Embryonic Stem Cell Research
June 10, 2004

It was very disheartening for me to recently read that members of the House, the Senate and now Mrs. Nancy Reagan are making a renewed effort to pressure President Bush to revise his order which bans using federal funds for embryonic stem cell research.

While we all earnestly desire and pray for the discover of treatments and cures for the diseases that plague us and our loved ones, not all of us want to do so at the expense of innocent human life.

In embryonic stem cell research, a human life is purposely brought into existence for the purpose of destroying it for the benefit of another human life.  Some argue that we don’t really know when human life begins, so we are justified in destroying human life in its early stages of development anywhere from conception to just before full delivery.

But all of this and other such arguments are arbitrary.  The one thing that we know for sure from a scientific standpoint is that a distinct human being begins his or her development at conception.  Humans develop from an embryo to a fetus, to an infant, to a child, to an adolescent, and finally into a full grown adult.  What changes throughout this process is not the distinct individuality of the human, but his or her size and stage of development.

But size and stage of development is not what determine personhood.  All humans vary in both size and stage of development throughout their lives.

Robert P. George, JD, who was a member of the President's Council on Bioethics has said that “The embryo is not a ‘potential life’ but is rather a life with potential.  It is a potential adult, in the same way that fetuses, infants, children, and adolescents are potential adults.”

But those who push for the destruction of human embryos and fetuses, use the same kinds of absurd arguments that Judge Phyllis Hamilton used when she struck down the recently enacted federal ban on the partial birth abortion procedure:  “The only way that an outside observer can determine whether any entity feels pain is if the entity communicates distress to the observer.  The parties agree that fetuses are unable to communicate, so it is impossible to determine conclusively if the stress responses seen in fetuses in fact translate into an actual pain response. . . .” 

So a baby in the womb cannot feel pain because it cannot talk?

A White House spokesman told The Boston Globe the president has not changed his mind, saying Bush “continues to believe strongly that we should not cross a fundamental moral line of funding or encouraging the destruction of human embryos.” 

Right now the destruction of human embryos is legal, and private foundations, pharmaceutical companies and other researchers can destroy human embryos in research.  This is bad enough in itself.  But what they want the President to do is to force the taxpayer to fund this research.

I am thankful to God that our president is standing on principle rather than giving into enormous pressure he is under to compromise his stand on the sanctity of human life.