Embryo rights?

On 7/19/06 - for the first time in his presidency - President Bush vetoed a bill passed by Congress. This legislation would have allowed Federal funding of research on new lines of human embryonic stem cells.

Stem cell research holds the promise of new treatments - even cures - for a host of horrible diseases. Nevertheless, the President emphatically warned us, to use embryonic stem cells in this way "crosses a moral boundary our decent society needs to respect...This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others."

I, too, consider myself an advocate for child protection and have long struggled with the questions: When does human life begin? When should an embryo or fetus be considered a person, and therefore entitled to all the protections of the law?

For me, at least, it is an excruciating question. Determining where to best draw that line has always seemed to be incredibly complicated, scientifically hard to sort out, and morally ambiguous. But the President's vision is crystal clear: a full-fledged human being exists once the egg and sperm unite. Period. End of discussion.

I've been thinking a lot about his unequivocal certainty and it has occurred to me that such a belief has major moral implications - over and above the embryonic stem cell research question - which neither he nor others seem to be addressing.

****************************************

First, some quick background on frozen embros (FEs):

• A FE is about a week old. It consists of about 30-150 cells in a ball. Here is a photo of what it looks like.
• There are about 400,000 FEs in the U.S. Most of them will neither be needed nor wanted, and eventually 'discarded.'
• FEs can not stay frozen forever (it's not clear how long, perhaps a decade or so). Storage fees are about $1,500 / year. About 50% of FEs survive the thawing process.
• To take nourishment and survive and grow, an embryo must "implant" in the wall of the uterus. This process takes about 10 days or so.
  

********************************

Now, if a ball of cells (or even a single fertilized egg) is truly a "human being", it seems to me the following troubling moral and legal issues are raised:

• About 2/3 of all embyos normally do not implant into the uterus and are spontaneously expelled from the womb, usually unknown to the mother. Should we expend significant government research dollars to find ways to allow the mother to recognize what has happened? This would allow a proper mourning ceremony to occur so that the souls of those embryos can rest in peace.


• Intrauterine devices (IUDs) and the "morning-after pill" work by preventing the embryo from implanting into the uterus. By extension of the 'moral boundary' argument, they are taking a human life and should be illegal.
  


• The indefinite frozen "suspended animation" of FEs could be considered a form of child abuse. Some parents keep dozens of their embryos in the deep freeze, with no intention of some day providing them with the necessities to thrive and live. Should we not mandate that they fulfill their parental responsibilities to nurture all of their human children (perhaps by attempting a pregnancy with every FE or by finding "adoptive" parental wombs) or else face criminal charges of child abuse and neglect?



• The fate of hundreds of thousands of unwanted FEs is to be destroyed. Should that be considered genocide, with all the criminal sanctions such a characterization calls for?



• Aside from criminalization, should we not attempt to prevent the willful destruction of these FEs? Attempts at adoption (e.g., through the "Snowflakes Adoption" program) have led to only a small number being rescued. Should the government provide financial incentives to women to "rent" out their wombs to implant and nourish the unwanted embryos to delivery? Of course, then we would likely need to build many orphanages to raise these children. An imperfect solution, to be sure, but isn't a life without parents is still preferable to one cut tragically short at the 50 cell stage?

*****************************************

I'm being quite serious here. This is no theoretical discussion. This debate must play out in one of two mutually exclusive ways. Either you follow the President and then are morally obligated to pour money and resources into the issues I have just discussed, or you do not consider a one week old ball of cells to constitute a human being and then are morally obligated to allow frozen embryos to be used for research that may unlock new ways to relieve the very real suffering of very real human beings.

Related Topics: Cord Blood Stem Cells: Your Questions Answered, New Technique for Stem Cell Research?


Technorati Tags: stem cell, bush veto, medical research, ethics