The Other Side of Pro-Life: Part II
Littwin: Stem-cell debate: Now it gets personal
Another absolutely wonderful read that sent me scurrying to the Congressional record for JoAnn Emerson's speech from 5/24/05:
Mrs. EMERSON. Mr. Speaker, I have a profound deep and abiding belief in the right to life. I have introduced a constitutional amendment to ban abortions every session of Congress since 1997 and have a perfect pro-life voting record.Two years ago I visited the Bader Peach Orchard in Campbell. I met the Baders' son, Cody, after my tour. Cody is a handsome and articulate young man who happens to live in a wheelchair because of a car accident. Cody asked that I rethink my opposition to embryonic stem cell research because he thought that one day if it did not help him, it might just help another young person like him. I later wrote a note to Cody's family telling them that even after hearing his story, I could not do as he asked. And I have regretted writing that letter ever since.
My friends Joel and Dana Wood have a son James, who was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy when Dana was 9 months pregnant. James may never see his 21st birthday, and this is just heartbreaking. My late husband, Bill Emerson, and his mother, Marie, who passed away last night, both suffered from diseases for which stem cell research holds much hope: cancer and dementia. Embryonic stem cells are the only avenue for research we know of now that can possibly help alleviate those two diseases. Neither adult stem cells nor cord blood are plausible for the study or treatment of brain tissue.
I have met with ethicists, scientists, two priests, and my own minister to talk about this agonizing decision. But when presented with an embryo, an embryo that cannot live outside a uterus, an embryo that is going to sadly be thrown out as medical waste, and the lives of little James Wood and young Cody, I ask do they not have as much of a right to life as that embryo that is going to be tossed away?
I had dinner last Thursday night with my daughter and her friend, Will Coffman. Will's story is much like Cody's. We talked and talked about this issue. And Will said to me, We may never know how the story will end, but please do not let the story end right now.
Mr. Speaker, my pro-life credentials are unquestioned. Who can say that prolonging a life is not pro-life? Technology and faith continue to present agonizing decisions and conflicts. Each life is precious, and so I must follow my heart on this and cast a vote in favor of H.R. 810.
I'm sure there's plenty I disagree with the Congresswoman on, but this is one more example of how the issue isn't even close to black and white. It's also an example of a much more realistic profile in courage than the Bush Administration is willing to pat itself on the back for being.
It's not a pro-life position to be against federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. It's just one more sad example of power for the sake of power. In this case, the power to keep someone in a wheelchair, the power to keep someone hooked up to an insulin pump. A shame that their life should mean so little.
SIDENOTE: For a slightly dated (back on Christmas, to be precise), but still powerful read along these lines, I'd highly recommend Michael Kinsley's TNR contribution for extra credit:
In short, stem cells make the essential premise of the right-to-life movement a much harder sell. It's a real person like you, or it's many people like you, or it's actually you--versus that microscopic dot. The selflessness required to say, "OK, I'll suffer and die prematurely so that this dot can stay frozen for the next thousand years," is much more dramatic than the mostly theoretical selflessness involved in opposing abortion.Recognizing this unfortunate constraint, the opponents of stem-cell research have nearly abandoned their principled argument--the one thing that made their cause sympathetic. In California, where the November ballot includes a proposal for the state to spend $3 billion over ten years on stem-cell research, the organized opposition barely mentions the word embryo. The pitch is mostly about side issues, such as whether the referendum language could be interpreted as lowering the standards of informed consent for people who sign up for research experiments.
And, in the national debate about the federal near-ban on embryonic stem-cell research, supporters of the ban harp on the allegedly great promise of stem cells taken from the bone marrow of adults, which are blessedly uncontroversial. As someone who stands to benefit most from early breakthroughs if they happen (I have Parkinson's), I have nothing against spending lots of money on research with adult stem cells. Bring it on. Please. But whatever promise there is in adult stem cells doesn't negate the promise of embryonic ones.
I obviously disagree with Kinsley's notion of life appearing gradually, but the points regarding the selflessness of the original pro-life movement versus the more self-interested absolutism of the current spinoff is well worth noting.
Sorry to bring this up again, but have you thought about the end game if a major cure is discovered sometime down the road with human embryo research? Sure, right now the rationalization is just "well, better to study these embryos than just throw them down the drain", and to that it may be hard to say no. But if a cure is found the demand would become such a flood that it's pretty much impossible that mere leftovers could sate it. The likely outcome is that huge cloning farms would fill the gap by produced hundreds of embryos at a time, which would then be harvested to manufacture the actual treatments.
I'm just saying, you do realize that a decision to go ahead with this is tantamount to a decision to mass manufacture human embryos as raw materials for medical products?
B_C_J: My God, man, do you understand what you just said? That, should we realize the "end game if a major cure is discovered" in ending the horrific suffering for some of our fellow humans who have survived beyond the protoplasmic state, that we will be sorry for our success?
Do we today harvest ourselves for our livers? Our kidneys? Our lungs? Of course not. Yet we are able to save lives, right now, with each of those organs, taken from other humans. We don't grow and harvest new humans for them - in spite of urban bathtub legends, or the fears expressed in "The Matrix."
Yet you would have us dump this promise down the drain, rather than to choose renewed life with the possibilities that we see. Yes, there are moral issues involved - we will seek the answer to them with our God-given ability to determine our best course, in each circumstance. As we now do with so many other choices that confront us each day.
I choose life over death - whether it means donating my own organs to others who need them should they be of use after my passing, or using doomed embryos which have no future on this planet. I believe in a culture of life - for those who have yet to be born, and just as importantly, those who accompany me in my journey in this life.
You have a point, that despite the demand for organs people aren't killing to get them. So my dire predictions may be wrong. I guess the substance of my point is really that I see any fatal research on living human embryos as on par with killing people for their organs, so I'm opposed.