Bioethics

Many big shots in the bioethics community continue to argue against “medical conscience,” insisting that doctors should be forced to perform all requested legal medical procedures — even if it involves the taking of human life — that can produce the result the patient wants.

In the latest ani-conscience broadside, published in the professional journal Bioethics, two internationally known bioethicists, Julian Savulescu and Udo Schuklenk, take an almost absolutist position:

Our argument is that patients have a right to receive health care when four necessary conditions are satisfied (citations omitted):

1. The treatment is legal in that jurisdiction.
2. Providing the treatment is consistent with constraints of distributive justice.
3. The treatment is in the patient’s interests.
4. The patient autonomously desires the treatment.

The doctors define “patient’s interest” as a “benefit recognisable within accepted professional standards of benefit and harm.” Note carefully that these are often ideological, as opposed to medical, positions.

Wesley J. Smith appeared on Driving Home the Faith, a production of Sacred Heart Radio, to discuss recent attempts to redefine the term “infertility.” The New England Journal of Medicine recently took issue with the World Health Organization’s definition of “infertility” and advocated for a revised definition that includes same-sex couples and single people. Smith explains why this categorical redefinition is problematic. “What it creates is an almost absolute right to have a baby by any means that is required to have that child,” Smith states. Further reading:

What if saving a human life could itself raise serious moral questions? Millions of human embryos are estimated to be frozen in the United States, many abandoned by the parents who created them through IVF. For some, the solution seems obvious: Why not adopt these embryos, give them a chance to be born, and welcome them into loving families? Does Catholic teaching support embryo adoption, or prohibit it? And if frozen embryos are human beings who deserve to be gestated, is leaving them frozen indefinitely morally comparable to abortion? These questions are deeply contested within Catholic bioethics. In Part 3 of our series examining the arguments for and against embryo adoption, we turn to the case in favor of prenatal Read More ›

It’s hard to get beyond the World Health Organization’s woke, but an article in the New England Journal of Medicine manages that task. The question involves the definition of “infertility.” To the NEJM authors’ consternation, the WHO has embraced an objective, scientifically based approach to diagnosing the condition. From “Who Counts as Infertile: A Missed Opportunity” (citations omitted):

In 2017, the WHO collaborated with international reproductive-medicine groups on an edition of a glossary related to infertility and fertility care. That document defined infertility as “a disease characterized by the failure to establish a clinical pregnancy after 12 months of regular, unprotected sexual intercourse or due to an impairment of a person’s capacity to reproduce.” The WHO has emphasized the importance of equitable access to fertility care globally, but its formal definition of infertility continues to exclude same-sex couples and to rely on intercourse-based framing.

Infertility is a biological condition. The WHO’s approach seems a good way to identify the inability to have children without expensive tests.

Wesley J. Smith spoke with Todd Wilken on the Issues, Etc. radio program to discuss recent development in bioethics in the U.S. and other Western countries. The discussion spans euthanasia in Canada, the U.S., and Belgium, organ procurement, threats to medical conscience, financial incentives, and more. Further reading:

What if saving a human life could itself be morally wrong? More than 1.5 million human embryos are estimated to be frozen in the United States, many abandoned by the parents who created them through in vitro fertilization (IVF). For some, the solution seems obvious: Why not adopt these embryos, give them a chance to be born, and welcome them into loving families? But is embryo adoption an act of mercy, or another form of surrogacy? In Part 2 of Bioethics Babe’s Frozen Embryo Series, Fr. Tad Pacholczyk makes the Catholic moral and theological case against embryo adoption, responding directly to the philosophical and theological arguments in its defense. Fr. Tad served for more than 22 years as an ethicist, Read More ›

Can you oppose IVF and still support embryo adoption? If IVF violates the dignity of the child by separating procreation from the marital act, what happens once that child already exists, frozen and unable to continue developing? Would embryo adoption repeat the original wrong of IVF, or could it be an act of rescue? In Part 1 of a special Bioethics Babe series examining the arguments for and against embryo adoption, I sit down with philosopher and natural-law scholar Dr. Melissa Moschella, author of To Whom Do Children Belong?, to explore the philosophical case for embryo adoption. At the heart of her argument is a crucial distinction: procreation ends at fertilization. Once a new human being exists, Melissa argues, gestation Read More ›

A surrogate was hired.  Then, at 20 weeks, he was diagnosed with a serious heart defect, and everything changed. McKenna West, a 28-year-old cardiac nurse and mother of two, says the intended parents asked her to abort their biological son after he was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS). Their surrogacy agreement reportedly required termination for a fetal abnormality if the intended parents requested it. McKenna scheduled the abortion. Then she refused to go through with it. Instead, she began researching how to save the baby’s life, eventually relocating to Texas, where he was born and underwent major heart surgery. Now comes the extraordinary twist: the same parents who requested his abortion are pursuing treatment to save his life Read More ›

Many Western countries and jurisdictions are legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide. That opens up a problem for the death pushers. Since states aren’t going to get into the wet work of the actual killing, medical professionals and caregivers are going to be conscripted to do the deadly deeds — even if that means violating their religious beliefs and moral consciences.

Instead of resisting this rank authoritarianism, the medical and bioethics establishments are increasingly going along. This proposed coercion includes requiring doctors’ participation in suicides when patients starve and dehydrate themselves to death — known as VSED for “voluntary stop eating and drinking.”

As I wrote a few weeks ago here, the British Medical Association just so opined. And now, following closely in that guidance’s wake, a major article in the Journal of Health & Biomedical Law argues similarly — using dementia patients as the prime example — that doctors have to both inform patients about their right to commit suicide by VSED and ease the process by providing palliative care against the agony that killing oneself in that manner causes.

Wesley J. Smith appeared on the Vicki Mckenna Show on August 28, 2026, to discuss the debates occurring in bioethics and medical journals to make previously unthinkable things acceptable and regularly practiced. For instance, they discuss how treating gender dysphoria in young children with puberty blockers was once unthinkable, but after being debated in the professional journals, it has been widely accepted. Now, bioethicists are proposing that the “dead donor rule” should be done away with in order to harvest organs. Read “‘Death by Organ Donation’ Pushed in Prestigious Medical Journals”