The Joy of the Truth

A new law requiring insurers to cover the costs of chochlear implants for children has drawn opposition. What is the complaint? Is is that . . .

• Government has overstepped its bounds, once again meddling in affairs that should be left to market forces?

No

• the law puts undue burden on small business who now have to pay a higher premium to insure their employees?

No

A lot of buzz has been going around about the attempts made by Vermont and Ohio state legislatures to remove “sexting” (sending out naked pictures of others by cell phone) from the list of felonies that could label someone a sexual predator.

Some commentators have criticized Vermont and Ohio for not taking sexting (which is done especially by teenagers) seriously enough. Others have lauded them for saving young adults… Continue reading

When will we realize that encouraging women to promise or to sell their sexuality to men is a recipe for abuse? When will we realize that portraying women as things to be used rather than people to be loved IS abuse? Continue reading

The March, 2008, issue of First Things ran an excellent opinion piece by Gilbert Meilaender called The Giving and Taking of Organs. Meilaender quotes Paul Ramsey, whose The Patient as Person explored the moral ramifications of organ donation when the technology was still young. Ramsey (and Meilaender) explored three possible modes of receiving donated organs:

1. Voluntary organ donation (opt-in)
2. Automatic organ donation with an opt-out option

Bill Steigerwald is urging Barak Obama to legalize the international sale of human organs. In his arguments, he claims that medical ethicists live in ivory towers, out of touch with real-world suffering. The reality is that utilitarians who devalue transcendent goods and embrace only tangible goods live in a fantasy world and ignore the devastation that their derision of human dignity brings to our culture. Continue reading