Episode 187: Richard Stith with Ethical and Legal Questions at the Beginning and End of Human Life (February 12, 2021)

The Open Door discusses ethical and legal questions at the beginning and end of human life. We find an inspiration to do so in the visual arts. Richard Stith is our special and returning guest. He is a Senior Research Professor of Law at Valparaiso University. Prof. Stith serves on the board of the Consistent Life Network, an organization that combats abortion, euthanasia, war, the death penalty, racism, and poverty.Let’s begin with a short video that offers the perspective of an artist, your wife Rosemarie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9lPGQgc2XE&amp%3Bt=3sIn our ongoing work to defend the lives of the preborn, can we argue that abortion violates their right to life without favoring the criminal punishment of abortion, even of abortionists? How has Germany addressed this question?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?Some argue that there is a right to assisted suicide and euthanasia. What would be the basis of such a right? What do you see as the dangers of the legal recognition of such a right?