A bad disease, a fatal cure: why sterilization is permissible and the autonomy of medicine is not.

The debate in this issue regarding the Roman Catholic condemnation of the morality of sterilization is puzzling for Protestants. As I will argue the puzzlement arises on two grounds. First, why would anyone object to direct sterilization for the cure or prevention of disease? Second, if one wanted to challenge such an objection on moral grounds why would one turn to medicine to do so? For Christian ethics there is nothing wrong in principle with direct sterilization when there are good reasons for precluding the possibility of an additional pregnancy; and it is a serious theological mistake to treat medicine as an independent moral authority.