The other effect that I worry about is the effect on the parent, that the moral teaching of humility and of the limits to our control that parenthood teaches- - that that will be lost and that we will begin to think of children more as consumer goods than as gifts that we can't fully control and for which we aren't fully responsible.
Michael SandelThere are really exercises in a kind of consumerist ethic that I think don't have the same moral weight as medicine or health.
Michael SandelThere is a tendency to think that if we engage too directly with moral questions in politics, that's a recipe for disagreement, and for that matter, a recipe for intolerance and coercion.
Michael SandelI have a broad but not an expert or scholarly background in the Jewish tradition. I've tried to learn what I can from childhood, but I am not an expert on Jewish teachings.
Michael SandelIt is true that the Jewish tradition emphasizes the moral mandate to save life. It also has a different position from the Catholic Church on the moral status of the embryo. It has a more developmental view of when human life, in the sense of personhood, begins than does the Catholic Church.
Michael Sandel