Common Sense

Hey, that rhymes! Almost like I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out a clever way to headline this post.

That’s basically what this is all about. There’s no logical reason to oppose stem cell research unless you believe that it is similar to abortion. The only reason we have the fertilized embryos to use in stem cell research is because of the fertility industry and all those in vitro fertilizations. Therefore, if you oppose stem cell research on the grounds that is killing human life, then you must also oppose in vitro fertilization.

Oddly enough, President Bush has never uttered a word about the evils of doctors who get women pregnant through this technique. I guess that’s not really odd, though, considering we have a president who is not too keen on the logic. I mean, he did invade the wrong country looking for WMDs.

Surrounded by babies and toddlers who began life as frozen embryos and were later adopted, Bush declared, “These boys and girls are not spare parts.

“They remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research,” the president said. “They remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells, and they remind us that in our zeal for new treatments and cures America must never abandon our fundamental morals.”

Looking at the wikipedia article on in vitro fertilization, we learn that indeed these kids are the spares. The liklihood that pregnancy will occur on the first attempt at implantation is about 20-30%. That means many failed attempts, many lost fertilized zygotes. In fact, several are implanted in the uterus at once in the hope that at least one will cause pregnancy. In a manner of speaking, the kids with the president today are indeed the spare parts… the ones that survived.

The reality of this whole situation is that he’s merely pulling a political stunt. He’s using his first veto in office to make crazy people happy and sick people hopeless. All for the sake of “morals” that aren’t clear or defined in any way. If we have a moral obligation to protect fertilized eggs, then we must follow logically and limit the number of fertilized eggs that a fertility clinic may produce. The technique itself yields much more than one per customer, so we would have to find surrogates willing to be implanted with other peoples eggs so that none are wasted. And we would have to carefully monitor every sexually active woman over the age of 10 because you wouldn’t believe how many naturally-occuring fertilized eggs get lost to menstruation every month.

But we’re not going to do any of that. That’s because we have no moral obligation to protect eggs or sperm or the zygote they produce. This is just what a shallow, cynical human being does when he wants to do something to make crazy people happy, he wraps himself in “morals” that don’t exist so he doesn’t have to answer any real questions about his decision. He won’t even take the proper responsibility for his actions. It’s sad and it’s pathetic.

He also surrounds himself with kids who were conceived thanks to the destruction of untold numbers of zygotes to explain why we must not do stem cell research. Fine, but I pity any of those kids who turn out to have MS or grow up and develop Alzheimer’s or any other degenerative neurological diseases (odds are that at least one of the kids in that group will) because we don’t have a president willing to do the work that may spare them. He took the easy way out and people will suffer for it.