Religion & Law

Will Saletan, who often takes conservatives to task for their stance on sanctity-of-life issues, has some stinging words for those who are euphoric in the wake of President Obama's announcement on funding for embryonic stem-cell research:

Think about what's being dismissed here as "politics" and "ideology." You don't have to equate embryos with full-grown human beings?I don't?to appreciate the danger of exploiting them. Embryos are the beginnings of people. They're not parts of people. They're the whole thing, in very early form. Harvesting them, whether for research or medicine, is different from harvesting other kinds of cells. It's the difference between using an object and using a subject. How long can we grow this subject before dismembering it to get useful cells? How far should we strip-mine humanity in order to save it?

And then there's this:

Several months ago, opponents of embryo-destructive research gathered in Washington to celebrate Eric Cohen's book In the Shadow of Progress, which explores the moral costs of biotechnology. They asked me what I thought of the book. I told them that the book was beautiful and important because it represented the losing side of history. It spoke for values threatened with extinction by the coming triumph of utilitarianism.  They didn't like hearing that. Nobody wants to be a loser. Losing is hard.

But winning is hard, too. In politics, to be a good winner, you have to pick up the banner of your fallen enemy. You have to recognize what he stood for, absorb his truths, and carry them forward. Otherwise, those truths will be lost, and so will you. The stem-cell fight wasn't a fight between ideology and science. It was a fight between 5-day-olds and 50-year-olds. The 50-year-olds won. The question now is what to do with our 5-day-olds, our 5-week-olds, and our increasingly useful parts.