Episode 185: The Beginning and End of Human Life with Dr. Richard Stith of Valparaiso U. (January 27, 2021)

This week on The Open Door, we discuss ethical questions that arise at the beginning and end of human life. We will do so in the context of human rights and the law. Our discussion will lead us to explore some implications of being “pro-life for the whole of life.” Our special guest is Richard Stith. He is a Senior Research Professor of Law at Valparaiso University. (January 27, 2021)Questions on this episode:Many of your publications are in Spanish. How did this come about? Just what is a human right? What are the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary appeals to human rights?Let’s go from the general to the specific. Can we argue that abortion violates the right to life of the preborn without favoring the criminal punishment of abortion, even of abortionists? How has Germany addressed this question? You write that “The attitude and act called ‘respect’ brings forth much more adequately than ‘value’ the distinctively individual priority of persons, allowing our common humanity to be a reason for each person’s separate significance.” Could you further explain the significance of this distinction?You contend that “the polarization of our public debate over embryo-destructive research may be due, to a large extent, not to different valuations of individual human life but to different conceptions of the process of gestation, with one group treating the process as a making or construction and the other treating it as a development.” How are these two models of reproduction incompatible? How do they shape the debate over the treatment of embryos and the debate over abortion?