Stem Cell Debate

My Position

I am not religious, but I believe that it may be unethical to create embryos for research. We don't know when human life begins, and when a person becomes a person, and it seems to me that we should err on the side of life. That does not mean that I would criminalize stem cell research, but just like I think cloning people for organs would be unethical, I think creating embryos for spare stem cells may be as well. I would probably blame science fiction reading for this position rather than any religious position.

My position on abortion was forever changed when my first child was born, and I mourn the day that my wife had a miscarriage because it represented a lost child. I find it hard to understand people who have children and offer unconditional support for abortion (though I recognize that you can support embryonic stem cell research without unconditional support for abortion).

So, do you think it would have been ethical to abort your baby 270 days before she was born so that we could harvest her stem cells and do research on them? To me, you have to be able yes to that question to support this research.

Should Stem Cell Researchers face Murder charges?

If we can take stem cells from embryos that will be tossed, why not organs from aborted late term fetuses? They are just going to be thrown away, after all. And if abortion is legal up to the moment of birth, why can’t we start “Fetus Farms” to grow organs for later transplantation? The developed fetus is not a person and has no right to exist, after all.

I have read some articles that indicate that if you don’t think stem cell researchers should be charged with murder, than you can’t think that destruction of an embryo is wrong. This seems to me to be the wrong question.

Wouldn't it be a better question as to whether the person who kills the embryo to harvest the stem cells should be charged with murder? We don't charge transplant surgeons with murder for harvesting the organs of a murder victim, so we shouldn't charge the researcher either, unless he actually does the killing, or has the killing done for his research.

On the other hand we would charge the transplant surgeon with a crime if he knowingly aided and abetted someone in killing another so he could harvest those organs.

I would think it is a reasonable standard that if someone is murdered, the killer is charged, and those who hired the killer would also be charged, even if it was ordered to harvest the organs and blood of the victim to save one person or many people's lives.

If you believe all abortion is murder and life begins at conception, I would think the same reasoning applied, but I don't go that far. Embryos are something different from people, but not just garbage.

Historical Argument

Some argue that there is no history of rights for the fetus, and so the effort to create rights is just the “crazy religious right” trying to inflict their values on us. Historically an abortion would at most be considered a crime against the father for his loss of a child. However, for much of human history, infanticide was legal and practiced as well (especially for the deformed), so I don't think I want to rely too much on historical norms. Additionally, since both children and wives were chattel for the fathers and husbands, I am not surprised that crimes against the unborn were seen as crimes against the "owner" of the right, either the mother or father. Additionally, science did not allow any way of determining causation. And, of course, the history is pretty clear that we have never allowed gay marriage either, so I think we should be very careful about basing arguments on history.

Abortion itself did not become a truly viable alternative to birth until the discovery of penicillin. The 100,000 back room abortion deaths canard is due to statistics based on pre-penicillin days. After the discovery of penicillin, criminal laws were created to ban abortion because it became a reality, because it was safe. So it may be true that before abortion was practiced to any great extent, it was "legal." But that is because legislatures don't ban things that don't happen, or are so likely to kill the person doing it that the act is its own punishment.

So it might be right that there is not a great history of protecting the unborn, but there is not a great history of protecting children, women, the disabled, or even other races.

In Vitro Fertilization and Usage of Stem Cell Research From Other Places

Can you argue against stem cell research and still believe in in vitro fertilization? If there is a cure found overseas using this method, can we in good faith use the science if we banned the research?

You can believe in in vitro fertilization if you also believe in implanting only the number of eggs that you are willing to give birth to, and you create only the number of embryos you intend to implant. The fact that it is done in a different manner is due to cost, not necessity.

And as for the knowledge gained elsewhere, do we use the science that was created by the Nazi's by experimenting on the Jews? I think that hypothermia in particular is one area that we use the knowledge gained. I would not have supported that science to get the information, but will use it to save lives now. This should be the same.

If Parkinson's treatment can be given without further loss of life, then I suppose it would be pragmatic to use it, but if it requires continued killing and harvesting of embryos to give treatment to adults, I think the treatment would be in the same category as the research.

Conclusion

Well, this discussion quickly devolved from simply discussing embryonic stem cells to rights of the unborn. I think that is fairly normal for the issue, though, because some people lump all unborn together with no rights, and others lump them together with all the rights of a person. And since the people opposed to embryonic stem cell research do it based on opposition to abortion, abortion and then miscarriages are always part of the discussion.

I do have trouble ethically with farming embryos because it seems like a slippery slope to having people farms, but I am sure that I would harvest all of them to save my kid.

I am perfectly willing to accept a gradation of rights, similar to Roe sets out, but the position that life and rights begin at birth is untenable given the change in science and viability of the fetus.

Viable fetus to me means able to live outside the womb without extraordinary care. Extraordinary care would be care that is never needed for a full term baby. So, I would include respirators and incubators, blood transfusions and medicines, but not reimplantation in another mother or life in a petri dish.

I believe that the earliest living person was born after 24 weeks of gestation, so for me, that is the point of viability. Abortion after that point is infanticide, but beforehand it is something different…what I don't yet know.

It is an emotional argument. At what point during your wife's pregnancy do you believe that the creature in there has a right to exist. I don't know when life begins, but I would err on the side of choosing too early rather than choosing too late.

And what do we do when we find that stem cells from a fetus at 20 weeks gestation are best for curing disease, rather than embryonic stem cells? Do we say that is okay, since they are not viable? I suppose some people will believe that up until birth it is okay. Since we can abort up to the moment of birth, why can't we grow these fetuses for organ replacement? They have no rights, after all.

So, perhaps the best argument against the research is that stem cells are a slippery slope to human farming, because the same arguments people are using for harvesting cells from aborted embryos goes for aborted viable fetuses as well. But if the pro-choice side would bend and agree that there is a difference between the legal status of an embryo at 14 days and a fetus at 14 weeks, perhaps we could make progress on this issue.