quote:
So where does that line end? If your wife gave birth prematurely and your newborn cannot breathe without being hooked up to a manmade machine, is that playing god? If not, why not? Completely unnatural to have a machine breathe for you. Why should we sustain any life through medicine? If you develop bone cancer, surely receiving treatment for it would be an unnatural, human intervention subverting god's will, correct? Is Pope John Paul II burning in hell right now because he received a tracheotomy, extending his life outside of god's will? Without unnatural intervention by man, he would have died much sooner than he did.

It’s not that hard to understand and I feel like you guys are being intentionally obtuse. The Church believes euthanasia involves a choice to destroy a human life unnaturally. It believes IVF inevitably involves the choice that results in destruction of human life unnaturally (discarding what the Church believes are humans). IVF also involves the creation of human life unnaturally and picking/choosing the “best genes/sample” as being more worthy of continuing with its human life, and a culture of selection/consumerism to human life.

Chemo, a breathing machine, hip replacement, cold medicine, surgery, a stent… all of those enhance/sustains (not creates / destroys) human life. The Church is also in favor of vaccines, but doesn’t approve of embryonic stem cell research to create them because it destroys an embryo. (It’s common misconception the church doesn’t approve of stem cell research. It does. It doesn’t approve of embryonic stem cell research.)

You might not think human life begins right when egg/sperm meet and you might think humans choosing to end their life unnaturally isn’t wrong, and that’s your opinion. So you might think the Church is wrong/archaic on those topics. But even if so, it’s not hard to see how people who do think those things distinguish IVF and euthanasia from medicine items like chemo, surgery, etc.

This post was edited on 5/16/24 at 11:20 am