By Nicole Allcock, Pharm.D., M.S., FASHP
Many Catholics must have haunting images of our past which occasionally rear their ugly heads just to remind us of poor choices made, how far we’ve come, and the mercy that God chooses to bestow on us when we mend our ways.
It must have been a Saturday, about seventeen years ago. The college-aged girl came to the pharmacy counter and asked for Plan B. I froze. I had been a pharmacist only a few years, and my primary job was in the intensive care unit at an academic medical center. I didn’t have to deal with contraception there, but I moonlighted on the weekends at a local chain pharmacy to help pay off my student loans. The year was 2006, and the Plan B “emergency contraceptive” pill (aka the “morning after pill”) had just been changed by the Food and Drug Administration from a prescription to “behind the counter.” This meant that pharmacists could dispense the drug without a physician’s prescription, but must physically hand it to the consumer since she needed to show proof of age. It was solely up to me whether or not to dispense.
The girl looked at me as if she were just getting ready to buy something innocuous, maybe shampoo. I remember responding with the first thing that came to mind. “I’m sorry, we are out of Plan B. You’ll have to try a different pharmacy.” The truth was that I had no idea whether or not we were out. I only worked in that pharmacy one day per month and didn’t have the inventory memorized. After the girl left, I turned to the shelf where Plan B normally resided. The purple and green logo from Barr Laboratories stared back at me. I had prevented myself from consenting to one sin by committing a different one instead. I had lied.
At the time of this incident, I certainly had not been living my faith well. Like most Catholics who grew up in the 1980s and 90s in a typical midwestern parish, I was quite poorly catechized in all things spiritual, liturgical and moral. I had a vague recollection that the Church thought birth control was bad, but no one had ever told me why, and few Catholics seemed to be serious about it. Consequently, I never asked questions in pharmacy school, and I had dispensed birth control pills quite frequently. It was just part of a pharmacist’s job, right?
But this was Plan B. I knew it was more likely than ordinary contraceptive pills to work by causing abortions, and I apparently still had some sort of little nudge toward good in my heart. If only I had heeded that intuition, my conscience, I might have avoided further regrets. But the Lord is merciful, and seven years later that part of my life was over. With a new-found freedom as an intentional Catholic, I needed answers to these moral dilemmas that I faced every day in my professional life. As I began to seek out information about the faith I was supposed to already know, a new word entered my vocabulary, “bioethics,” and it was intriguing.
What is bioethics?
The definition of bioethics isn’t concrete, and a search for the term “bioethics” produces a variety of answers. The prefix “bio” comes from a Greek root meaning “life,” so bioethics could simply be translated as “life ethics.” In short, bioethics is medical ethics. The president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, Joseph Meaney, Ph.D., KM, gives the simple explanation that bioethics is, “discerning what is right or wrong in difficult cases that arise in medicine and the life sciences.”1
Bioethics began to emerge as a discipline in the 1970s. Today, bioethicists work in hospitals and consult on cases where difficult decisions need to be made. They also head up ethics committees, advise professional organizations, teach, publish scholarly works, and often provide one-on-one consultations with individuals.
Is there a difference between Catholic bioethics and secular bioethics?
We live in a society which is deeply secular and post-modern. Many people now display a worldview which denies that truth can be found through reason, and there is little agreement on what constitutes truth and goodness. Saint Pope John Paul II commented on this in his encyclical, Fides et Ratio, noting that various doctrines have arisen which “devalue even the truths which had been judged certain.” There is no confidence in truth, and society has consented to an undifferentiated pluralism.2 This is essentially the notion that all opinions are equally valid and tolerated. In his homily at the 2005 conclave, Pope Benedict XVI similarly described this phenomenon as a “dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.”3 In a pluralistic society, tolerance becomes the supreme virtue.
Unfortunately, the field of bioethics has followed this rise of pluralism in society. Many different approaches to bioethics exist today and ultimately compete with each other. This article is not meant to be an exhaustive review of the multiplicity of approaches to secular bioethics, so two illustrations will suffice. Utilitarianism, for example, seeks to provide a maximum amount of good for the greatest number of people. While this seems laudable at first glance, this approach is essentially a mathematical calculation to determine what would be good for a whole, but which often commits an injustice by disregarding the individual dignity of each person. Another approach is called principlism. Principlism is often taught in medical schools and appeals to the four biomedical ethical principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, justice and respect for autonomy. While these four principles are certainly valid for consideration in the ethical choices we make, principlism as a whole tends to be an overly simplistic model. The principlist model can be used by two different ethicists to rationalize two different opposing views on a single moral question. For example, one ethicist may claim respect for autonomy as supreme, and therefore support a woman’s right to an abortion. A different ethicist may claim non-maleficence (to do no harm) as supreme and reject a woman’s right to abortion due to the harm inflicted on the baby.
