{"id":417,"date":"2009-02-07T20:35:34","date_gmt":"2009-02-07T20:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2009\/02\/assisted-reproductive-technolo.html"},"modified":"2009-02-07T20:35:34","modified_gmt":"2009-02-07T20:35:34","slug":"assisted-reproductive-technolo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/02\/assisted-reproductive-technolo.html","title":{"rendered":"Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Catholic Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The single mother of six who lives with her parents and then has more eight children<\/a> seems to have missed the class on good parenting. Simply put, this is too many children.  They can’t each get the care and attention they need. The mom wants to go back to school. Who then takes care of them?. Who pays?  All the children were born with the help of artificial means. <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

To live in the technological revolution of the new world, we need ways to shape our ethical and moral response.<\/a> My Catholic Church has subtle and nuanced arguments about just war, and when it is justifiable to take up arms. These volumes fill libraries. But on sex and reproduction, they are frozen in a pre-scientific age.   <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

Sadly, my Catholic Church does not seem ready to provide guidance.  They revert to the barricades—their usual unsubtle and unhelpful response:  NO NO NO. They forbid parents who desperately want a child from using artificial insemination. <\/a>Yet, thousands of children and adults live fruitful lives because their parents turned to science. Are they saying that these children should never have been born?  <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

This is not the moment to rail against those single men who don’t understand love, sex without children, and having  children without sex. But I hope that if not the Church, the group of bio-ethicists who have emerged in the last thirty years will discuss when in vitro is appropriate, when having more children is having too many, and what shape a healthy family might take. <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

I don’t think this is the moment for laws and regulations, but  certainly the time is ripe for someone, the woman’s parents,  health professionals, a minister, a social worker to say that six children  born to a single mother is enough. Today’s children need and deserve attention—and they won’t get it when there are 13 others who also want it.  <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

I am pro-conscience and believe that mothers should decide what is the best for their families and themselves. But as social beings, we are helped in the formation of our conscience by our family, friends and social norms,. And we could be helped by my Catholic Church should it decide to move beyond the ancient  biology of the  homunculus.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

I hope that this woman’s story will provoke a vigorous dialog as to when bearing a child is a blessing to the family and the child, when it is not, and how those who are pro-conscience can best keep off consciences informed. <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The single mother of six who lives with her parents and then has more eight children seems to have missed the class on good parenting. Simply put, this is too many children.  They can’t each get the care and attention they need. The mom wants to go back to school. Who then takes care of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholics","category-religion-in-the-public-square"],"yoast_head":"\nAssisted Reproductive Technologies and the Catholic Church - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/02\/assisted-reproductive-technolo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Catholic Church - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The single mother of six who lives with her parents and then has more eight children seems to have missed the class on good parenting. Simply put, this is too many children.  They can’t each get the care and attention they need. The mom wants to go back to school. Who then takes care of…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/02\/assisted-reproductive-technolo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-07T20:35:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kathleen Kennedy Townsend\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Catholic Church - Progressive Revival","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/02\/assisted-reproductive-technolo.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Catholic Church - Progressive Revival","og_description":"The single mother of six who lives with her parents and then has more eight children seems to have missed the class on good parenting. Simply put, this is too many children.  They can’t each get the care and attention they need. The mom wants to go back to school. Who then takes care of…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/02\/assisted-reproductive-technolo.html","og_site_name":"Progressive Revival","article_published_time":"2009-02-07T20:35:34+00:00","author":"Kathleen Kennedy Townsend","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/02\/assisted-reproductive-technolo.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/02\/assisted-reproductive-technolo.html","name":"Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Catholic Church - Progressive Revival","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-02-07T20:35:34+00:00","dateModified":"2009-02-07T20:35:34+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/7a0c29254760f11be56775b1818505f4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/02\/assisted-reproductive-technolo.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/02\/assisted-reproductive-technolo.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2009\/02\/assisted-reproductive-technolo.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Catholic Church"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/","name":"Progressive Revival","description":"Politics from the New Religious Progressives","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/7a0c29254760f11be56775b1818505f4","name":"Kathleen Kennedy Townsend","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/aa2\/aa26e53d98941519394e5a7f209a375ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/aa2\/aa26e53d98941519394e5a7f209a375ax96.jpg","caption":"Kathleen Kennedy Townsend"},"description":"Kathleen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s faith was shaped as she grew up in a large Irish Catholic family and attended Catholic schools. The eldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, she saw her parents make the connection between faith and justice, between faith and the common good. Civil rights was a moral issue - poverty unacceptable. Her father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s article \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Suppose God is Black?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d highlighted for her the notion that our religious beliefs were intimately connected to our public actions. In the early eighties, Kathleen wrote a number of articles connecting faith to the fight for a fairer society. She founded the Maryland Student Service Alliance to make Maryland the first, and still only state that requires young people to engage in community service as a condition of graduation. And, as Maryland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first woman Lt. Governor, she instituted the office of Character Education - to provide a focal point for the teaching of responsibility and respect to the next generation. Kathleen serves on a number of non-profit boards. She is the chairman of the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland and serves on the board of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Points of Light Foundation, National Catholic Reporter, and the Character Education Partnership, among others. While serving as the chairman of the board of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, she created the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Mrs. Townsend is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Before being elected Lt. Governor, Mrs. Townsend served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States. She helped design and launch the nationally acclaimed Police Corps, a program that gives college scholarships to young people who pledge to work as police officers for four years after graduating Kathleen has been appointed an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s School of Public Policy and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government where she focused her efforts on faith and public life. Mrs. Townsend is an honors graduate of Harvard University, and holds a law degree from the University of New Mexico where she was a member of the law review. She has received ten honorary degrees and has published several articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Monthly, among others. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend lives outside Baltimore, Maryland with her husband, David, a professor at St. John\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s College in Annapolis. They have four daughters Meaghan, Maeve, Kate and Kerry.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/kktownsend"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}