ATSS: Mark F. Carr, “What Is the Unborn Child? American Faith-based Healthcare, Abortion, and the Culture Wars”
30 October 2024 |
Without the court-protected, faith-based, healthcare corporations of modern America, our healthcare non-system would collapse. So how do faith-based healthcare corporations manage the necessary conflicts between their religion’s doctrinal stance and caring for a diverse public?
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, a new era of approaching women’s reproductive rights and health has emerged. America is finding out that the simple-minded approach to abortion as either “pro-choice” or “pro-life” is naive, dangerous to women, and medically nonsensical. But nuance is not a strong suit for Americans on this topic. Healthcare systems that offer necessary medical care to the public, as well as federal and state legislative entities, are struggling to find a way forward with appropriate nuance.
- With women’s reproductive health and abortion on so many ballots across the country on November 5th, how do we properly think about what fetal life is, particularly in relation to the person carrying the fetus?
- What is the moral status of a fetus and how are we supposed to understand what an “unborn child” is in relation to a fetus?
- Should a fetus have the same constitutional rights as its “mother”?
- What does our Church teach us about life—When it begins, how it is valued, and what our public-facing healthcare ministry should do when both lives cannot be saved in a maternal-fetal conflict?
- Should Adventism, Judaism, Catholicism encourage its women to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of their “unborn child”?
Teacher:
Mark F. Carr, MDiv., PhD., is a clinical ethicist. He formerly pastored several Seventh-day Adventist Churches in Alaska prior to receiving his PhD in Religious Ethics at the University of Virginia. He devoted sixteen years to Loma Linda University’s School of Religion, where he led the MA program in biomedical and clinical ethics, as well as being the theological co-director for the Center for Christian Bioethics. After a short time at Kettering College in Ohio, he returned to his beloved Alaska, where he enjoys his job, family, flying, fishing, and fat tire bike riding in the winter.
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Coming up:
- Lena Toews
- Warren Trenchard
- Denis Fortin
- Mark Carr
- Skip Bell