Catholic bioethics is unique. It is a form of virtue ethics based on natural law. The Catholic approach to ethics is rooted in reason and unchanging truth. It respects advancements in science, and has at its foundation the intrinsic dignity of the human person. That is, the Catholic approach to bioethics abides by the principle that each human life is invaluable. When evaluating a dilemma where two lives are in danger, a course of action must be chosen which would result in the best possible outcome for both lives. This is opposed to some secular ethical frameworks where one life is considered more valuable than another. In addition, Catholic bioethics never justifies an evil action in order to produce a good outcome. In other words, evil cannot be the means to a good end.
Why should Catholics care?
If this all sounds like some sort of academic and philosophical mess that nerdy people study, well, it can be. However, all Catholics owe it to themselves to understand at least the basics of the why behind the Church’s moral teachings. The modern world involves nearly constant decision-making about our healthcare, and well-meaning medical professionals and political leaders often lead us in a direction inconsistent with the will of God as discerned by the Church. This frequently happens when we are receiving healthcare in non-Catholic facilities, as well as in Catholic facilities from medical professionals who have not been adequately educated on the Catholic approach to ethics. However, these decisions are important. The salvation of our souls is at stake. After learning just a few simple concepts, Catholics can more confidently make decisions on many bioethical issues, and will know where to go for help with more difficult situations. That inner voice of conscience will no longer be frightening.
Introducing Choices
This article serves as the first in a series called Choices. Bioethics issues such as contraception, sterilization, in-vitro fertilization, physician-assisted suicide, transgenderism, and many others have become points of contention in our society, and unfortunately, even in some segments of the Church. However, the official teachings of the Church are clear. It’s fairly easy to tell Catholics the what. That is, what to do or not to do. This column will attempt to go further and answer the why behind the Church’s moral teachings in a concise and easy to understand way. Future articles will also delve into how to discuss these delicate issues with others in the community and with our children, directed toward the culture we live in here in Southern Missouri. When we understand the why behind the Church’s moral teachings, we can truly pass on this knowledge to our children. Hopefully this leads to a next generation whose choices will be wise and holy.
If you have questions or ideas for future topics, please message The Rubric. Look for the next article in just a few weeks, and please pray for me!
1. Meaney, Joseph. (2020, Aug. 7). My Vision for Bioethics. National Catholic Bioethics Center. https://www.ncbcenter.org/messages-from-presidents/my-vision-for-bioethics
2. John Paul II. (1998, Sept. 14). Fides et Ratio, no. 5. https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html
3. Benedict XVI. (2005, April 18). Homily. https://www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/homily-pro-eligendo-pontifice_20050418_en.html#:~:text=We%20are%20building%20a%20dictatorship,the%20measure%20of%20true%20humanism.
Dr. Allcock received her Pharm.D. from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2002 and M.S. in health care ethics from the University of Mary and the National Catholic Bioethics Center in 2020. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists and the National Catholic Bioethics Center. Dr. Allcock has practiced as a critical care pharmacist and a hospital pharmacy administrator, though she currently homeschools two teenagers. She is also a Benedictine oblate.
Finally some decent content on The Rubric! I am excited to read these as they come out. Thank you! I am hoping to soon share a short reflection on a recent article in the local paper in Springfield dealing with Planned Parenthood.... Glad to be on the same team as you in the battle for virtue and morality.
A wonderful first article in the needed series. I look forward to the future articles. Among the several things that caught my attention was Dr. Allcock’s observation that ‘tolerance’ is the primary virtue in our society. I have noticed that at this point tolerance is a coverup term for intolerance. It’s a contradiction but false reason leads to contradictions becoming accepted as normal. What is in reality a single view of moral life--one that rejects the foundations of Christian civilization--claims to be tolerant, but one is only tolerated by going along with that point of view whose components can be known and which seeks to provide the guiding principles for living. For instance, to claim that life begins at conception and that therefore it is intrinsically evil to take the life of a baby in the womb, is attacked as being intolerant with respect to women’s health. Or, to say that the most qualified person should get the job, is called racist and therefore not tolerated. One is tolerated as long as one agrees with what claims to be the social consensus--the settled science for example. We are actually in a battle for the soul of our society and the side advocating for tolerance is extremely aggressive.