Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 20, 2023 / 08:30 am
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and a key Catholic bioethics group are both warning of a potential rewriting of U.S. law to broaden the definition of brain death, a revision they claim relies on “deficient medical criteria.”
The USCCB and the National Catholic Bioethics Center said in a joint letter this month that the Uniform Law Commission was moving to revise the definition of whole-brain death without relying on “compelling scientific evidence” to do so.
The Uniform Law Commission (ULC) is a nonprofit group based in Chicago that drafts model legislation for U.S. lawmakers. The group says on its website that it “provides states with nonpartisan, well-conceived, and well-drafted legislation that brings clarity and stability to critical areas of state statutory law.”
The ULC meets this week in Honolulu for its 132nd annual meeting. Among the items of debate at the gathering is a slate of revisions to the Uniform Determination of Death Act, a law first proposed by the ULC in 1981 and which has since been adopted by most state legislatures.