William E. May winner of the 2007 Paul Ramsey Award Winner
"Husbands and wives... have a "right" to the marital act and to care for life conceived through this act, but they do not have a "right" to a child. A child is not a thing to which husbands and wives have a right. It is not a product that, by its nature, is necessarily inferior to its producers, rather a child [is] like its parents. And this is the moral problem with the laboratory generation of human life..."
"Membership in the human species is of critical moral significance simply because human animals are different kinds of animals. They are different, not because of culture or brains, but because of who they are, that is, beings ultimately minded because within them is a principle of immateriality, of transcendence. Members of this species are beings of moral worth not by reason of anything that they do or achieve, but by reason of what they are."
CBC is proud to announce Dr. May as the winner of the 2007 Paul Ramsey Award. Dr. May joins Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, Dr. Germain Grisez, and Dr. John M. Finnis, as past recipients of an award which honors those who have made significant contributions in their work to defend the dignity of humankind while advancing ethical biotechnology.
Of course Dr. May has also just recently released his memoirs....
If interested, here is the first review...