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The medicalization of transhumanist technologies demands our prompt and undivided attention. This article surveys the principal body/mind enhancement goals of transhumanist medicine and the means it would employ—genetic, robo, info-, and nanotechnologies—to accomplish those ends (Part One). Second, it engages Christian anthropological and natural law principles to evaluate the populist and essentialist concerns these therapeutic/enhancement interventions provoke (Part Two). And, third, it proposes formation of a Catholic medical think tank to appraise whether transhumanist biotechnologies can serve human dignity and, to the extent they can, to formulate wise clinical/administrative guidelines for their inclusion in US Catholic healthcare settings (Part Three). Nontechnical summary: This article explores the body/mind enhancement goals of transhumanist medicine, evaluates the biotechnological means to accomplish those therapeutic/enhancement goals, and suggests the formation of a Catholic medical think tank to formulate wise clinical/administrative guidelines for the inclusion of genetic, robo, info-, and nanotechnologies in US Catholic healthcare settings.

For physicians who morally oppose assisted reproduction, NaProTECHNOLOGY offers an alternative set of treatments for infertility.

The author proposes an ethics audit of Catholic sterilization policies as a way to correct the disparity between the regnant moral directive prohibiting direct sterilization in Catholic health-care facilities and the policy and practice of allowing tubal ligations for “medical” or “therapeutic” purposes. The proposed four-step plan for the ethics audit involves dialogue and collaboration between U.S. bishops who have Catholic health-care facilities in their dioceses and the respective hospitals’ administration, sponsors, and medical staff. First, bishops clarify for Catholic hospital administrators, sponsors, and system leadership the moral distinction between a direct sterilization and one that is therapeutic or indirect. Second, bishops instruct hospital CEOs to abide by directive 53 of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services by providing only indirect sterilizations. Third, bishops encourage hospital leadership and medical/nursing staff to promote directive 53 in tandem with directive 52 and its call for providing natural family planning services within the hospital. And, fourth, bishops collaborate with the hospital or system leadership in conducting ongoing oversight of sterilization policy/procedures to insure that their Catholic health-care institutions practice durable compliance with directives 52 and 53.

Thousands of women experience uterine factor infertility (UFI). Some are born without a womb. Many of these women, whether suffering from congenital or acquired uterine infertility, retain a strong desire to be able to bear their own biological child. Here I will assess the ethics of two proposed models of human uterus transplantation (UT) to determine whether either approach is a morally superior alternative to gestational surrogacy.

The current approach to infertility of assisted reproductive technology (ART) completely misses and then bypasses the evaluation and treatment of cervical factor infertility. In contrast, the Creighton Model Fertility Care System (CrMS), a method of fertility awareness that has the unique ability to quantify cervical mucus observations, and natural procreative technology (NaProTECHNOLOGY or NPT) directly evaluate and treat cervical factor infertility. The ART treatment of choice for cervical factor infertility–-intrauterine insemination (IUI)–-is also morally disparate from the NPT treatment protocol: while the latter genuinely assists the infertile couple's act of sexual union to achieve its natural end of pregnancy, IUI replaces the natural act, depriving human conception of the one context worthy of the dignity of human life and procreation, a reciprocal self-gifting act of love between husband and wife. A renewed interest and focus on the direct evaluation and treatment of cervical factor infertility is needed.