Should a mother consent to having her child immunized with a vaccine that was developed many years ago from aborted fetal tissue? Should a student use an anatomy atlas that includes drawings that likely used hundreds of dissected cadavers from the Nazi death camps as models? Should a woman who is imminently dying of intractable heart failure consent to a heart transplant if she knows the new heart has been retrieved from a young man who was murdered a few hours ago? The common thread in these scenarios is the question of moral complicity. Does scripture or Christian tradition teach us anything about moral complicity?
What Child Is This?
This is an edited and adapted version of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations report on “Marriage, Family and Human Cloning.” It speaks not only of cloning but also briefly touches on artificial insemination, surrogacy, and in vitro fertilization.
