President Bush’s veto last week of a bill that would have increased federal funding for stem cell research on frozen human embryos was unpopular. But it was right.
This was the first time Bush has invoked a veto in his 5 1/2 years as president, which suggests the importance he assigns to this issue.
The bill in question would have expanded federal support for embryonic stem cell research, easing restrictions that the president imposed in 2001 on federally funded embryonic stem cell research. Bush has stated that he issued the veto because he believes such research “crosses a moral boundary that our society needs to respect.”
The president believes that human life begins at conception and that destroying a human embryo to harvest stem cells is tantamount to murder.
This, of course, is an issue that has divided America since the 1970s, when the denial that life begins at conception framed the justification for legalized abortion in Roe v Wade.
“Each of these human embryos is a unique human life with inherent dignity and matchless value,” Bush said last week at a White House ceremony attended by children who had been conceived from frozen embryos. “We see that value in the children who are with us today.”
The stem cell issue, not surprisingly, is riddled by emotion.
Supporters of stem cell research were quick and vocal with criticism of the president’s action, accusing him of dashing the hopes of scientists, patients and their families.
Stem cell research does hold great promise for those afflicted with spinal cord injuries, and those with such life-threatening diseases as diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig’s.
Nearly all of us are endowed with the innate motivation to preserve the lives we have. No one really wants to see themselves or a loved one die without doing whatever is medically possible to save them. This devotion to life is commendable and right.
But the means to achieve that end have raised some unpleasant questions, particularly the one we’re dealing with here.
Many opponents of abortion are among those who support stem cell research. Our own Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith, along with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Sen. Orrin Hatch are among them. They want to save lives and they believe that using discarded fertility clinic embryos is a legitimate way to do it.
Problem is, if you agree with President Bush, those embryos are still living creatures, frozen though they may be. They have cells that, given the right conditions, will function just fine and will produce new cells, which is exactly what all this medical research is based on. There is plenty of evidence that these stem cells could produce cures for some of the conditions noted above.
But to harvest those stem cells means the embryo has to die. And that is why we agree with the president on this one. No matter what the benefit, there are grave moral questions surrounding the practice of killing one person to benefit another.
That’s what we’re talking about here.
If an embryo is not a living human being, why do parents and medical professionals go to such lengths to save fetuses who are having trouble in their mothers’ wombs? Why not just let all babies die who are born too early to sustain life without medical aid? The answer is that these are human beings and they do have value, despite the efforts by otherwise intelligent people to argue (conveniently) that they are not.
None of us takes lightly the problems of diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or Lou Gehrig’s. We personally know people who have been afflicted by one or more of those diseases and some paralyzed by spinal cord injuries. We’d be ecstatic if cures for any of those conditions could be found – without the sacrifice of a human life.
Some critics have questioned why the president has to meddle at all with the particular embryos that would be used in this research, since they are already harvested and are frozen. If they are thawed, they will not live, so why waste them? these people ask.
Yes, the problem of what to do with the frozen embryos is a difficult one, but two wrongs don’t make a right. To harvest those stem cells, killing those embryos in the process, takes us across a line we shouldn’t cross. That’s President Bush’s point.
What is right is protecting God-given human life, even when to do the contrary has potential to help save other lives.
The very fact that we have these frozen embryos is due to the fact that medical achievement has reached the point where people have had to start playing God.
And when we have to do that, we get into trouble.