Stem Cells, Cloning, and Abortion: Making Careful Distinctions

The current controversy over federal funding for research involving stem cells derived from very early embryos is situated between two other equally difficult issues: abortion and cloning. As Laurie Zoloth (2002) says, talk about stem cells is directly proximate to the abortion debate. Nonetheless, a settled position in favor of abortion rights does not necessarily lead to support for research that involves the death of embryos. Nor should opposition to reproductive cloning necessarily entail opposition to therapeutic cloning. There are important ways in which our attitudes toward research with embryonic stem cells ought to be entwined with our thinking about abortion and cloning, but there are also some very important distinctions which are getting lost in the noisy debate

The Puzzle of IVF

This essay seeks to address a puzzling element of the current political and legal struggles over abortion in the United States: if, as pro-life activists insist, embryos are morally equivalent to born, living persons, then why do these activists not oppose in vitro fertilization (IVF) as aggressively as they oppose abortion? IVF accounts for a significant number of destroyed embryos. Constitutionally, IVF appears to be a much more vulnerable target than abortion. And yet, legislative and political attempts to attack and restrict IVF are few, while attempts to erode women\u27s capability to terminate pregnancies are a constant feature of our political and legal landscape

Book Review

This is a review of Women and Jewish Law: The Essential Texts, Their History, and Their Relevance for Today by Rachel Biale (1995). It is a minor miracle. It is readable and free of unnecessary jargon, and accessible to the educated reader who has only some introduction to the nature of Jewish law (Halakhah). At the same time, it is serious and scholarly and would work very well as a text for a graduate seminar on Jewish law, women and law, or religion and law. The author celebrates the increasing power and visibility of women in all denominations of Judaism, but she does not distort texts in order to push an agenda. Rather, she presents the relevant texts and displays how they can and cannot allow for women\u27s progress in such areas as public prayer, divorce, and sexual relations. Her perspective is that Halakhah is intrinsically open to change, and that “the attempt to present a monolithic and extremely conservative portrait of the Halakhah is more a characteristic of the response of modern Jewish Orthodoxy to secularism than a central feature of the Halakhah in earlier periods.” The legal and religious position of women in Judaism, Biale believes, is characterized by tension between two views of the status of women. On the one hand, from the perspective of God, so to speak, women are considered the moral and religious equals of men. On the other hand, in more mundane and concrete ways, their life is marked by subservience to men, and by exclusion from Judaism\u27s most important activity: the study and interpretation of Halakhah

Joining a Cult : Religious Choice or Psychological Aberration?

In this article, I will analyze the different theories about cult membership and conversion, specifically focusing upon whether or not conversions to cults ought to be respected by the law in the same way that the law respects conversion to and membership in, mainstream religions. In section II, I attempt (unsuccessfully) to define a cult. In section III, I discuss the civil liberties issues surrounding cults and the public furor they have engendered. In secion IV, I discuss the different and competing theories about why young people join cults, and the implications of those theories for public polic responses. Finally, in section VI I conclude that none of the arguments which attempt to draw distinctions between cults and mainstream religions are solid enough to ground legal interventions against those who choose to join new religious movements

Genetics: the Not-So-New Thing

Practical knowledge of heredity predates history. Indigenous peoples laid the foundations of modern agriculture by developing plants such as corn. However, the language and metaphors of the Human Genome Project treat modern genetics as if it had no historical antecedents and fail to acknowledge these early contributions to the science of heredity. The results of this blindness are twofold: it exacerbates reluctance of native peoples to take part in genetic research and to garner the benefits of genetic medicine, and it encourages biopiracy, as modern scientists discover and patent native plants

Fathers, Foreskins, and Family Law

In the United States, a custodial parent has the right and responsibility to make medical decisions for one\u27s child. But does that right encompass consenting for a surgical procedure for which there is little or no medical justification? What if the noncustodial parent opposed the procedure? And when is a child old enough to make the decision for him- or herself? How should a physician respond when asked to perform a surgical procedure when the decision is enmeshed in family controversy? These and other questions are considered in Boldt, a recent family law case decided by the Supreme Court of Oregon

Moral Ambition: The Sermons of Harry A. Blackmun

Justice Harry A. Blackmun died on March 4, 1999 at the age of 90. The public funeral was held on March 9, at the huge and impressive Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church, on Nebraska Avenue in Washington, D.C. Among the many speakers at this Service of Death and Resurrection was the Rev. Dr. William A. Holmes, senior pastor at the Church, speaking on The Churchmanship of Harry Blackmun. Dr. Holmes talked movingly of a man who was intimately involved in the affairs of his church. Among the Justice\u27s many contributions, Holmes noted a sermon that Blackmun had once preached on the Book of Ruth. Dr. Holmes concluded his eulogy by remarking that Justice Blackmun\u27s theory of Constitutional interpretation was the same as his theory of Biblical interpretation: a theory grounded in compassion. On March 4, 2004 the Justice\u27s papers became available to the public through the Library of Congress. In addition to the sermon on the Book of Ruth, preached in 1992, there was a second sermon, preached in 1987 on the bicentennial of the Constitution. In this essay I will describe how these sermons connect to and illuminate the Justice\u27s jurisprudence. First, I will describe Blackmun\u27s religious upbringing and interests. Next, I will summarize the two sermons. Then I will show how the sermons relate to each other, and to one of the Justice\u27s most famous opinions: his dissent in DeShaney v. Winnebago County D.S.S. One might ask why the sermons of a sitting Justice would be thought to shed any light at all on his jurisprudence, especially in a Justice who, like Blackmun, was careful of the boundaries between church and state. As I show below, recent scholarship has focused on the parallels and similarities between Constitutional and Biblical interpretation. In this essay, I take seriously Dr. Holmes\u27s closing comment and I ask: How similar was Blackmun\u27s interpretive approach to the Constitution and to the Bible

Embryos Created for Research Purposes

The creation of embryos for research use has drawn a great deal of criticism. It is difficult to defend an ethical distinction between what one can do to spare embryos and what one can do to research embryos. The strongest ground on which to argue against the creation of embryos for research is a symbolic one, having to do with respect for human life. Ronald Dworkin\u27s work in Life\u27s Dominion on the symbolic meaning of the abortion debate throws a helpful light on this dispute. By understanding the basic question to be, Does the creation of research embryos weaken or insult our communal respect for the sanctity of human life in some way that in vitro fertilization (IVF) or the experimental use of spare embryos does not?, the debate can move in a more constructive direction