Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T15:13:22.905Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Beginning of Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2008

Richard Harries
Affiliation:
Bishop of Oxford
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

There are a number of ethical issues connecting with the beginning of life, most obviously abortion and most recently research on embryos. These issues have a number of aspects, particularly in relation to fertility treatment and genetic manipulation but they all assume answers to prior questions about what it is to be a human being and when it is that an entity, to use a neutral term, is accorded the full protection due to a human person. So it is that in this first lecture I will be concentrating on souls, persons and embryos.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 2000

References

1 Catechism of the Catholic Church (Geoffrey Chapman 1994), para 336.Google Scholar

2 Evangelium Vitae (Catholic Truth Society 1995), para 60.Google Scholar

3 Rycroft, Charles (ed). Psychoanalysis Observed (Constable 1966), p 12.Google Scholar

4 Ward, Keith. Religion and Human Nature (OxfordUniversity Press 1998), p 145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Habgood, John. Being a Person (Hodder and Stoughton 1998), p 1467.Google Scholar

6 Religion and Human Nature, p 147.

7 Religion and Human Nature, p 158.

8 Dunstan, G. R. and Seller, Mary J. (eds). The Status of the Human Embryo (King Edward's Hospital Fund for London and OCU 1998).Google Scholar

9 Quoted by Dunstan.

10 Warnock, Mary. A Question of Life (Blackwell 1985).Google Scholar

11 Catechism of the Catholic Church, para 2270.Google Scholar

12 Byrne, Peter. ‘The Animation Tradition in the Light of Contemporary Philosophy’ in The Status of the Human Embryo, p 99.Google Scholar

13 Byrne, Peter. Personal Origins, the Report of a Working Party on Fertilisation and Embryology of the Board far Social Responsibility (2nd revised edn) (Church House Publishing 1996).Google Scholar

14 The Status of the Human Embryo.

15 See especially Oppenheimer, Helen. ‘Ourselves, Our Souls and Bodies’ in Studies in Christian Ethics. vol 4, no 1Google Scholar; ‘Abortion: A Sketch for a Christian View’ in Studies in Christian Ethics, vol 5, no 2Google Scholar; and ‘Mattering’ in Studies in Christian Ethics, vol 8, no 1.Google Scholar

16 Murray, Les. ‘Spring Hail’ in Collected Poems (Carcanet 1998), p 8.Google Scholar

17 Oppenheimer, Helen. ‘Mattering’ in Studies in Christian Ethics, vol 8, no 1.Google Scholar

18 Banner, Michael. The Practice of Abortion: A Critique (Darton, Longman and Todd 1999).Google Scholar

19 Biggar, Nigel. ‘God, the Responsible Individual, and the Value of Human Life and Suffering’ in Studies in Christian Ethics, vol 11, no 1.Google Scholar

20 Abortion, a briefing paper (Board for Social Responsibility, Church House, Westminster SWIP 3NZ, 1997).Google Scholar

21 Gardner, W. H. and MacKenzie, N. H. (eds). ‘That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection’. The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Oxford University Press 1970).Google Scholar