If President Bush had decided to federally fund research for the stem-cell lines of 60 already dead full-term preborn babies – babies that were killed specifically for their stem cells – the prolife community and the nation at large would be aghast.
But when the president decided to federally fund research on the stem-cell lines of 60 already dead embryos – human beings killed in their earliest stages for the sole purpose of harvesting their stem cells – most Americans and even many in the “prolife” community applauded him as wise.
Would somebody please explain to me the fundamental argument for the difference between the two?
President Bush made a deliberate, well thought-out, well labored-over decision to fund research on stem cells from embryos who have already been killed – killed, mind you, by researchers who saw fit in their own eyes to destroy one human for the mere hope of improving the life of another. These researchers actually believe that some human life has more value than others. They placed upon themselves the status of “judge” and determined
which humans have an intrinsic right to a better, a healthier, a more comfortable life and which humans must die to provide it.
President Bush says, “No more!” He declared, “We don’t support research that takes a human life.” But at the same time, in the same breath, he wants to politically benefit from having supported the research that can only go forward because somebody else has already done the killing. The president has condoned, and now rewarded, the actions of the scientists who killed these human beings. The president doesn’t want to pay to have it done now, he just believes in paying after the fact.
The very researchers who purposely killed these very young human beings now have the blessings of a president who is considered by some to be the great hope and protector of the preborn.
And those around President Bush who help shape his political career and future feel victorious. Why? Because they know that by this “brilliant” political move, the president has made great leaps in securing the support of the vast number of Americans in the great “muddled middle” on the issue of abortion. The fact that most Americans can still be swayed one way or another about the morality of killing the preborn is testament to the fact that the prolife community has failed to consistently define life as starting at the moment of conception. And many of our leaders are failing again at this most crucial of crossroads.
To the general populace, the president’s speech this past Thursday night made him appear to have the moral wisdom of Solomon. That, my friends, is a homerun for political “operatives” who have been pondering for years about how to win votes from this large segment of the American population traveling without a compass through the abortion-rhetoric fog. The Bush operatives may have won the support of this vital group, but the logic they used to do so has sliced the baby right down the middle.
I am nauseous at the realization that unless those who have traditionally supported the belief that life begins at conception do not reexamine their hearts and reaffirm this most basic of principles, that it is we as a political community who will be responsible for having lost the war against abortion once and for all. Too many have forgotten the basic rule that once you fuzz the line of where life begins, you have lost the entire argument for the sanctity of human life.
And as the $250 million is spent experimenting on these human remains, what in the world will our president do if the research does reveal more hope that even more experimenting will find a cure for, say, diabetes? Will he then decide to expand the funding to include the killing of more humans in their earliest stages to expand the cures? He may very well not. But he will never be able to stop it from happening.
Congress is already very close to passing such a bill now, even though scientists only surmise that these cells hold promise. Can you imagine how much more rapidly Congress would approve funding if any experiments of this kind are even remotely successful? President Bush has set the precedent. He is the very first president of the United States to approve taxpayer funding for research on embryonic stem-cell lines.
It is at this point in human history, and it is this most “pro-life” of American presidents, that has sent us, once and for all, into the deep abyss of American acceptance of sacrificing one class of human beings for the benefit of another.
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