A Question of Life
President Obama, with a single signature, reversed a long standing prohibition on the use of federal funds to conduct research on human embryos. A very large number of taxpayers have sincere moral objections to funding such research which they believe destroys existing human life. Now they have no choice in the matter.
A community of scientists and policy makers has lobbied for embryo research for years believing that great advancements in disease treatment and prevention may be possible. However, tangible evidence supporting the thesis is minimal while great progress has been made utilizing adult stem cells harvested from sources such as umbilical cord blood.
Dr. James Thomson, University of Wisconsin, did some of the initial research on human embryos, but admitted that he held serious ethical reservations. “If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough,” he said.
In November, 2007 Thomson and Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University announced that they had each independently developed a “new way to turn ordinary human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without ever using a human embryo. The discovery was widely hailed as likely ending the perceived need and ethical debate about destroying living human embryos.
Proclaiming the breakthrough, the New York Times reported, “Now with the new technique, which involves adding just four genes to ordinary adult skin cells, it will not be long, he says, before the stem cell wars are a distant memory.” Obviously, none of this mattered to Obama, the Colorado devotee to the issue, Diana DeGette or the researchers who stood to capture millions to continue to destroy human embryos in the name of science.
One of the most articulate explanations of Defenders-of-Life side of this issue that I have read is attached below. I encourage everyone to read it, and contemplate the enormity of the question before us as a nation dedicated to defending those unalienable rights including “life”.
Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Human Dignity
From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a new life is begun which is neither that of the father nor of the mother.
By Rev. Msgr. Mark J. Seitz
3/12/09
DALLAS, TX (Catholic Online) - It is often said that every man has his price. In this age it seems that even moral absolutes have their price in the minds of many. Actions are viewed as morally wrong only until I decide that the action would have sufficient benefits for me. This is the moral relativism we have often heard our present and our previous Holy Fathers condemn. This approach to morality has led our society into actions many of us would never have imagined possible.
After the horrors of the Second World War, the conquering Allied nations adopted the Geneva Conventions enshrining the moral principle that it is never right to mentally or physically torture anyone for any reason. Principles such as these marked us with a moral stature befitting a great nation and placed significant pressure upon our enemies to do the same when they held our soldiers as prisoners. But the signers of the Geneva Convention didn’t adopt this code for appearance sake or for merely utilitarian ends. We adopted the Geneva Conventions because they were morally right.
Another sad example of moral relativism has recently been in the news. President Obama has lifted the executive order that was in place restricting federal funds from being used in research upon living human beings at the embryonic stage of their lives. Many people, good people, who generally have a good moral compass, have lost their bearings on this one. The Nuremberg Code was developed relating to this issue. It stated, among other things that, “No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur…” (#5) The Code also asserted that no one should be the subject of such experiments without his or her free consent.
Now here we are, just half a century later, violating these basic principles in regard to our most innocent and voiceless members. Many proponents have raised the issue as to whether a human embryo is indeed a human being. We know that from the moment of fertilization a separate individual begins to exist whose development is dependent upon the mother only for a safe environment in which he or she can be nourished and grow. If a human embryo is not a human being at what point do we wave our magic wand and declare this new living being, to be human? And who other than God has the right to declare the developing child less than human or less worthy of the rights that we recognize for all other human beings?
Here is what the Church has to say on this matter: “From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a new life is begun which is neither that of the father nor of the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already. To this perpetual evidence…modern genetic science brings valuable confirmation. It has demonstrated that, from the first instant, the program is fixed as to what this living being will be: a man, this individual man with his individual characteristics already determined.” (Declaration on Procured Abortion, 1974) What reasonable person can resist the logic of this explanation?
In a variant of relativism called “proportionalism” many argue that even if the embryo is a human being that he or she will die anyway. Why not use them for the great good of eradicating terrible diseases in others? That is an interesting argument. It was exactly the argument of Dr. Mengele, the Nazi doctor, who did such horrific experiments on Jewish people and others who were destined for the gas chambers. We ought not to compound the moral evil of bringing to life human beings outside of the loving married embrace by then using them like they were some commodity for our death-dealing experimentation.
Umbilical cord blood, collected when the child is born, abundantly supplies stem cells that have already proven their great worth in treatments. Other technologies that would provide embryonic stem cells without creating and then killing an embryo are now being developed. Don’t let the altruistic-sounding language fool you; many who are pushing this issue are not interested in a moral alternative. They don’t want to be fettered by moral restraints. They want science cut loose from any moral bearings.
Such are the consequences of moral relativism. This nation was founded upon the conviction that every human being shares an equal human dignity, not because the state grants it, but because we have been endowed with this dignity by our Creator. Everyone used to know that the deliberate maiming or killing of anyone, except as an unintended consequence of self-defense, was always a terrible violation of this principle. When moral absolutes are sacrificed, no matter how good and urgent our intention may be, we all sacrifice our human dignity.
Msgr. Seitz is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Church in Dallas, TX.
