Main description:

Mormonism, Medicine, and Bioethics provides the first comprehensive treatment of principles and positions on questions of bioethics encountered by members, professionals, and ecclesiastical leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon). The book addresses three fundamental features of a coherent religious bioethics: precepts for practical decision-making, general ethical principles, and core religious convictions that give a
distinctive motivation for personal, communal, and professional integrity. LDS ethical principles of love, hospitality to strangers, covenantal solidarity, justice, and moral agency are integrated with central topics in bioethics including abortion, genetic testing and enhancements, in vitro fertilization,
medical assisted death, medicinal marijuana, neonatal intensive care, organ donation, preventive health care, universal access to care, and vaccinations.

This book uses first-person experiences to give voice to the lived moral realities of Latter-day Saints as they experience difficult and wrenching ethical questions and choices as persons, family members, community members, professionals, and as citizens within the context of their distinctive faith convictions. It situates these communal conversations within the broader discourse of bioethics and thereby supports both bioethics and religious literacy. Mormonism, Medicine, and Bioethics
also examines circumstances in which The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints engages in a moral witness of its values on matters of public policy, such as legalization of physician-assisted death, of elective abortion, and of medicinal marijuana. The book concludes with a distinctive normative
argument on why LDS ethical principles and practices require support of universal access to an adequate level of health care for all persons. It provides an appendix of significant LDS ecclesiastical policies on medical, health, and moral issues, making it a definitive educational and reference compilation.

Contents:

Preface

Introduction: Moral Realities of Latter-day Saint Ethics

Chapter 1. Faith, Medicine, and Healing

Chapter 2. Creating Life: New Conceptions

Chapter 3. The Wisdom of Prevention

Chapter 4. Back to the Future: Genes, Disease, and Future Generations

Chapter 5. Gifts of Life: Organ and Tissue Donation

Chapter 6. Born Dying

Chapter 7. Dying Well: Life Endings and Medical Assisted Death

Chapter 8. Public Bioethics: Abortion and Medical Marijuana

Epilogue. An LDS Case for Universal Health Care

Appendix A. LDS Ecclesiastical Statements on Biomedical Ethics Issues
Bibliography
Index