The embryonic stem-cell abomination of desolation

Congress passed a bill yesterday for the funding of embryonic stem-cell research, that would allow the destruction of human embryos for extracting stem-cells that could perhaps offer some medical and scientific benefit. Today President Bush used the first veto of his tenure to stop the bill from being written into law. His reasoning was, such a bill would permit and encourage the destruction of human life. The President spoke plainly:

"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others. It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. So I vetoed it."

So, if the polls are accurate, the majority of American seem to support doing evil so that good may result from it. And so do a majority of their elected representatives in the House and Senate. But in this case, President Bush did not think that this was an ethical line we could cross.

Green is for two yeas supporting the bill in the Senate, grey for a split, red for two nays.
N.B. "Red-state" America has gotten a good bit smaller.


From the New York Times:

“Less than 24 hours after the Senate passed groundbreaking stem cell legislation, President Bush is set to defy the will of the American people and crush the hopes of millions who suffer from debilitating conditions and diseases like diabetes, spinal cord injury, Lou Gehrig’s, Parkinson’s and others,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate minority leader.

“We are not going to give up this fight for stem cell research,” Mr. Reid said. “We’re going to press Republicans to override a veto, just as we pressed Republicans to bring it to the Senate floor, and just as we pressed Republicans to get it passed. We didn’t give up then. We’re not going to give up now.”

Mr. Reid said that most of the 44 Democratic senators had sent a letter to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader and one of the 19 Republicans who voted for the stem cell bill on Tuesday. “We’re so hopeful that he’ll join us in this fight,” Mr. Reid said.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts also sounded a note of defiance. “We will not give in,” he said. “We are going to continue this battle, and we have every intention of success in winning this battle for families in our country and for people all over the world.”

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate minority whip, said the strategy of the Republicans who oppose the stem cell bill was clear: “It is their belief that if the president vetoes this bill quickly and does it early, that people across America will forget by November.”

And Senator Hatch, the Utah Republican who usually sides with the White House, also expressed disappointment, telling The Associated Press that the veto “sets back embryonic stem cell research another year or so.”

That the president would use the first veto of his tenure on the stem-cell bill was “confounding,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said it was dismaying that Mr. Bush “heralds bipartisanship and then snuffs it out in his first opportunity.”

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, said that the veto amounted to “saying ‘no’ to hope.” It is up to members of Congress, she said, to “represent their constituents” and vote to override the veto.

Watching a bit of the coverage on President Bush's veto, I was amazed to see opponents pull out nearly every informal fallacy to distract people from the facts of the matter. Amazing. The whole thing amounts to something like this:

We have an historic opportunity to save the lives of millions.
--but I think this is murder.
But everyone knows someone with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.
--but I think it's murder.
How can you deprive so many suffering the chance to have a cure?
--but it seems to be murder.
Everyone is supporting this; tremendous bipartison support!
--destroying embryos is murder.
How can you be soley concerned with reaffirming your core constituency at the expense of life?
--the taking of innocent human life is evil.

And so on.

Case in point, most people today are utilitarians/consequentialists: there is no reason why the worst kind of evil should not be done if it can be of some proportional good benefit.

What is even more elucidating (and scandalizing) is to observe the many so-called pro-life elected officials who voted for this bill (e.g. John McCain). If anyone wants a litmus test, here it is. Want to know whether someone is really pro-life? How do they feel about embryonic stem-cell research?

Bush's supporters were referred to as "ultra-conservative" Evangelicals or Catholics. Oh, but they forget to mention the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops!

And the National Catholic Bioethics Center explains wht this can be even worse than abortion.

I'll close with two great quotes from Walker Percy, MD, on the issue.

From "A View Of Abortion, With Something To Offend Everybody":

The current con, perpetuated by some jurists, some editorial writers, and some doctors, is that since there is no agreement about the beginning of human life, it is therefore a private religious or philosophical decision and therefore the states and the courts can do nothing about it. This is a con. I will not presume to speculate on who is conning whom and for what purpose. But I do submit that religion, philosophy, and private opinion have nothing to do with this issue. I further submit that it is a commonplace of modern biology, known to every high-school student and no doubt to you the reader as well, that the life of every individual organism, human or not, begins when the chromosomes of the sperm fuse with the chromosomes of the ovum to form a new DNA complex that theneceforth directs the ontogenesis of the organism.

Such vexed subjects as the soul, God, and the nature of man are not at issue. What we are talking about and what nobody I know would deny is the clear continuum that exists in the life of every individual from the moment of fertilization of a single cell.

And from "An Unpublished Letter To The Times":

In a word, certain consequences, perhaps unforeseen, follow upon the acceptance of the principle of the destruction of human life for what may appear to be the most admirable social reasons.

One does not have to look back very far in history for an example of such consequences. Take democratic Germany in the 1920s. Perhaps the most influential book published in German in the first quarter of this century was entitled The Justification of the Destruction of Life Devoid of Value. Its co-authors were the distinguished jurist Karl Binding and the prominent psychiatrist Alfred Hoche. Neither Binding nor Hoche had ever heard of Hitler or the Nazis. Nor, in all likelihood, did Hitler ever read the book. He didn't have to.

The point is that the ideas expressed in the book and the policies advocated were the product not of Nazi ideology but rather of the best minds of the pre-Nazi Weimar Republic--physicians, social scientists, jurists and the like, who with the best secular intentions wished to improve the lot, socially and genetically, of the German people--by getting rid of the unfit and the unwanted.

It is hardly necessary to say what use the Nazis made of these ideas.

I would not wish to be understood as implying that the respected American institutions I have named are similar to corresponding pre-Nazi institutions.

But I do suggest that once the line is crossed, once the principle gains acceptance--juridically, medically, socially--innocent human life can be destroyed for whatever reason, for the most admirable socioeconomic, medical, or social reasons--then it does not take a prophet to predict what will happen next, or if not next, then sooner or later. At any rate, a warning is in order. Depending on the disposition of the majority and the opinion polls--now in favor of allowing women to get rid of unborn and unwanted babies--it is not difficult to imagine an electorate or a court ten years, fifty years from now, who would favor getting rid of useless old people, retarded children, anti-social blacks, illegal Hispanics, gypsies, Jews...

Why not?--if that is what is wanted by the majority, the polled opinion, the polity of the time.