Wow, Dawn! I hope Michelle Malkin and a host of other websites link to this piece! A really fine commentary. Isn't it amazing that the Reagan biological kids have gone so wrong, and that the adopted one, Michael, has remained truer to his father (and Father) than them all? Maybe those infertile couples should consider this possible benefit of adoption.
RRR | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 8:11 am | #

William Saletan in Slate had quite a bit more to say about the concept of scientists developing embryo-like things that cannot - ever - develop into a baby, but could be used as a source of stem cells. The process is called Altered Nuclear Transfer, or ANT.

Bush's bioethics council is against it, but can't seem to articulate why. My view? On the pro side, if you can grow someone a new liver or kidney in a dish using their own cellular material, bravo! On the con side, growing entire human-esque organisms for harvested cells and organs is a loathsome concept.

Article is here for review:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2118825/

Dawn writes: "Most people who seek out in vitro fertilization are not aware that they are almost certain to cause the creation of lives that will be destroyed. Chalk their ignorance up to the mainstream media, which hides this fact both passively and actively..."

Malarkey, says I. The very nature of the process requires that each embryo created has a chance of 'taking' and developing into a baby. If 12 are created and 2 kids are born, then it stands to reason that 10 embryos either will be rejected by the mother's body or discarded. People seeking out in vitro treatment aren't getting this vital bit of info from the news - they are getting it from their doctors and plain common sense. The public may be deceived by the media, but people seeking out the treatment are not - if they are, they either have an unethical doctor or are really, really unintelligent.
joe | 05.18.05 - 8:50 am | #

Can I be controversial for a moment?
I wouldn't mind if IVF and other treatments of its kind were outlawed. Couples spend bookoos (sp?) of bucks on the chance of getting pregnant--money they could be lavishing on an adopted child or two, and there seem to be plenty of kids up for adoption. IOW, get rid of IVF and make adoption the only option for less-fertile couples. Parents get babies, and children get homes.
Kate B. | 05.18.05 - 9:35 am | #

I've always been a Pro-choice advocate for first trimester abortions. Ironically, I was more disturbed by the pictures of first trimester abortions than those of late term abortions. My views are in a transitional period right now.

Still, I think there is a time and a place for exercising your freedom of expression. I went to Planned Parenthood to get tested, which is one of the few (cheap) places in my city to get it done. I happened to be walking in at the same time as a mother who had decided to bring her three small (under age 10) children with her, as planned parenthood provides general (cheap) family care. Outside there was the usual throng of radicals spouting their propoganda. One had a five foot tall image of an aborted fetus (or unborn child depending on your politics). He had no reservations about shoving it in the mother's face ,in front of her children, claiming that she was supporting the murder of babies by going into the clinic. I can only imagine the kind of life-time trauma this must have had on her children. How exactly does this help the cause?
Left Brain | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 9:40 am | #

Ok, I’m a Christian and very concerned about life, but I’m going to ask a tough question here.



So, granting the assumption that life begins at conception, one life is born and 11 die here. Ok but any innocent who is born and dies goes to heaven don’t they? What is our alternative course of action? We do nothing. Those 11 dead embryos are never created. Isn’t that worse than death? Our command from God is to be fruitful and multiply. If we follow this line of logic, shouldn’t we fertilize as many embryos as we possibly can? Yes most of them will die and that is tragic, but isn’t a short life better than no life? I don’t believe that an infant who dies or is killed is any less precious to God than a senior citizen.

I don’t think that can possibly be the answer, but what’s wrong with my logic? My guess is that the conception argument is wrong. I suspect life begins when the embryo is implanted in the womb which is about ten days in and the time when identical twins settle down. I know others violently disagree with me and that includes some very bright committed Christians. I’d like to know why we should go with conception, rather than womb implantation (I don’t think that’s the right technical term, but it’s that 10 day point). Lets leave aside the ‘culture of death’ argument. It’s a very valid as to what we should make legal, but it isn’t applicable to the actual definition of when life begins. If you are happy to kill things with a heartbeat (about 21 days) I don’t want to hear from you either.
Richard J. Stuart | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 10:24 am | #

Yes, God says, Be Fruitful and Multiply. He also says, Thou Shalt Not Kill. What's the difference between the fertilized, unimplanted egg in the petri dish, the fertilized, unimplanted egg in the Fallopian tube, and the fertilized, implanted egg? Location, mostly. Is there any difference in the embryos themselves? Not that I know of.

