, build up some savings, and then have 2-3 children, and there is almost no chance that either the couple or their grown children will spend their lives in poverty. Even if they have a baby or two in their teens, their chances for escape from poverty are much better if they don't keep on having babies -- since most of these kids are lacking education, common sense, and impluse control, they are most likely to accomplish the no-more-babies goal if they have themselves sterilized -- otherwise they will continue to have one "accident" after another.
There is a genetic component to poverty in many cases. For example, there are several impoverished rural areas of the U.S. where a huge portion of the people are genetically predisposed to low intelligence and poor health, and they tend to reproduce a lot because of a combination of welfare keeping them from actually starving to death, and the lack of ability or inclination to do anything more challenging than having sex. Same with inner-city public housing projects. Most people with any brains or physical energy up and left these hell-holes a long time ago.
But since poverty is often (perhaps usually) not directly related to genetic endowment, support for voluntary/incentivized sterilzation programs does not imply a conclusion that poverty is always a genetic disease.
Depends on if the woman is having kids or not. We're learning that on the female side fertility is like any other physical activity: practice makes perfect. Women that don't have kids lose the ability very early, women that keep having kids keep the ability for a long time (my grandmother's sister had her last of 13 at age 46, no complications).
Got any back-up for that assertion? As a 42 year old who recently underwent several cycles of IVF/embryo freezing for use down the road (entirely elective; no attempts to become pregnant the natural way, at any age), I am extremely well-read for an amateur on the subject of age and female reproductive abilities. I've not seen a single word anywhere to suggest that any reproductive medicine specialist suspects a connection between fertility in later years and the age of first and subsequent pregnancies. I could be wrong, but unless you can point to some actual research backing this notion, it must be assumed to be an old wives' tale that you picked up somewhere.
Another thing to consider when deciding who should have the nip and tuck based on the possibility of wanting to reverse that decision is that tube tying is easier to undo than vascectomies.
Alternatively -- more reliably, though more expensively -- IVF eliminates the need to reverse the tube tying, as the tubes are completely bypassed. There are also techniques to extract sperm from men for in utero insemination, without reversing the vasectomy.
Nonsense, there is a direct link between IQ (not just inthe mental retardation range) -- which is determined largely by genetics -- and poverty.
There's tons of articles out there on the added complications a woman has if she doesn't have her first child before the age of 30.
Please show me a link to ONE.
Child birth later in life is always more complicated but the slope is less severe if you've had a kid earlier.
Again, please show me a link to ONE scholarly article asserting this. Obviously, women tend to have more general health problems later in life, and they will therefore have a higher incidence of pregnancy complications related to those health problems (just as younger women with diabetes, hypertension, obesity, etc. will have more pregnancy complications than healthy women of the same age). However, pregnancy complication rates are not directly related to healthy baby delivery rates -- most women who experience pregnancy complications will still deliver a healthy baby. Perhaps there is some statistical correlation caused by a tendency of women with significant health problems to postpone child-bearing.
The statistics for donor egg pregnancies show very nearly identical live birth rates for women of all ages up to 55 (the cut-off for most programs), and the better programs have a per-attempt success rate of over 80%, and a per-two-attempts success rate of over 90%. Almost none of these older women have had prior births -- most are professional women who put off child-bearing until they were too old to produce viable eggs of their own (the younger ones are usually using donor eggs either due to disease- or cancer treatment-caused damage to their ovaries, premature ovarian decline, or a family genetic problem that they want to be sure not to pass on). The rates are so close to identical that the CDC-mandated standard reporting format for fertility clinics does not even break down donor egg results by age, while the "own eggs" results are broken by several narrow ages ranges with results differing hugely.
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