Treatment of Imperiled Newborns: The Social Quality of Life Model in Light of Catholic Social Teaching

Because of the technological shift that our modern medical era has brought to the treatment and care of imperiled newborns, many persons have been saved who otherwise would have died. Though concerns about the quality of life for many of these newborns have come to the fore as a result, the importance of social factors in a broad understanding of what quality of life means is an oft-neglected topic and can be seen clearly within a context of Catholic Social Teaching. If one takes seriously the intrinsically social nature of persons, a preferential option for the poor, the universal destination of goods, and other like principles, the central thesis of the dissertation becomes clear: though all newly born human infants are full moral persons, what kind of treatments are beneficial or burdensome cannot be seen apart from complex social questions with regard to distribution of resources. Though more research is needed on treatment outcomes and their long-term costs before most specific reforms could be prudently enacted, the dissertation argues that certain neonatal treatments are disproportionate with the common good and ought to be foregone.