Implantation, BTW, is defined now as the start of pregnancy. It's when the woman's body figures out there's a baby down there and the hormonal circus begins. I want to be clear on this: implantation changes the woman's body. The baby's body--such as it is at the time--is already there, whether or not the woman knows it. So, even if we're looking for a time of enlivening after conception, I'm not sure implantation is it. And any question of this kind brings with it the enormous question of why that moment--what changes in the embryo, so that one minute ago it was not alive, and one minute later it is. I've never heard a good answer for this one.

And as for innocents going right to Heaven, so it's okay if they're created only to die--isn't there something in the Bible about stones cryong out against the shedding of innocent blood, especially when it's your own flesh and blood?
Kate B. | 05.18.05 - 10:51 am | #

Richard, what's wrong with your argument, aside from the idea that life begins at implantation rather than conception, is your saying that we have the right to play God. We have no right to create 11 lives knowing full well that 10 of them may never see the sunlight. Creating life is God's business. Our job is to have dominion--to sustain life once it's created. To say we're sending destroyed embryos to Heaven reminds me of the sick children's game: "Hello, little fly. Would you like to see God?"—*smash*
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 11:09 am | #

I am a protestant (Baptist) conservative who has recently married a Catholic conservative and with it her large Catholic conservative family. I find it interesting each day how much our two histories of the same faith agree with each other, like on the subject of abortion. I have, however, recently come to disagree with the majority of protestants and agree with the teachings of the Catholic church on the issue of conception and birth control. I believe the issue of abortion is much bigger than when life begins or ends. Its about leaving issues not of only of life, but of family, and the valuing of family. It has taken me a long time to come around to this view, and I dont go so far as to treat contraception as "mortal sin", but I do believe it interferes with God's plan for people and the support of the family structure. Because of that, I think Catholics have the intelectual honesty advantage when arguing against abortion. I do, however, admire the stand you are taking against IVF. We can't argue against stem cells if we tell couples its okay to kill embryos in order to have a baby.
Rob Zerbe | 05.18.05 - 11:11 am | #

Richard, kudos and thanks for bringing up a very important question. For this question has wider ramifications. Most Christians (or maybe nearly all) believe that unborn babies are innocent and therefore go to heaven if aborted. So from a strictly rational view, it would seem like a win for the babies.

But we don't actually know that it is a win for them. To argue that the babies go to heaven is basically an apeal to emotion: "how could God be God if it were otherwise?" But this assumption also carries within it another assumption: that a heavenly reward is a heavenly reward is a heavenly reward. Or to put it another way, it assumes that nothing about our earthly life really matters as long as, by hook or by crook, we make it into heaven.

But this doesn't wash, for scripture tells us that God shall wipe every tear from their eyes. It doesn't say there will be no tears, but that he will wipe them away. But tears over what? Presumably the tears don't come from the fact that heaven is a big disappointment. The tears must reflect where we have come from, not where we have arrived. It is this mortal coil which gives us plenty to cry about.

So back to the lives aborted before ever seeing the sunshine, before ever feeling the sting of rejection from playmates, before awkward first dates and war and love and despair and hope and joy. When they get to heaven, what tears will they have for God to wipe away? What does the wiping away of tears by God do between us and God? What does it do between a parent and a child, or between lovers when one consoles another? It heals, it comforts, it forms or strenthens a bond between the comforter and the comforted.

I'm not going to attempt to draw conclusions about the ramifications of this vis a vis aborted lives in heaven. Presumably God knows what he's doing, and He knows what to do about these horribly harvested innocents. We all live lives of differing lengths. Some of us grow old and wise, with years of memories both happy and sad. Some of us leave this world as children, before our understanding of the world is fully formed. But these things are properly left in God's hands. We cannot do as Andrea Yates did, who drowned her little children because she believed they would be better off in heaven. By the same token, we cannot take the lives of those even more helpless and innocent. How horrible to be one of those children, drowned in the tub that day, perishing in confusion and panic and in the shock of betrayal? It is quite possible that when we arrive in heaven we will find that those who were aborted endured unspeakable horror, a horror made worse, not better by having no means to express it, or even understand it. And if that is so, then some of their tears must become our tears in this life and in the hereafter if we would call them brothers and sisters.

