Joseph Fletcher
From Philosopedia
Fletcher, Joseph Francis III (1905—1992)
A theologian who once was an ordained Episcopal priest, Fletcher became a pioneer of medical ethics, teaching at the University of Virginia.
He wrote eleven books and more than 350 articles. In 1954, he published Morals and Medicine, The Moral Problems of the Patient's Right to Know the Truth, Contraception, Artificial Insemination, Sterilization, Euthanasia which, according to his The New York Times obituary, argued “the case for active euthanasia, for telling the truth to dying patients, for artificial insemination and for sterilization of those judged unfit for parenthood.”
Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy once dubbed him “the Red Churchman,” for he was twice beaten unconscious while lecturing in the South for the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union. Added The Times, “In the late 1960’s, he renounced belief in God and publicly espoused humanism, although he maintained many of his ties to religious groups and members of the clergy.”
In 1974, Fletcher was the American Humanist Association Humanist of the Year. In 1986 he was elected an honorary associate of the British Rationalist Press Association. He served on the Council for Secular Humanism’s Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, signed Humanist Manifesto II, and is a Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism.
