April teleconference targets life decisions

NEW YORK (UMNS) – A satellite teleconference, set for April 25, will explore "beginning of life" decisions in the context of recent medical advances and new scientific technology.

The event, "Does God Care How We Make Babies?  Ethical Concerns about Reproductive Choices, Cloning and Abortion," will air from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern time.  United Methodist Communications and the Iliff School of Theology are sponsoring the teleconference, in cooperation with the Women's Division, United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries, and the United Methodist Publishing House.

Shirley Struchen, teleconference producer, said the focus would be on "some critical ethical issues that the church as a whole is interested in discussing."  Among the issues that panelists and viewers will explore are:

• Implications of sperm donation, egg donation and in vitro fertilization:
• Concerns about cloning and creating designer children; and
• Dilemmas related to abortion as a moral choice.

Two of the panelists - Sally B. Geis and Donald E. Messer - have written a book on these concerns called The Befuddled Stork: Helping Persons of Faith Debate Beginning-of-Life Issues.  The book will be published in February.

Geis and Messer also are co-authors of Caught in the Crossfire: Helping Christians Debate Homosexuality and How Shall We Die? Helping Christians Debate Assisted Suicide.  Geis was founding director of the Iliff Institute for Lay and Clergy Education and currently is an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.  Messer has been president and Henry White Warren Professor of Practical Theology at Iliff since 1981.

Other participants will be Fredrick R. Abrams, M.D., Garlinda Burton, Sidney Callahan, the Rev. Ronald Cole-Turner, Marilyn E. Coors, Ruth L. Fuller, M.D., the Rev. Rebekah L. Miles and the Rev. J. Philip Wogaman.

Abrams is director of the Clinical Ethics Consultation Group and associate clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.  He also is associate medical director for the Colorado Foundation for Medical Care.  He founded the Center for Applied Biomedical Ethics at Rose Medical Center in Denver and is past chairman of the National Ethics Committee of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Burton, who will serve as moderator, is editor of Interpreter magazine, the United Methodist program journal, and a former news director for United Methodist News Service.  The United Methodist Association of Communicators named her Communicator of the Year in 1995.

Callahan is the author of nine books and has written for a variety of publications, including The New Republic, Psychology Today and the Los Angeles Times.  She has served as a columnist for Health Progress, the official journal of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, and for Commonweal Magazine.

Cole-Turner is the H. Parker Sharp Professor of Theology and Ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and an ordained United Church of Christ minister.  He has written numerous books and papers on religion and science, including Human Cloning: Religious Responses, and leads a UCC task force on genetic engineering.

Coors is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in the Department of Ethnics and Human Genetics.  The Roman Catholic laywoman serves on the Denver Children's Hospital ethics committee and the boards of Regis University and the Seeds of Hope Charitable Trust.

Fuller is an associate professor of psychiatry at the Health Sciences Center and previously was in private practice in Harlem.  She has consulted with the Sickle Cell Center at Children's Hospitals and the Child Protection Team at University Hospital in Denver.  A Presbyterian elder, her published work has focused on women and children in cross-cultural and minority settings.

Miles, an associate professor of ethics at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, is a member of the United Methodist Church's Little Rock Annual Conference.  She was a member of the United Methodist Genetic Science Task Force and is the author of The Pastor as Moral Guide and Wesley and the Quadrilateral.

Wogaman served as professor Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary from 1966 to 1992.  Since then, he has been senior pastor at Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington. His 15 published books include Christian Ethics: A Historical Introduction and Christian Moral Judgment.

The teleconference will include four on-air segments with panel presentations and video and local site discussions with interactive questions by phone and fax.  The target audience includes religious leaders and members of their faith communities; counselors; chaplains; and medical, health care and social service professionals.  Continuing education credit is an available option.

For more information about the teleconference or about hosting a downlink site, call (212) 870-3802 or send an e-mail to umtc@interport.net. Information also is available on the Internet at http://www.umcom.org/umtc/choices.