Daily Ramblings:
Do Right To Me, Baby ...05/25/2005 04:52:46 pm
"Who can say that prolonging a life is not
pro-life?" So spoke Republican Congresswoman Jo
Ann Emerson, before voting in favor of a bill
overriding President Bush's ban on Federal funding of
new embryonic stem cell research. She boasted of
having a perfect pro-life record. She and other
pro-life Republicans who voted this way are
demonstrating that lazy illogicality is far from
being the sole property of Democrats.
The argument that has clearly swayed these members
of Congress is the one that says that the embryos in
question would have been discarded anyway, so why not
use them for good? They are excess; left over at
fertility clinics. The current treatments demand that
many embryos be created, because the chance of a
successful pregnancy with any one given embryo are so
small.
So, while these pro-life Republicans consider each
one worthy of respect as human life, they wish
nonetheless to be practical, and to make some good
come of what they see as the embryos' inevitable
destruction.
President Bush, in what has to count as the most
dramatic possible answer to this argument, met with 21 of these embryos - 21
who weren't destroyed after all but were adopted and
born and now have names like Tanner and Noelle, and
got to eat birthday cake at the White House.
The ultimate flaw in the thinking of pro-life
members of Congress who nevertheless support Federal
funding of embryonic stem cell research is really a
failure to understand basic economics (and too much
time in Washington will certainly do that to you). If
you believe that "spare" embryos do each
constitute a unique human life, then the position to
take is that we should move away from the current
situation where there is such a thing as a
"spare" embryo. We need the science of
fertility treatments to advance so that there are no
"excess" individuals created in the effort
to help an infertile couple have a baby.
What you absolutely don't want to do is to create
a built-in use for these "spare" embryos.
If they are being used for speculative life-saving
research, there will be that much less motivation to
minimize their creation in the first place. And, yes,
if such research should finally succeed in actually
achieving the cures that continue to elude it (not
for want of international trying) then what you have
arrived at is a justification for their mass
production.
It's a matter of incentives - something with which
the creators and stewards of our nightmarish tax code
should be instinctively familiar.
Meanwhile, the whole issue continues to be blurred
by what passes for the mainstream media these days.
The real successes with adult stem cells and
umbilical-cord-blood stem cells get far less
attention than the utopian predictions of the
advocates for embryonic stem cell research. The
distinctions between the three types fail to be
emphasized - if they're not being wilfully obscured -
as in this CBS story:
A majority of
Americans approve of using embryonic stem
cells in medical studies, according to a
CBS News poll. Fifty-eight percent say they support
stem cell research, while 31 percent
disapprove.
Approval is higher now than it was last August;
then, 50 percent approved and 31percent
disapproved, but 19 percent had no opinion.
Republicans are less likely than Democrats to
approve of it, although half do. Approval
of stem cell research among Republicans has risen
significantly since last year; then, 37
percent approved of it, now 50 percent do.
Approval has risen among Democrats as well,
although less dramatically, from 57 to 65 percent
now.
(emphases mine: RWB)
So, what is it exactly that these people in the
poll are really approving? Stem cell research,
including adult and umbilical? Or strictly embryonic
stem cell research? CBS doesn't bother to make the
distinctions in these paragraphs. Are we to trust
that their pollsters made the issues clear?
Forget gerrymandered polls and news organizations
that store their credibility in the toilet. The true
politics of this question (crass it it may seem to
reduce it to that) were illustrated in the poll that
counted - on November 2nd last. As yours truly
RWB helpfully
explained a few days later, embryonic stem cell
research was the issue that no one pointed to in the
aftermath of the Democrats' defeat, but which should
indeed have been noted, given the degree to which it
was emphasized by the Kerry/Edwards ticket during
their convention and campaign.
In the event that the Senate also passes this
misguided bill, President Bush will make it the
victim of his first veto, and he'll do so without
hesitation. His leadership on this issue is more than
just admirable. It may be forgotten now, but before
September 11th came and turned the page - in August
of 2001 in fact - this President was already
willingly defining himself by this issue, and the
broader issue of a culture of life. It was in August
of 2001 that the President made a very unusual
address to the nation - one I wrote
a little about at the time on a now defunct
website - in which he strove to bring these ethical
questions directly to the table of ordinary
Americans.
His continued rejection of the lazy illogicality
that seeks to overwhelm us on these issues may yet be
one of the most treasured legacies of his Presidency.
Don't wanna miss nobody, don't
wanna be missed,
Don't put my faith in nobody, not even a scientist.
But if you do right to me, baby,
I'll do right to you, too.
Ya got to do unto others
Like you'd have them, like you'd have them, do unto
you.
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