Pragmatism and Conscience: A Religious Perspective on Competing Values in Embryo Experimentation
Most people realize that key terms such as "Reproductive Technologies" immediately involve us in the most major issues of our society. Yet a spokesperson for Health Canada recently said that any new regulatory body for reproductive technologies would include representatives of those who oppose some of the proposed measures on religious and moral grounds. The reason given was that: "This is not just a medical issue ... "1 It is remarkable that this needed to be restated, and speaks volumes about our overly specialized culture where we are sometimes too dependent on science, which, taken in a narrow sense, reigns supreme. Who we are in relation to one another is a fundamental issue for all cultures. How we treat one another continues to shape our culture. We have learned many lessons from history about how that has been done, and how we continue to influence it. Culture is not something passive in which we are immersed. It is true that we are strongly influenced by the society in which we find ourselves, but society is itself a product of historical conditioning, and in many ways we help to shape future society. Our values lie at the heart of this task, and it is at this level that the shaping of culture is the most challenging. Who are we? Why are we here? What is our relationship to others? How do we treat each other? When does any responsibility towards another begin? And, digging even more deeply,