We don't really know what happens, but we cannot afford to make the illogical leap that it must be utterly without consequence to those who are aborted.

Thanks again for bringing this one out. It is a very good question.
Joel | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 11:49 am | #

Nice fisking of Patti. Is Mike Reagan the only decent Reagan left?

I would, however, like to point out that the 400,000 embryos in fertility clinics are for the most part wanted by their parents. Almost 90% of these unborn children "are being stored for possible future use" which is somewhat inappropriate way of saying their parents are thinking of trying to initiate another pregnancy in the future.

Too often those in favor of embryonic stem cell research throw out the 400,000 number and act like all of these embryos are destined either for research or the dumpster when that isn't the case.
Jivin J | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 11:52 am | #

What baffles me is that I never once have heard anyone decry in equal terms to some of the rhetoric here the literally millions of "deaths" that occur every year from naturally occurring miscarriages, specifically miscarriages that occur because implantation fails, miscarriages of the type tha twoman often don't even know they've had. I mean, if you *really* feel that strongly that there is NO difference between a fertility clinic destroying unused embryos and a person killing a 20-year-old woman with a baseball bat, then shouldn't there be more outright horror at those millions of natural miscarriages? Those millions of "deaths?"
John C. | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 11:53 am | #

John C., we're all going to die—but not all of us are going to die of natural causes or accidents. That's why we have laws against murder.

Moreover, people do pursue laws against things presumed to cause miscarriages, such as exposure to toxic chemicals.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 11:57 am | #

John C,
One must take intent into account. If I run over a child who ran into the street while I was driving the speed limit I would be crushed. I would feel horrible and extremely sad; but I would not feel guilty. I had done nothing wrong, I had acted properly and an accident occured- something that we don't intend to happen but nonetheless does. The intential act of taking anothers life unjustly- that is murder. The mother who miscarries does not intend to do so. Hence she feels bad, but not guilty. I feel bad for those misscarried but angered at those murdered.
Jacob G. | 05.18.05 - 12:09 pm | #

(Sorry to double post, but curious...)
Most of the time a persons opinion about whether IVF and Stem Cell Research is wrong, depends on whether they think that the Embryo, or better yet at the single cell stage, is a life or not. Why do you all believe one way or the other? (I am asking not what you believe but why, if you don't have a reason, then this might be a good chance to attain one. Dawn if this is too off stage please delete.)
Jacob G. | 05.18.05 - 12:41 pm | #

Another great question. I think the real truth is that this question is unknowable. And the fact that science can never illuminate this question (it is a question of living soul), means that we must go conservatively.

Suppose I showed you a closed door and said, "this button activates a threshing machine inside that windowless room which would kill anyone inside it." Without being able to open the door, suppose I also said, "I don't think anyone's in there right now. I don't know. Probably not." Could you, in good conscience, simply say, "ok, good," and then push the button? What if we knock on the door and wait for an answer, or even yell through the door, is that good enough? Our duty to fellow man dictates that we'd have to first make absolutely and doubly certain no one was inside that room when we pushed the button.

It is the same with life at conception. We cannot positively know the answer. We don't know if there is a single instant at which a soul blinks into existence, or if there are stages, or a gradual progression. None of this is revealed to us. And since we know nothing about it, the "room" must be guarded, the button prohibited.

This is a really awesome thread of comments.
Joel | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 12:58 pm | #

Dawn (and others),

Is it better for a couple to be childless and create no life than it is to create some number of embryos, one (or three) of which are then allowed to grow into children?

If there were free babies on street corners we could tell the parents to just adopt. But, there aren't free babies on street corners (adoption is expensive and difficult), and even if there were, the question I asked still remains: 1 life + some lives that never make it out of the test tube, or no lives at all? I just don't see how the second is better.

What about in cases where natural pregnancy is likely to lead to a child with a fatal genetic disease? Is it wrong, then, to choose the lives that will last for more than two years, rather than leaving it up to chance?

What about in the cases where the a tissue-matched child would have cord blood that could save a sibling? (Several such cases have come up.) There, using IVF to select a tissue-match could save a life.
Kris | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 1:41 pm | #

Dawn,

Always keep in mind the "engineering." A "process" is useful to the extent that it's economically feasible. You'll never make replacement organs or tissue from embryonic stem cells because doing so would require lots of cell divisions, highly controlled by chemical and physical stimuli. Since robotics and "kettles" will always be woefully insufficient for this, ESC-derived tissues will never be economically manufacturable.

