Janet E. Smith, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Dallas; author of Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1991) 426pp. and editor of Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993) 591pp.; has published on natural law, virtue, Aquinas' ethics, abortion, contraception, various bioethical issues, Veritatis Splendor, the Universal Catechism, and Plato and myth.
Contact: jsmith@acad.udallas.edu
Rather than being a "right" of women, abortion is a great disservice to women, one which reflects both a growing lack of appreciation among women for those powers and capacities which are distinctly theirs as women and a growing despair that women are willing and able to be full participants in society and to make the sometimes noble sacrifices demanded of individuals for the good of society. Seeing abortion as solely a matter of women's rights assumes that the fetus has no rights or that the rights of the woman are unquestionably superior. But abortion, no matter where it fits into the scheme of the rights for women, is a violation of the right to life for another human being.
Date posted: 2009-10-28
Rather than being a "right" of women, abortion is a great disservice to women, one which reflects both a growing lack of appreciation among women for those powers and capacities which are distinctly theirs as women and a growing despair that women are willing and able to be full participants in society and to make the sometimes noble sacrifices demanded of individuals for the good of society Seeing abortion as solely a matter of women's rights assumes that the fetus has no rights or that the rights of the woman are unquestionably superior. But abortion, no matter where it tits into the scheme of the rights for women, is a violation of the right to life for another human being.
Date posted: 2009-09-09
Pro-abortion feminists who should be raising a clarion call of outrage are willing to accept the slaughter of unborn females in preference to male babies because they fear any restriction on sex selection since restriction of any abortion threatens all abortions. The logic is on the side of the pro-abortion crowd - if it is all right for a woman to kill her baby through abortion for any reason whatsoever, why would it be wrong for her to kill her girl babies if she, her husband, or her culture prefers a boy? Legalized abortion has unleashed a Pandora's box of evils and until we make it illegal, it pernicious effects will continue to proliferate.
Date posted: 2009-08-08
Most Americans would most likely await a compliment when they hear the claim "The United States is in a class by itself." But for many this expectation will be sadly dashed when they read these words in Mary Ann Glendon's Abortion and Divorce in Western Law and they learn that she is claiming that American abortion and divorce laws are the most liberal in the Western world and that they provide the least protection for the fetus and for the children of divorced parents.
Date posted: 2009-05-16
What I wish to explore here is how the modern age has a philosophical and theological dysfunctionality in respect to its understanding of children and their intrinsic importance, and of the importance of children to their parents and society. At the risk of sounding unduly alarmist, I must observe that our society has nearly reached a state of philosophical insanity in respect to the value of human life, the value of babies and the meaning of sexuality. A state of philosophical insanity means that we are fundamentally and basically denying the reality of fundamental and basic truths to the point that our behavior is dangerously self-destructive.
Date posted: 2009-04-06
It is encouraging that some of the texts are very clear in the presentation that the all the chemical forms of contraception and the IUD work on occasion as abortifacients - that is, they sometimes work by preventing the implantation of the fertilized ovum (the new little human being). The distressing and frustrating bad news is that these texts give a false explanation of the reasons for condemning contraceptives as contraceptives.
Date posted: 2009-01-19
What I wish to explore here is how the modern age has a philosophical and theological dysfunctionality in respect to its understanding of children and their intrinsic importance, and of the importance of children to their parents and society. At the risk of sounding unduly alarmist, I must observe that our society has nearly reached a state of philosophical insanity in respect to the value of human life, the value of babies and the meaning of sexuality. A state of philosophical insanity means that we are fundamentally and basically denying the reality of fundamental and basic truths to the point that our behavior is dangerously self-destructive.
Date posted: 2008-12-29
Recent medical research indicates that tissue from the brains of fetuses could provide considerable assistance to individuals suffering from such diseases as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. It is also possible to transplant organs, such as livers, from fetus to fetus. To date, the US government has sustained a highly controversial ban against the use of fetal tissue for research purposes or for purposes of transplantation. This decision has met with great opposition from those who think that it is cruel and inhumane not to provide whatever relief possible to those suffering from various debilitating diseases.
