Embryos Are So Small. What's The Big Deal?

The Senate, following the House, is going to overthrow President Bush's Stem Cell Research Policy which bans using embryonic stem cells from embryos killed after August 9, 2001.  It does not limit funding, federal, private or state on research on embryos destroyed before the policy.  Those stem cell lines are being used by researchers all over the world.  President Bush has promised to veto this bill, HR 810.

"What's the big deal with embryos? They are so small."  That argument won't work because neither size nor lack thereof confers any greater or lesser degree of personhood or rights.  But another point is missing here.  Humans in the embryonic stage of life are human beings regardless of their size, the means by which they have come into existence, their location in lab freezers/Petri dishes, or the fact that they are left over, not wanted, or were not intended to be implanted.  Those are ridiculous arguments, but here's the larger point:

HR 810, the bill to overthrow the policy, tells us that there are classes of human beings who can be experimented upon and used as means to an end for others.  Not only is this wrong in and of itself, excluding a class of human beings from the inalienable right to life and the right not to be harmed, makes everyone else's rights negotiable and subject to the power of those who can declare who is or is not a human being.  That's intolerable and undermines universal human rights.

The president says he wants “to explore the promise and potential of stem cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos that have at least the potential for life.”  He also has said “Research cloning would contradict the most fundamental principle of medical ethics: that no human life should be exploited for the benefit of another.”

It's good that the President is going to veto this.  But a dangerous precedent will be set with this Congressional action.  Click here to see the Nevada LIFE press release on this and other bills before the Congress.