Most ESC scientists miss this important limitation of the "promise" of this research, since scientists (not being engineers) neve worry about "scaleup."

Here's what will happen: once the social stigma against ESC technology is wiped out, ESCR will continue unabated. After a few noteworthy "developments," venture capital will go into some ESC tissue startups. These, after some 5 years of failures to scale up (ah, engineering!), will change course to the only potentially viable manufacturing route: growing cloned humans (or IVF babies) for tissue/organ harvest.

These babies would be genetically modified to lack immunological markers that would cause an immune response in the tissue recipient.

This is the only cost effective way to "grow" organs. You may even find women hired as surrogates - perhaps in third world countries - if technologies for growing fetuses are not developed.

Expect these developments to come from the Third World or China. American and European researchers will complain of a "science gap" if the laws are not relaxed to let them compete. With the taboos of abortion, IVF and ESCR fully gone, it will sail through Congress.

As far as "adult stem cells" are concerned, expect progress for a few key diseases such as diabetes, where single cells (not tissues) are needed for manufacture. They will never be the kind of "cure all" falsely promised by the ESCR "community."
Ian | 05.18.05 - 1:52 pm | #

Kris:

the question I asked still remains: 1 life + some lives that never make it out of the test tube, or no lives at all? I just don't see how the second is better.

I think the real question is whether those lives in the test tube should ever have been there in the first place. Babies aren't spontaneously conceived in test tubes; someone puts them there, and that is the point at which this first swings into the immoral. It is like putting refugees on a ship at sea which then begins to sink. Fussing over which few get to be in the life boats begs the question of why all those people were put into the sinking ship in the first place.

Is it wrong, then, to choose the lives that will last for more than two years, rather than leaving it up to chance?

This is Social Darwinism run to its complete conclusion; survival of the fittest in the laboratory. It is wrong to initiate several lives in the hopes that one of them might be viable. It is wrong to bring a person into being and then fail to treat that person with the respect due to each individual human being.

What about in the cases where the a tissue-matched child would have cord blood that could save a sibling?

What about a case where your liver could save my life? Would I be justified in compelling you to be my doner? Of course not, that would be inhumane. The fulcrum of this whole issue is on respect for each human individual.
Joel | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 1:59 pm | #

IVF is "expensive and difficult," Kris. If you've got the cash and patience for IVF, you've got the cash and patience for adoption.

Also, I have to say I'm frankly disturbed by the notion of selecting a baby for the cord blood that could save a sibling. I'm disturbed by the idea of selecting any of a child's characteristics.

And you misphrased your question: it's not "1 life + some lives that never make it out of the test tube," it's twelve lives, eleven of which are decimated. The alternative is, in stead of creating new life to destroy the majority of it, fostering existing life.

Side note, has anyone heard about the surrogate quintuplets? A Texas story, I think. INfertile couple hires surrogate mom. FIVE embryos are implanted, with an expectation that MAYBE one won't miscarry. All five make it to term. Raising Arizona, anyone? All the created embryos are babies, no matter whether or where they might be miscarried (deliberately or not).
Kate B. | 05.18.05 - 2:01 pm | #

Ian, you make a startling (to me) and plausible point about scalability. This is already being borne out in the field today. At the moment the admittedly more modest hopes of adult stem cell research are outstripping the silver bullet pipe dreams of ESCR. It is logical that this will eventually put pressure on the scientific community to let the human body do their organ growing for them. When has humanity ever faithfully shunned the path of least resistance?
Joel | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 2:08 pm | #

Brave New World anyone?
Kate | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 2:15 pm | #

Kris - there are no free babies in the test tubes, either. Another poster mentioned this above so I won't steal her thunder. In short, the cost isn't really an object. So to your other questions...

They all boil down to the same calculation, instead here the cost is jotted in blood. Is it better to kill those nine for the sake of the tenth? That very question presumes that the only value in that tenth child is in what he can do for others, rather than for what he is himself. It turns human life into a matter of commodity. Why is that one tissue-matched child more valuable than his siblings?

Or to ask this question another way - you are a captain in war, charged with taking an enemy position. You know that a certain number of your soldiers will die, along with a larger number of the enemy. Despite all precautions, some civilians will be displaced and possibly killed as well. But this captured position will enable your people to end the war and free the rest of the people.

