July 08, 2006
A Curious View of Humanity
Michael Kinsley has a great article at Slate about the absurdity of the
stem-cell debate.
In any particular case, fertility clinics try to produce more embryos than
they intend to implant. Then-like the Yale admissions office (only more
accurately)-they pick and choose among the candidates, looking for qualities
that make for a better human being. If you don't get into Yale, you have to
attend a different college. If the fertility clinic rejects you, you get
flushed away-or maybe frozen until the day you can be discarded without
controversy.
And fate isn't much kinder to the embryos that make this first cut. Usually
several of them are implanted in the hope that one will survive. Or, to put
it another way, in the hope that all but one will not survive. And fertility
doctors do their ruthless best to make these hopes come true.
In short, if embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility
clinics are death camps-with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics. No one
who truly believes in the humanity of embryos could possibly think
otherwise.
. . .
The better point-the killer point, if you'll pardon the expression-is that
if embryos are human beings, the routine practices of fertility clinics are
far worse-both in numbers and in criminal intent-than stem-cell research.
And yet no one objects, or objects very loudly. President Bush actually
praised the work of fertility clinics in his first speech announcing
restrictions on stem cells.
He should really push the point a bit further. If embryos are human beings,
then there's a good chance that fertility clinics are responsible for as
many "murders" as abortion clinics.
An additional irony is that for all the praise that fertility clinics get
from "pro-lifers" like President Bush, in-vitro fertilization often leads to
actual abortions. That's what Kinsley meant when he wrote that doctors
perform fertility treatments "in the hope that all but one will not
survive". Remember that lady who had septuplets a few years back? That's
what happened to her. After getting a bunch of test-tube babies implanted,
she decided that she couldn't "play God" and abort the weaker embryos like
her doctor had counseled her to do, but that her religion required her to
deliver her lab-produced litter of children. The remarkable thing about her
story wasn't that she got pregnant, but that she was stupid enough to try to
keep all seven and lucky enough that none of them died.
But I guess we're supposed to respect the sincere beliefs of those who
consider embryos to be human beings, right?
Nevertheless, abortion opponents deserve respect for more than just their
right to hold and express an opinion we disagree with. Excluding, of course,
the small minority who believe that their righteousness puts them above the
law, sincere right-to-lifers deserve respect as that rarity in modern
American politics: a strong interest group defending the interest of someone
other than themselves.
Or so I always thought-until the arrival of stem cells. Moral sincerity is
not impressive if it depends on willful ignorance and indifference to logic.
Just like marriage "defenders" don't seem to care much about divorce, if
abortion opponents want credit for their supposed moral clarity, then they
need to be a little more consistent.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask]
In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn