Stem Cell Vote

So, it's official: by a vote of 63-37, the Senate has sent the stem-cell bill discussed below to the President, and it surely looks like it will be vetoed post-haste. I'm not going to talk about the implications of this vote, because I already did that once. In fact, I'm not going to say much at that's directly on point.

Instead, I'd like to talk about a the stated justification for the looming veto. In response to why Bush plans on vetoing this bill, Press Secretary Tony Snow said the following: "The President is not going to get on the slippery slope of taking something living and making it dead for the purposes of scientific research."

Alright, there are a couple of responses to this. First, and this is the least consequential point because it is merely semantics, I'd like to point out that testing on animals has been done for years by the government and private actors. Sometimes, they die. Completely aside from the question of whether this is morally right or not, this "slippery slope" was crossed long ago, and it hasn't led to testing on people who are mortally ill (at least, involuntary testing), nor in testing on prisoners, etc. Snow's point was obviously meant to be that the President isn't going to go down the slippery slope of taking a HUMAN that is alive and making it dead.

This leads to the second point of discussion, and that is whether a fertilized embryo that is a few days old can be considered human or not. There is no dispute by anyone, at least anyone sane, that a few-days-old embryo is alive, but does it deserve the protections that belong to humans? Or is it some kind of lesser being, a proto- or pre-human? Obviously, this is pretty much the same question that comes up in the abortion debate, and nothing I can say is going to somehow change people's minds on the issue. Nevertheless, this is clearly a point that needs to be discussed; it can't just be glossed over.

My problem with the position that opposes this is that it seems a bit logically inconsistent, and here's why. The embryos that would be used in this process are those that would be discarded in the invitro-fertilization process. When someone chooses to undergo IVF, several embryos are created, and only one is implanted. The rest are summarily destroyed. My understanding is that the creation of excess embryos is a necessary part of the IVF process. Yet, you don't see very many politicians coming out in favor of stopping the evils of IVF. Why is this? Isn't the creation and subsequent destruction of embryos just as insidious as abortion? Isn't this the kind of thing that the pro-life lobby is supposed to oppose?

Of course the answer is that while abortion is a crowd pleaser for a substantial portion of the electorate, opposing IVF would not be. Many people need IVF to have children, and too oppose that would be one of the most politically unpopular things that any politician could do. And yet, this results in a huge inconsistency in the position taken by these politicians.

Further, knowing that these embryos are going to be created and destroyed, isn't it worse to callously allow them to be destroyed (and thus serve no purpose) rather than be used in a way that could benefit society? Now, this is a very close ethical issue. I agree that if we were creating embryos solely for the purpose of experimenting on them, that would be wrong (unless you are a pure utilitarian, in which case you probably have no problem with this). But that isn't what is happening. These embryos are going to be created and destroyed. As it is now, they serve no purpose. Anti-stem cell groups, then, are arguing that it is better to create and destroy embryos for IVF than to create and utilize embryos created by the IVF process. That, to me, is terribly naive and illogical.

If folks on the anti-stem cell research side were anti-IVF, I could understand the position more clearly. I cannot understand accepting IVF and still being opposed to the constructive use of embryos that are to be destroyed. For me, the choice between destruction or utilization is clear.