Today, with the announcement that our new President will allow the use of tax dollars to fund research utilizing embryonic stem cells, I’ve heard lots of speculation about the potential good: regenerated spinal chords, cures for diseases like Parkinson’s and certain cancers, folks getting out of their wheelchairs. Only inserted parenthetically are disclaimers about the fact that embryonic stem cell research offers only potential toward possible cures yet undiscovered. Almost never is it admitted that research with embryonic stem cells is no more promising at all than research already being conducted with great success using stem cells from other sources. The focus of the argument seems always to jump right ahead to one simple question: Would not these potential benefits be well worth the use of these embryos, which might be just discarded anyway? Just think of the folks who could be helped!
Well, saints, I think we had better concern ourselves quite quickly with a different potential at stake and quite another question to raise. First of all, what about the potential human life represented by each human embryo to be discarded after the extraction of stem cells? The truth is, after all, since the scientific community can offer absolutely NO answer as to the point in time when an embryo “becomes” a human baby, it is no potential life at all, but an actual human life. To terminate a human life, however small, against its will and in exploitation of its inability to defend itself, is murder. Each step towards a possible cure that utilizes the benefits of embryonic stem cell research is complicity in actual murder.
This leads us to our question to raise. How many actual human lives represent a reasonable price to pay for each potential benefit to another human being? In other words, how many existing human embryos should we kill to pay for a cure for Parkinson’s? Is our “compassion” for tomorrow’s patients ample justification for the extinction of today’s children? If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, how much are today’s children worth in terms of tomorrow’s cures? And how shall we justify the dehumanization and murder of human embryos in light of the equal promise offered by ethically neutral and medically equivalent stem cells from other sources?
We as a culture sat by as justifications were raised for the creation of embryos outside of the womb. Potential pregnancies through in vitro fertilization justified the creation of “discardable” embryos in the process. The embryos which lived “justified” the death of others. The “right” of a woman to bear children trumped the rights of the unborn themselves. Now the creation of embryos – and the resultant destruction of them – outside the sanctified safety of marriage and the womb is excused for reasons so far-flung as to be laughable were not the cost so great. And were not all of us required now by our President to pay, both fiscally and morally, that cost.
On the surface, of course, it all seems so compassionate. Maybe even Christian. Our President predicated his justifications and assurances with the phrase, “being a man of faith…”. Saving lives and making advances for the sick and weak among us: who can argue against it without sounding angry and calloused and hateful? But let us not fool ourselves. Murder today is no way toward a compassionate tomorrow for anyone.
Well said, brother! The thing I find most frustrating is how the media insists on always using the broader term “stem cell research” even when discussing those who oppose only embryonic stem cell research. As if opponents of the later are de facto opponets of non-embryonic stem cell research as well. I hurt for all of those Christians who are supposedly pro-life who voted for Obama under the sad misconception that his policies would not really have any effect on the un-born. The right to life movement has already lost nearly a decade of progress in two months. Father, in Your Mercy, help us!