The President chooses life
President Bush is to be commended for vetoing the fetal stem cell bill. As he rightly said in his veto message, "Children should not be used for spare parts."
It's easy, though, to understand the other side. Nancy Reagan- one of the most visible pro-stem cell research advocates- believes that a cure might be found for Alzheimer's Disease- the sickness which took first the mind and then the life of the greatest president of the last half of the Twentieth Century. Sufferers from a myriad of illnesses have been promised relief- if only we benighted social conservatives could get over the notion that to cannibalize even nascent members of our own species for spare parts is to pay too high a moral price for whatever good might theoretically come of it.
And- as Michael Fumento observes-that good might not only be much overblown, but there may well be morally less costly alternatives which will work just as well. Other forms of stem cell, which do not require the ending of even the beginning of a human life, might yet end up yielding the same- or better- results. If so, wouldn't every reasonable person agree that it would be a good thing- and a better answer than cannibalizing human embryos?
Everybody, that is, except those for whom the general acceptance of the casual killing of human embryos is the real agenda?
What is certain is that once we've crossed and begun destroying life in order to serve it, it will be more than the inherent contradiction involved we'll have to deal with. It will be a precedent which will be harder to contain than the advocates of fetal stem-cell research think.
True, the embryos involved would have been thrown away. But that in itself is the real problem. Any process- including in vitro human fertilization- which creates human life for the purpose of redundancy, with the conscious intention that it be thrown away, is itself an insult to human dignity and the priceless character of human life.
That we've crossed a line we never should have crossed to get here is not a justification for crossing another such line now.
It's easy, though, to understand the other side. Nancy Reagan- one of the most visible pro-stem cell research advocates- believes that a cure might be found for Alzheimer's Disease- the sickness which took first the mind and then the life of the greatest president of the last half of the Twentieth Century. Sufferers from a myriad of illnesses have been promised relief- if only we benighted social conservatives could get over the notion that to cannibalize even nascent members of our own species for spare parts is to pay too high a moral price for whatever good might theoretically come of it.
And- as Michael Fumento observes-that good might not only be much overblown, but there may well be morally less costly alternatives which will work just as well. Other forms of stem cell, which do not require the ending of even the beginning of a human life, might yet end up yielding the same- or better- results. If so, wouldn't every reasonable person agree that it would be a good thing- and a better answer than cannibalizing human embryos?
Everybody, that is, except those for whom the general acceptance of the casual killing of human embryos is the real agenda?
What is certain is that once we've crossed and begun destroying life in order to serve it, it will be more than the inherent contradiction involved we'll have to deal with. It will be a precedent which will be harder to contain than the advocates of fetal stem-cell research think.
True, the embryos involved would have been thrown away. But that in itself is the real problem. Any process- including in vitro human fertilization- which creates human life for the purpose of redundancy, with the conscious intention that it be thrown away, is itself an insult to human dignity and the priceless character of human life.
That we've crossed a line we never should have crossed to get here is not a justification for crossing another such line now.
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