Situations like this drive some to absolute pacifism, thinking that this suffering is too dear a cost to pay. Even for the goods that might come and the lives that could be spared or improved, we have no right to willfully shed blood.

The primary difference between pro-life and pacifism is in the nature of the war. In a real shooting war, the soldiers aren't sent to die (though some will), but to fight and survive. And unlike the unborn, the enemy gets to fight back. Even civilians can flee. The unborn are nothing more than fixed targets.

I'm not an absolute pacifist, but even I balk at the thought of a war against our own progeny, defenseless and without blame, waged for the hypothetical benefit of my friends and family - or my own.
Nightfly | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 2:16 pm | #

Jivin J, as I mentioned, those 400,000-plus embryos are languishing in test tubes. Yes, there is a chance that some may be successfully implanted. Yes, the parents of some of them hope that the embryos will be implanted. But the fact remains that freezing significantly diminishes the viability of the embryos--embryos which, in any case, should never have been created.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 2:32 pm | #

Inorder for something to be a good act, virtue, not only must the end be good but the means also must be good.

IVF in itself is wrong. That is to say that even if the process was so efficient that no embryos would die and the parents would attain that which they desired, a healthy baby, the process would still be wrong, and hence the action would be a vice.

IVF is unnatural, and so because of this it is a vice, and hence a sin or against God. IVF removes the parents themselves from the act of procreation, properly speaking from the act of conception. The sperm and egg obviously remain, but they are merley that by which the couple concieve- the sperm and egg are not the couple. And so, the being, or child, is concieved or created without the parents proper.

This is why Dawn is right when she says that they are trying to play the role of God. They are trying to create life not as God has ordained, but without- as they see fit.

It is sad that many cannot have children or have children that will die young. Humility and Obediance- what little more is needed to imitate Christ.
Jacob G. | 05.18.05 - 2:48 pm | #

What about the use of what Saletan refers to as artificially created 'blobs' for research? They are not human, nor capable of becoming a child. They are not embryos, but only 'embryo-like'. And yet, they are composed of human cells and tissue and would not exist but for the combination of male and female DNA.

Saletan wisely points out that if ANT is unethical, how far back in the conception process do you go? Are unfertilized eggs and errant sperm cells equally sacred? Or does the sacred property of protected life only accrue to fertilized eggs?

If every spermatazoa is sacred, then any guy who is or ever was a teenager is in huge trouble with God for murdering tons of potential unborn folks just by urinating, or dreaming of Gwen Stefani, or the sin of onanism.

Where does one draw the line?
joe | 05.18.05 - 4:01 pm | #

IVF is unnatural, and so because of this it is a vice, and hence a sin or against God.

Jacob, I don't believe that argument holds up. Angioplasty isn't "natural" nor are clean streets and horticulture. When you get right down to it, the human race wasn't meant to be "natural" in the commen sense of that word; in nature we find beasts behaving in ways which are unacceptable for humans. We are created in the image of God, and meant to have dominion over the natural world, and therefore ourselves are in some sense unnatural. We must be careful to take our definition of what is vice or sin from God and His Word, and not from precedents set by the natural world.

No other species takes or is even able to take such extrordinary pains to preserve the helpless. In fact, nature actually sets a precedent for abortion: a pregnant rabbit, in a condition of extreme stress, may actually reabsorb the litter she is bearing. My objection to IVF is purely because of God's command: thou shalt not commit murder.
Joel | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 4:06 pm | #

Dawn and Jacob G. - My point was narrower. Millions of embryos "die" each year through naturally occurring pre-implantation miscarriages. And yet there's almost no outrage; as there is when, say, diseases kill millions of children a year. There's no charities, no univeristies with research programs set up to stop this slaughter, no demands for research to stop these deaths. It's pretty much just accepted, in a way that, say, childhood luekemia is not, that these early miscarriages happen. My point, narrow as it is, is that if every embryo is really a life than these deaths are just as horrible as any deaths. Why aren't they treated as such, by pretty much anyone?
John C. | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 4:11 pm | #

The discussion of the William Saletan article about the possible use of "embryo-like" cells for research is a red herring. Whether or not such research is murder—and I personally am gravely concerned by it—there is no question that embryos are being murdered every day in the name of "science" or, with supreme irony, "fertility." That is the here-and-now issue. It is disingenuous for someone who does not even believe that embryonic stem-cell research is murder to pretend any kind of concern over research on "embryo-like" cells.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 4:15 pm | #