Date posted: 2008-11-14
My topic is the Church's teaching on contraception and various sexual issues. As you know, we live in a culture that thinks that contraception is one of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind. If you were to ask people if they wanted to give up their car or their computer or their contraceptive, it would be a hard choice to make. It's really considered to be something that has really put us, greatly, into the modern age and one of the greatest advances of modern medicine and modern times. Yet, there's this archaic church that tells us that, really, this is one of the worst inventions of mankind. According to the Church, contraception is one of the things that's plunging us into a kind of a disaster.
Date posted: 2008-11-07
Still, even the insufficient material Tentler presents tends to undermine her argument. While reading Catholics and Contraception, I discovered a new hero, Father John Ford, who worked very hard to get the Vatican and the American episcopacy to continue their strong advocacy of the Church's teaching on sexuality. His is one of many stories here that remind us of a vibrant time in the Church's past. Thus, in spite of my complaints about this book, I am enthusiastically recommending it as a portrait of a vibrant time in the Church's past, one I think young priests and young couples might well revive.
Date posted: 2008-11-07
Marriage is an institution that has been around as long as mankind. One would think, then, that we would know a lot more about marriage than we do. If anything, current statistics on divorce and infidelity would seem to indicate that we are regressing rather than progressing in our understanding of marriage. Here is not the place to rehearse the misunderstandings of the nature of marriage that are rampant in contemporary society. The challenge here is to determine what truth or truths about the objective reality of marriage need to be heard by our contemporaries and to explore how we might get them to see and accept the objective reality of marriage. The intent here is to use this information to understand better the Vatican teaching that in vitro fertilization (IVF) and embryo transfer (ET) are morally impermissible even for spouses.
Date posted: 2008-10-17
The sexual revolution of the sixties was a true revolution; our understanding and practice of sex changed radically. Contraception made sex outside of marriage "doable" in an unprecedented way. The modern world thinks of sex as a momentary pleasure that requires no commitment to one's sexual partner nor to any children that may result. Pregnancy is now considered largely an "accident" of sexual intercourse. The landscape of our lives is now cluttered with individuals damaged by unsuccessful "love" affairs (was true love really involved?), broken marriages, children born out of wedlock (1 in 3 are) and women and men hurt by abortions (nearly 1 in 3 pregnancies is aborted).
Date posted: 2008-07-26
Much ethical theory has recognized that the very importance of the attempt to live an ethical life lies in the fact that in acting the individual forms herself or himself either for the better or for the worse. That is, each and every human act, each act stemming from the deliberate choice of the human agent determines the type of human being an individual is, or in other words, the kind of moral character which an individual has. Then, in turn, the moral character which one has influences what decisions one makes. For those who share this perspective, one of the foremost questions to be asked by the moral agent in determining the rightness or wrongness of an act is: What kind of person will I become if I do this act?
Date posted: 2006-03-15
Priests often ask me what they can do at the parish level to promote Humanae Vitae and Natural Family Planning. What must first be established is the importance of this task. I firmly believe that if priests inspired their parishioners to do just two things, most everything else they want to do with them and for them would be significantly easier. These two things are: Promoting Eucharistic Adoration and, promoting fidelity to the Church's teaching on sexuality.
Date posted: 2004-01-01
A Challenge to Love is a relatively short explanation of Humanae Vitae and why the Church's teaching on contraception is correct.
Date posted: 2003-09-17
Many in the pro-life movement are reluctant to make a connection between contraception and abortion. They insist that these are two very different acts -- that there is all the difference in the world between contraception, which prevents a life from coming to be and abortion, which takes a life that has already begun. Let's take a look at the facts.
Date posted: 2001-12-31
Christians need to provide apologetics and explanations why faithfulness and why responsibility towards children are two of the defining characteristics of marriage. Moderns, I think, are tired of unfaithfulness, tired of shallow and brief relationships; they crave something more meaningful, something on which they can rely. Young people are rather sick of divorce. Christians who have the wisdom of the centuries should strive mightily themselves to live chaste lives and to form loving marriages and families, for such is vital to their eternal salvation and such may well be vital to the temporal well-being of the whole of society.
Date posted: 2001-12-31