by R. Cort Kirkwood
(AgapePress) – The question of federal funding for stem-cell research has some pro-lifers scratching their heads.
They recoil at the thought of it involving abortion, but cannot fathom opposing medical research that might cure crippling diseases. They wonder if abortion “politics” is hampering progress.
That argument is fallacy, for politics aren't the problem. Abortion is.
The Other Side's Logic
Mortimer Zuckeman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News and World Report, sums up the “politics” argument in the magazine's July 23 edition.
Like others, his case rests on an apparent ineluctability: “The embryos in question will be discarded anyway.” He thus offers a crude lesson in embryology, noting that stem cells “will never develop into a fetus” because other embryonic cells are required for a newly formed life to grow in the womb.
After that sophistry, which would permit any and all abortion, he separates the fetus and the embryo. Research on the former would be an abortion, but research on the latter, because it is smaller, is permissible, particularly if it arose from in-vitro fertilization i.e., in a petri dish with donated sperm and egg.
Of those, “some will be discarded anyway,” and the procedure involves “mixing of sperm and egg in a petri dish purely to extract cells for research not for reproduction.” But reproduction will have occurred in that dish, conception being required to create the embryo, and thus, the stem cells.
Zipping past that contradiction, Zuckerman quotes pro-life Sen. Orrin Hatch and The Wall Street Journal's Robert J. Bartley. Hatch flatly says “microscopic embryos on a petri dish do not constitute life, whereas an embryo in the womb does.”
Bartley is Zuckerman's theological muse. “In religious terms,” Zuckerman quotes Bartley the scrivener, “the soul has not entered the body.” Actually, “in religious terms,” ensoulment occurs at conception. Catholic and orthodox Christian teaching is crystal clear on that point. Bartley should stick to economics.
The Means to an End
So Zuckerman and friends ultimately argue, implicitly, that all abortion should be legal, for intent in creating life, not life itself, is what matters.
Using emotionalism, they present the victims of diabetes, other diseases or spinal-cord injuries. The image of cinema's Superman, Christopher Reeve, sentenced to life in a wheel-chair because of “pro-life politics” is a powerful one.
Their point is utilitarian to its core: The end justifies the means.
Which means, for instance, we can conduct medical experiments on death-row inmates, who will be executed anyway, or the victims of Lou Gehrig's Disease, for they too are doomed.
Well, everyone knows we can't do that, but our moral and religious scruples collapse, it seems, when we enter the misty realm of the microscopic, that which we neither see nor fully understand. We only know, we are told, that embryonic life cannot live apart from a mother's womb.
The “embryos will be discarded anyway” is not an argument for stem-cell research. It's an argument against in-vitro fertilization, illustrating why the procedure transgresses moral law. It permits doctors to manipulate life on a level unintended by God.
If “they are going to be discarded anyway” is a morally persuasive argument, then we surely must erect in-vitro labs where all the embryos “are going to discarded anyway.”
Stem Cells and Abortion
Truth is, federally-funded stem-cell research will involve abortion, for it will require either taking a life from the womb or taking a life destined for it, regardless that the latter was conceived in a dish by morally illicit means.
An embryo is an embryo in the womb or the dish. Life begins at conception, and any research that deliberately destroys such a life is the moral equivalent of abortion.
Pro-lifers must oppose the research and federal funding for it.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)