ABSTRACT
Three issues that dominate current bioethical discussions regarding the beginning of human life – and which have polarized debate in scientific, social, and political arenas – are abortion, human embryonic stem cell (ESC) research, and human cloning. The first has been a significant point of public debate since the US Supreme Court’s Roe v.Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions in 1973.The latter two issues garnered national and international attention beginning in 1998 and 1997, respectively, and the recent reports of the President’s Council on Bioethics (PCB), Human Cloning and Human Dignity (2002) and Monitoring Stem Cell Research (2004), demonstrate that debate on these issues is not likely to end anytime in the near future. Having argued for a Thomistic account of when a human being begins to exist in Chapter 2 and elucidated Aquinas’s natural law ethic in Chapter 1, I will now apply these metaphysical and moral positions to these issues of contemporary societal concern.
