What has brought us to this point where the eggs of young women have become commodities to be bought and

sold? (see http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20060316/1a_cover16.art.htm) I have asked a question that is obviously larger than I can answer here, but we approach an answer by noting that we have to a great extent lost our sense of wonder at the splendor of nature and of our proper place within it. The natural world is no longer something to contemplate and respect, but has become mere material with which we can (or will be able to) create whatever kind of world we want. Technology rules our fast-paced lives and estranges us from the rhythms and movements of the natural world. As far as some of us are concerned, this is well and good, because Nature is an annoyance that we would just as soon avoid; except perhaps for certain aesthetic delights it might bring us. Because we enjoy the easy comforts that our domination of nature brings, we blind ourselves to the moral and physical horrors we have wrought. Certainly, life would be poor, nasty, brutish, and short without technology or art, so I am not proposing that a pure state of nature is to be sought. However, art (techne), like grace, should build on nature, not against it. The manipulation of nature should accord with and enhance the normal, healthy processes of nature. Nature is normative. Its biological systems and processes serve as guides to action, as they are inclined toward natures perfection. What is good for nature, what perfects and completes it, should be pursued. This naturalistic principle, as we might call it, follows directly from the first principle of practical reason: Do good and avoid evil. The good of each thing is the perfection or completion of its being (or nature).[1] Man, who can understand all goods and is not moved only by instinct, should be solicitous of the good of all beings, not merely his own good. Even from a self-interested perspective, his bodily well-being cannot be maintained without maintenance of the ecological systems of which he is a part. As well, it seems to be impossible for man to be happy, that is to perfect his own being, unless he pursues the good of others, albeit, particularly the good of other persons, but also that of other natural beings. A difficulty for the naturalistic principle arises, however, from the fact that the natural world is not a monolithic thing that has a system of perfectly coordinated movements. In fact, the natural world is at war with itself. What is good for the lion is not good for the gazelle. And there is disease in nature: what is good for the cancer cell, is not good for the body. Nature is imperfect, so it seems an unlikely source of guidance for our action. Of course, many of the conflicts in nature are simply resolved by natures own processes. They are amoral. Man is not involved with them. They take care of themselves. Some gazelles will outrun the lions; others will not, so some lions will not starve. The body has an immune system that fights off disease and restores health. But sometimes the body fails to restore health on its own. Here we come to the crux of the issue of how far the naturalistic principle can be taken. It seems that we need some other principle to help decide the extent to which we can use technology to assist nature to be healthy. We can say confidently that we should never use technology to make nature un-healthy. Contraception and abortion are clear examples of the use of technology to subvert healthy

natural processes. But what do we say about using technology to help create life, and more specifically of using one womans eggs to create life for another woman? Here it seems that the pro-life camp should be jumping for joy. More babies! Being pro-life, however, does not mean promoting life by any means and at any cost. To be pro-life entails a respect for the ordinary processes of life. Because the contemporary world has divorced sex from procreation, it is easy for it to divorce procreation from sex. The two, however, should always be married. But why? If we do not object to the injection of insulin into the diabetics veins by artificial means for the sake of his health, why should we object to the artificial insemination of a human egg and its placement into the uterus of a woman for gestation when the woman is unable otherwise to conceive? The diabetic cannot produce insulin, and the woman cannot produce a child, so we assist them with artificial means. What is wrong with that? To answer to this question is more difficult than explaining why contraception is evil, precisely because the goal of in vitro fertilization is the good of life. We might argue that we see here how the naturalistic principle is not the final word in ethical decision making, which it is not. But I think we can answer even this question from a naturalistic perspective. In the first place, we can point to the fact that in many cases, though not all, the inability to conceive is the result of some earlier perversion or unnatural act, such as the procurement of an abortion, or the use of artificial contraceptives, or it is a result of contracting a sexually transmitted disease. Natures reaction to vice is often disease. But this fact is not a sufficient answer, because we cannot claim that disease is a good, even if it is a reaction to an evil. Secondly, we can point to the horror of what befalls many embryos that are inseminated for the sake of one attempted pregnancy. Not all the embryos are implanted; and many are experimented on and killed. This is clearly unacceptable from a naturalistic perspective. But assuming that we could come up with a way to fertilize only one egg and have almost 100 percent success in implanting the egg? Wouldnt that be all right? Then we have the problem that the parents who are united in marriage, who may even love each other and may actually want the child as something other than a commodity to which they feel a right of ownership, are often not both the biological parents of the child conceived (as in the case we started this article with, where the eggs are purchased from a third party). But we do not object to adoption, so we cannot really object to one of the parents not being a biological parent. Can we? We could go on asking and answering such questions, distracting ourselves from the vital issue: sex and procreation belong together.[2] Two become one flesh, so that the two may become one flesh. To grasp the inherent connection between sex and procreation and to understand that it is wrong to intentionally sever the connection between them by performing either activity in isolation from or without openness to the other requires insight or prudence. It is not an ad hominem argument to point out that for one to acquire prudence he must acquire temperance and fortitude. At any rate, developing a sense of wonder at the splendor of nature and of our proper place within it and acceptance of the naturalistic principle can be a first steps toward acquiring the insight.[3]

_______________________________________ [1] The term nature is used in a number of ways, and misunderstanding can result from confusion of the different senses of the word. In every instance above (except the last one and when referring to that which is the subject of grace), the term nature refers simply to the natural world, the physical world with its material laws and biological systems and processes. Another sense of the term nature refers to the essence of a thing, or that which defines what the thing is. In this sense, we would say that the nature of man is to be an embodied spirit (or a rational animal). The two senses are intimately related in that when we describe an object in the natural (physical) world, the description of the physical characteristics and processes of the thing comprehends the whole essence (or nature) of the object. In short, at the physical level of being there is no real distinction between our two primary senses of the term nature. Because man is an embodied spirit, however, we cannot give a complete description of his nature by simply describing his physical characteristics. Man has a nature (in the second sense) that transcends nature (in the first sense). [2] We might add the corollary that procreation and marriage belong together, for the good of the off-spring, which is the naturalistic reason why sex and marriage go together. [3] On the other hand, insight into the inviolability of the connection may lead to acceptance of the principle. The old naturalistic natural law arguments against masturbation, contraception, and homosexuality have long seemed so brilliantly clear to me, that I find it difficult to see how some people find them ridiculous. All three arguments rest on the quite obvious fact that the sex organs are ordained toward procreation. Even contraceivers do not deny the fact, which is why they seek to interfere with their natural end when they use them. What we make of the fact varies radically. I once was arguing about the evils of contraception with a supposedly conservative political science professor (not at any of the schools I attended) and he argued that to not practice contraception is animalistic. The reasoning being that we are most human when we use our reason to control nature and bend it to our ends. Upon reflection I realized that he could not be farther from the truth. We are most human when we freely conform our mind, will, and passions to the ends God has given us. It is more human to learn to temper and control the desires (to acquire the virtues) from within, than it is to find ways to fulfill every sexual urge one has by controlling nature externally.