“Catholic, but not According to the Rules”: Assisted Reproduction and Catholic Doctors in Belgium, 1940s–1980s
This article elucidates how Catholic doctors in Belgium, a dominantly Catholic country that was home to the largest Catholic university in Europe, creatively handled church teachings on assisted reproduction from roughly the 1940s until the 1980s. Catholic thought on reproductive medicine is mostly...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
2021
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| In: |
Journal of religious history
Year: 2021, Volume: 45, Issue: 3, Pages: 390-411 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Belgium
/ Catholicism
/ Reproductive medicine
/ In-vitro fertilization
/ History 1940-1990
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| RelBib Classification: | CF Christianity and Science CH Christianity and Society KBB German language area KBD Benelux countries |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article elucidates how Catholic doctors in Belgium, a dominantly Catholic country that was home to the largest Catholic university in Europe, creatively handled church teachings on assisted reproduction from roughly the 1940s until the 1980s. Catholic thought on reproductive medicine is mostly represented as restrictive and conservative, but this is not the full picture. On the contrary, this article reveals that many Catholic moralists and physicians looked for loopholes within church teachings, creating ‘Catholic’ versions of assisted reproductive technologies. A few progressive Catholics fundamentally questioned the authority of the Vatican, justifying donor insemination and in-vitro fertilisation by means of personalist ethics. By drawing attention to the diverse ways in which Catholics in Belgium negotiated their own moral understandings of assisted reproduction, this article adds a new dimension to recent histories of contraception, which complicate narratives of conflict between religion, science, and sexual liberation. |
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| ISSN: | 1467-9809 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of religious history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/1467-9809.12764 |