This article considers the ethics of delayed disclosure of the limits of health care to a client. Specifically, it considers the current practice of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, which imitate abortion providers’ advertising techniques, so as to attract abortion-minded clients. I argue that such advertising is within the limits of truthfulness, and that it may be maintained as a legitimate response to a crisis of terminology in the abortion debate. This conclusion validates similar techniques of “benign misleading” as used by NFP-only or abstinence-only health-care providers.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
PaulJohnIIEvangelium vitae (Boston, MA: Pauline Books, 1995), n. 94.
2.
PaulJohnIIEvangelium vitae (Boston, MA: Pauline Books, 1995), n. 30.
3.
PaulJohnIIEvangelium vitae (Boston, MA: Pauline Books, 1995), n. 25.
4.
PaulJohnIIEvangelium vitae (Boston, MA: Pauline Books, 1995), n. 25.
5.
For an analysis of this shift, see JohnJ., ConleyS.J.“A New Assault on Conscience,” in Life and Learning XIII: Proceedings of the Thirteenth University Faculty for Life Conference, ed. JosephW., KoterskiS.J. (Washington, D.C.: University Faculty for Life, 2003), 21–28.
MosherSteven W. has written recently on international efforts to redefine “reproductive health” and other definitions, e.g. “‘Reproductive Health Care,’ the ‘Demographic Imperative,’ and the Real Health Needs of Women in the Developing World (Part Two),”Linacre Quarterly76 (2009): 181–211.
8.
The initiatives of Mark Crutcher, and more recently, Lila Rose, president of an organization named Live Action, likely violate the limits of truthfulness. In her efforts to expose the deceptive practices of Planned Parenthood workers of covering up statutory rape cases, Rose declares that she is fifteen years old, when she is actually in her twenties.
9.
GriffithsPaul J. recently defended St. Augustine's ban on lying in Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity, (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2004).
10.
MacIntyreAlasdair appeals to agents’ duties to justify lying to protect an innocent in “Truthfulness, Lies, and Moral Philosophers: What Can We Learn from Kant and Mill,” in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 16, ed. PetersonGrethe B. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1995): 307–361. In this paper, I argue that such duties inform the meaning of terms, but cannot justify lies.
11.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1st ed., n. 2483.
12.
PrussAlexander argues for the acceptability of a form of deception that is based on accepting the false terms of the interlocutor in “Lying and Speaking Your Interlocutor's Language,”Thomist63 (1999): 439–453. This seems to conflict with the good of personal integrity that Germain Grisez correctly defends. It also misappropriates words, implicitly denying the gift of speech, as Paul J. Griffiths argues in Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity, 85.
13.
See MannWilliam E.“To Catch a Heretic: Augustine on Lying,”Faith and Philosophy20 (2003): 479–495.
14.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed., n. 2482.
