I was just alluding to a theme that I’ve seen from the “pro-life” side: that the precautionary principle demands the prohibition of all abortion on the grounds that there’s some chance the fetus/embryo might be a person, and abortion doesn’t result in “real” benefit anyhow.
As I’ve stated several times now, prolifers are not necessarily against all abortions. I don’t understand why I keep repeating this but it isn’t getting across. I, personally, am against all abortions
with the exception of danger to the mother’s life. I believe that is a view held by most prolifers.
However, stem cell-based research has the potential to be very beneficial. In vitro fertilization has clear benefits as well (even if the Catholic Church shrugs them off as “immoral” even without the issue of termination of unwanted embryos). And even therapeutic abortion is a response to real issues, even if you think that it’s the wrong response.
The results from any type of research can be very beneficial. During WWII the Japanese conducted research on fully conscious, aware humans. They would tie them down and then pull out a scalpel and cut them open. I’m not sure where I read this so I can’t provide a link but I did read somewhere that the reason they did not anesthetize the “victims” of their research was that it added a confounding factor to their research. Which is true; it would have added a confounding factor. But it was still torture and it was still murder.
Do the ends justify the means? Is there another way to obtain this data? Why are veterinary schools moving away from dissecting killed animals to actually operating on fully anesthetized animals and letting them live?
Why is it acceptable to kill human beings in order to obtain data that would clearly be beneficial to perhaps millions of people? My mother was diabetic and died of complications of that disease. My father died of pancreatic cancer. Of course I didn’t want them to die. And I don’t want children to die from diseases that could be cured if we just knew the way to cure them.
And I don’t want human beings killed to obtain data, even if that data would be beneficial to other human beings. Murder is
wrong. It is
wrong when it involves adults; it is
wrong when it involves born children; it is
WRONG when it involves the unborn.
Basically, what I’m getting at is that it’s not enough to just say “I say it’s a person, you say it’s not, but as long as there’s a chance I might be right, I should get my way.” I think that as long as we’re talking about things like eliminating a whole spectrum of research that could lead to the cures for all sorts of diseases and conditions, the “pro-life” side really needs to present a valid and compelling argument. Some people try to do this, but many don’t.
Who said that?? I certainly didn’t. My point is that it is the
personhood of the zygote/embryo/fetus that is at the basis of the whole controversy. Because if you believe that what you are killing in order to obtain your research data is a
human being then you must find another way to obtain that data.
Should data that has been obtained from stem cell research be used at all? Of course it should be used. But if stem cell research results in the death of human beings then we need to stop it now and get our data another way.
Do you remember a few years ago when many brands of dog and cat food were removed from store shelves because the animals that ate this food often became ill and died? I have a menagerie in my house and so I was understandably concerned. So I did some checking and I found that one company was testing their dog and cat food on thousands of dogs and cats and that such% died and such% didn’t. And that was their research. That horrified and saddened me. This research was conducted AFTER everyone knew that there was something wrong with the pet food.
I see that happening with stem cell research. Have a steady supply of unborn children and do your research on them because they aren’t people and they certainly aren’t human beings so what’s the big deal? The big deal is that they
are people and human beings.
We are supposed to be smart. Researchers are supposed to be very smart. I am sure there are other ways to find this very important data. In a biology class one day the professor asked how we would find out if an animal could see color. My answer was that we should dissect it to see if there were color receptors. Dumb dumb dumb. Another student suggested that an experiment could be conducted using behavior of the animal and that wouldn’t hurt the animal. Smart. I learned something that day. There is more than one way to obtain data and we should conduct our research in a way which minimizes the damage to the animal we are studying.
IOW we should
not be killing the unborn to obtain data. Let’s find another way!!