Sorry for the repeat, but wanted to make another point. I've said this before here, but since it applies again, I thought I'd say it again. I think it's a tad disingenuous to suggest that, in the example at hand, Patti Davis wants to "destroy human life at one end to extend it at the other." I understand that that's your position on what she's recommending. But it's not quite fair to not acknowledge that it's not how SHE sees what she's suggesting. SHE (and, for the record, me) sees it as destroying something that is emphatically NOT life to extend life. While you may not share that viewpoint, it's a bit of dirty pool to try and make it sound as if she does and just doesn't care.
John C. | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 4:19 pm | #

John C.
Most families I know of which have had a misscarriage have held a funeral for their child. Death in-itself is not wrong, it is natural. How one dies though, that is the question. I do agree with you, that I wish families with misscarriages would be more sad than they are- they have lost a child; I disagree with misscarriages being a disease or a slaughter.

Joel,
Nature- That which happens always or for the most part. You are right to call me on this distinction- the natural, not-natural, and unnatural. Clean streets are not found in nature but are not contrary to nature- hence not-natural, although streets arise from a natural tendency to be clean and to be ordered.
Abortions are found in animals but are not natural. Animals do not always or for the most part have abortions, nor do they will too, animals have instint not will.
IVF is unnatural because it takes the two parents, the two agent causes, out of the picture and replaces them with one agent cause. In the act of conception naturally their are two agents-male and female- although in IVF there are either 1, the doctor, or three, doctor and parents. Either is contrary to nature.

I agree we must be extremely carefull about nature- God is it's author and further it's everpresent cause. It is what he has ordered and hence to go against it is infact to go against him, for he is everpresent in nature- both as its cause and because he is Omnipresent.
Jacob G. | 05.18.05 - 4:28 pm | #

John C., as Jacob writes above, some families do mourn their miscarriages, and there are many charities which address problems such as pollution which are thought to contribute to miscarriages. But if you're saying that every non-implanted embryo by my logic deserves a battery of mourners and activist groups, that's a red herring. (I've got two so far today on this thread; I could use some rye bread and a little salt.)

People can't mourn something they never knew existed, as is the case with the pre-implantation miscarriages you describe. As for whether there should be nonprofits that battle such miscarriages, again, any nonprofit that works to uphold all human, born and unborn, and improve the public health, is working to prevent health conditions that would lead to miscarriages.

What you're really doing, John, is trying to take the focus away from the fact that embryonic stem-cell research is murder. The fact that those who oppose such research may not all be supporting other important causes does not take away the most basic and terrible sin that is the destruction of human life.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 4:36 pm | #

Ah, I think I understand your question now. I was comparing miscarriages to abortion and/or IVF, while you were asking about a the comparison to things like childhood luekemia. In the former question, it is a difference in moral implications: one is murder, the other is tragedy.

But your question is about medical priorities, or emphasis. In essence it's about the ethics of triage. Such situations seldom have clean, clear-cut, satisfying answers when we try to look at all medical priorities from a high-altitude, collectivist perspective --e.g if I were a totalitarian dictator, what should the budget be for childhood leukemia? But we are not totalitarian dictators, so such decisions are largely not ours to make. If you meet a person who contributes generously to childhood leukemia, but doesn't happen to give any money for breast cancer research, you can't exactly lump him in (sorry, bad pun) with murderers and theives, even if we assume that by donating to breast cancer research he might have saved some lives. He is contributing to life with his leukemia research donations, and isn't necessarily morally wrong because of this emphasis in his own personal charity decisions.

All that being said, I think it's a good point you bring up, and the proposition that there should be more research to prevent miscarriages is well worth considering. But perhaps you really mean your question lead to this: if a lobbying group attempted to raise public awareness of the need for better miscarriage research, would they gain any traction in the minds of the public? My guess is that they wouldn't be terribly successful: murdering the unborn is already endorsed and protected by the law of the land. I do think this specific cheapening (abortion) of the lives of the unborn has, as a consequence, weakened society's resolve to protect unborn life in general. And that may be the very problem you're calling up.
Joel | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 4:39 pm | #

Life may begin at conception, but what reason do we have to believe that the embryo is a person at that time?

