“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.

The Ramsey Award is given to those who have demonstrated exemplary achievement in the field of bioethics. Ramsey (1913-1988) was the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University and is regarded by many as one of the most important ethicists of the twentieth century.

Dr. May is the Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C., where he has been teaching since 1991. In 2003 Pope John Paul II appointed May as a consultor to the Congregation for the Clergy a title bestowed by the Vatican in recognition of his work. One of his most recent books is Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life (2000).

The 4th Annual Ramsey Award Dinner will be held at The Olympic Club Lakeside on Friday, March 30, 2007, 6:00PM in San Francisco, California.

Make a seat reservation or sponsor a table

Author Profile

Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, MA, BSN, RN, is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl’s writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. She is also called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking; she has three times addressed the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women on egg and womb trafficking.