North Star Writers Group

On Wednesday, President Bush finally uncapped his missing-in-action veto pen and stopped a bill that would have federally funded the creation of human embryos for the purpose of destroying them so as to harvest their stem cells. While I am grateful that the president sees the bigger picture here, it's frightening to see so many unable to do likewise. Nothing could be more immoral or fly more in the face of everything America is supposed to stand for than creating and killing people simply for spare parts.

Maybe it's that an embryo doesn't yet look human enough for us to establish an emotional connection. Maybe our good intentions toward those suffering with horrible diseases blind us to the unintended but inevitable consequences. Or maybe we're just selfish enough to not care what happens to other innocents so long as we personally benefit. (I sincerely hope that's not the case.) Whatever the real reason is, we need to realize just how dangerous this path is to travel and what the inescapably awful results will be if we choose to go down it.

What we are talking about here is nothing short of the creation of a slave race of human beings, existing solely to serve the living. That they are not yet born is completely beside the point--if given a chance to live by being placed in a fertile woman's womb, they will. President Bush was quite right to have several "snowflake babies" (children who were frozen embryos adopted by another couple and thus given the chance to live) with him at the veto ceremony to illustrate just what we would lose. Which of these precious little ones would you have had slaughtered for their stem cells?

Last time I checked the 13th Amendment, slavery was outlawed forever in America. That the slaves-to-be here are unborn rather than dark-skinned matters not. People are not to be property under any circumstances. And that is exactly what they would be if some had their way. Given the recent history of America, it is staggering to see these folks so completely regress. Frankly, they ought to know better.

And there is a bigger, even more profound truth here. Each human being created when egg and sperm combine is unique. The chance to give birth to that specific individual occurs only once and is forever lost if not brought all the way to fruition. Even if the man and woman involved breed to the maximum of their fertility in their short time on planet Earth, they will not and indeed cannot bring that same person into the world ever again. This is what makes each of us special, and gives us priceless value. If we lose that, each of us are diminished in ways I cannot begin to fathom. (Perhaps it's entirely fitting that the purpose of this would be to cannibalize spare body parts, for a collection of parts is all any of us would be in this Brave New World. And the collectors would indeed be cannibals.) I am also astounded that so many people can miss this truth and thus be so sexually irresponsible, when in doing so they are abusing the only power that we share with Almighty God - the gift of creating unique new life.

As to the practical steps we can take in the here and now, the first is to be more responsible and ethical use of in-vitro fertilization technology. Without the reckless use of IVF, there would be no extra embryos and no stem-cell debate at all. Producing dozens of embryos that cannot possibly all be birthed by the couple that generated them, or implanting so many in a woman at once that it inevitably causes problems (remember the Iowa couple with septuplets?) should be seen for the gross errors they are. Couples should only produce as many embryos as children they are willing to give birth to (for children are what embryos are), and then commit to giving every last one of them the fullest chance at life, with the doctor implanting them in the mother in numbers and at times that maximize that chance.

Beyond that, we simply need to put our oversized egos aside. If we have a terrible disease, we need to handle it with humility and dignity, and not selfishly demand that someone else be sacrificed to save us. If we struggle with fertility, we need to realize that parenthood does not require a biological tie to be real (in other words, adopt, adopt, adopt!), and that playing irresponsible games with the building blocks of life is probably not a good idea. Finally, we need to see that the ends, no matter how noble, cannot justify an evil means. The horrific consequences of condemning an entire class of human beings to servitude and oblivion more than outweigh any "good" that could come from it after the fact.

May we protect the voiceless and innocent among us and speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.

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