As far as I can tell, an organism cannot be a person unless it has a brain. The brain really is the person - the rest of the body is there to keep the brain fed and respond to its control. So an embryo that hasn't grown even a rudimentary brain may have "life", but it cannot be a person entitled to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness (especially as a brainless organism cannot be happy or unhappy).

So it's immoral to use the force of law to prevent such organisms from being used to save the lives of actual people with actual brains, and not immoral to create and destroy them in order to get a baby.
Ken | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 4:41 pm | #

Pointing out a logical inconsistency is not a red herring, and what Saletan believes is secondary. The question being raised here is where one draws the line. If every reproductive component (egg and sperm cells) can result in a human life, why aren't we giving each one a fair chance?

Eggs are routinely absorbed or shed by a woman's body, and sperm cell 'wasted' by accident or design, and no one cries. Yet without them, we do not exist. They are the building blocks of life.

As pointed out by John C., post-fertilization but pre-implantation stage embryos are miscarry often too. No one weeps for them, but they carry the potential for life. Should we be developing technology to 'catch' them and bring them to term?

It's fair to criticize those who create embryos for research or fertility purposes. It's not fair to fault them for taking your argument to its logical conclusion. If life is sacred, then every component of it deserves an equal shot at success.
joe | 05.18.05 - 4:44 pm | #

Millions of embryos "die" each year through naturally occurring pre-implantation miscarriages. And yet there's almost no outrage; as there is when, say, diseases kill millions of children a year. ... My point, narrow as it is, is that if every embryo is really a life than these deaths are just as horrible as any deaths. Why aren't they treated as such, by pretty much anyone?

There's no outrage because this is far different, and not "just as horrible" as willful, wanton slaughter. Legal abortion is an atrocity, and wholly preventable.

Your comparison with disease is also faulty. Diseases aren't considered outrages unless they are likewise easily preventable (such deaths from smoking or drink, or from lack of basic sanitation) or else actively inflicted (smallpox in the blankets, anthrax in the mail). Wiping out polio wasn't a matter of fighting evil but alleviating suffering; there was no additional element of guilt.

Finally, miscarriages are generally considered a great tragedy when the mother is aware that she was carrying. Pre-implantation isn't really the point. Others have already shared on this board that the knowledge of just such a lost life in their family is upsetting. Considering the explosion of neonatal care and the great advances in obstetrics in the past two generations, I don't see how there is no research going on into the problem. I found this while googling, for example; science is slowly learning some of the common elements in spontaneous early miscarriage and will no doubt develop ways to lessen those risks, in much the same way as doctors discovered and monitor rh-factor incompatibility between mother and child.

Since in many other cases those risks are genetic abnormalities in the embryo (extra chromosomes and such) no therapy can ever achieve 100% success; the proper word for this is not "slaughter" or "outrage" but "tragedy." It lies outside our power to remedy.
Nightfly | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 4:46 pm | #

Ken - if the brain makes the person as far as you can tell, I fear you aren't telling far enough. Cats have brains too. And sometimes people with quite excellent brains suffer terrible trauma or contract something like ALS and have those brains trapped forever with no way to express themselves to the outer world. The quality of the brain isn't the issue.

From a Christian standpoint, there is an additional objection to your position, because it leaves out the spirit. We aren't our brains any more than we are any other part of the body. Our identity is a merging of matter with spirit; we use our brains as tools. A badly-injured person may well be like a computer with no monitor, keyboard, or mouse - perfectly functioning but with no ability to give or receive the results. A brain without that spiritual spark is worse, like a computer with no operating system. (Type what you please, but you're not getting onto the Internet.)
Nightfly | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 4:56 pm | #

Ken:
As far as I can tell, an organism cannot be a person unless it has a brain.

You presuppose the non-existence of soul. In a materialistic universe, yes, you'd be right, because "as far as I can tell" might very well reveal the whole truth of the matter. But soul, if there is such a supernatural thing, and is by its definition super natural; above nature, outside nature, and therefore not observable by the tools of science. To assume that because we can't observe it, we don't need to take it into account is perilous. If we have no carbon monoxide detector, does it follow from that missing gadget that it is therefore safe to assume the stove won't poison us? It is better if we, having no carbon monoxide detector, go the safe route by keeping the kitchen ventilated or turn off the stove.
Joel | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 4:57 pm | #

"Life may begin at conception, but what reason do we have to believe that the embryo is a person at that time?"-Ken
What sort of life does the embryo have? Is it a dog? A mouse? A human? It is a human, for the embryo has THIS sort of life- namely human. It also has being. Hence it is a human being!
What sort of distinction is being drawn by saying it is a human being but not a person? I've never understood this, please explain.
Jacob G. | 05.18.05 - 4:59 pm | #

Joe, you don't believe that killing an embryo is murder. You're just trying to change the subject and catch me in a logical inconsistency that doesn't exist.

