Commentary
Sixteen years ago, the University of Sydney applied to buy several hectares of land within the boundary of St John’s College, intending to construct a new medical building there.
I was the Rector of the college at that time. I and the Fellows were sympathetic to the request, for we had no use for the land, which lay between our oval and existing university property.
The proposed price ran to several million dollars, and, like all educational institutions, we could use the money.
But for us, as a Catholic college, there was one big ethical issue at stake: we determined that we could not sell the land unless the university gave us an undertaking that the new building would not be used for medical procedures that were connected in any way with the termination of human life, either of the very young or the very old….