I believe that every life should be given every opportunity to thrive. I believe that it is wrong to create lives in the laboratory. Anything that is done with embryos once they are created in the lab which increases their odds of implantation does not take away the fact that creating such life in the laboratory is always wrong.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 5:01 pm | #

No one has mentioned yet that there is a growing movement to allow infertile couples to "adopt" frozen embryos leftover from IVF cycles. (I put the word "adopt" in quotes as the SCOTUS considers embryos to be property; hence, legally it's considered a transfer of property rather than an actual adoption". Check out www.snowflakes.org, the site for Snowflakes, which AFAIK has the largest embryo adoption program in the U.S.

Although creating the embryos in the first place was wrong, this is, as far as I'm concerned, the best way to use those already here. They can be given a chance for life.

And as for the poster who commented that "no one weeps for pre-implantation stage embryos", I beg to differ. I had three frozen embryos that we "adopted" from another couple transferred into my uterus, and for two weeks, my husband and I hoped and prayed that they would implant. When I learned that none of them had done so, I wept. And wept. And wept.

Another comment about adoption: Yes, there are many children in the U.S. foster care system who need families, _some of whom_ are available for adoption. However, not everyone feels called to adopt an older child who has suffered abuse, neglect, etc., and infants are not easy to come by. Infertile couples have many difficult choices to make.
Julie | 05.18.05 - 5:24 pm | #

Although creating the embryos in the first place was wrong, this is, as far as I'm concerned, the best way to use those already here. They can be given a chance for life.

I'm not saying it's exactly the same kind of issue, but this reminds me of the dilemma facing those who fight the traffic in human slaves: some hold that it is merciful and expedient to go and buy as many slaves as we can and set them free, while others hold that such purchases, while perhaps immediately expedient, are immoral because they do nothing to destroy the economy which depends on and facilitates slavery, and also because to purchase a slave, even if only to set him free, involves an implicit assent that he is saleable. In the same way, I worry that adoption of "leftover" embryos may have an enabling effect upon those who advocate IVF to begin with.

But this issue is somewhat different; where slavery is concerned, I am convinced that all effort must be spent demolishing the system which protects the institution of slavery, while in the case of the frozen embryos, for some reason I lean the other way.

In any case, Julie, what you did was commendable. I'm sorry to hear it did not work.
Joel | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 5:51 pm | #

Folks:

To all who’ve mentioned that miscarriages DO cause real grief, I apologize for giving you the impression that I thought they didn’t, at least for most. I’ve been through two myself, so understand completely.

Dawn:
“What you're really doing, John, is trying to take the focus away from the fact that embryonic stem-cell research is murder”

Not really, since I so very emphatically believe that it is not murder. I still think the point is valid; we as a society generally don’t treat very early miscarriages as tragic in the same way that we do “natural” deaths of two-year olds, and by your logic we should. My larger, more provocative point, is that I have a hard time believing that most on this thread would either—that is, that anyone here would be just as devastated by a two-year old’s “natural” death as by a week-old embryo’s. Why, if there no difference between the two?

Joel:
I don’t expect that our hypothetical miscarriage lobbyists would be successful either; but for different reasons than you. Any group trying to prevent pre-implantation miscarriages is, to my mind, trying to save the deaths of things that are not in any real way “lifes.”

Nightfly:
“Diseases aren't considered outrages unless they are likewise easily preventable”

Believe you me, if either of my daughters were to die from a non-“easily preventable” disease, I’d be plenty outraged. And while the proper word may be tragedy, the point still stands. No one views as equally tragic the death of a two-year old child and a pre-implanted embryo.
John C. | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 6:55 pm | #

Joel, what a great analogy! I wasn't sure if it was good to 'take in' fertilized eggs from another, but I do agree now.
LeoXII, in the encyclical IN PLURIMIS, states implicitly that the 'buying' of slaves for the sole sake of freeing them is not a sin. Past Theologians even agreed that the slave, who is bought by the Christain inorder to free him, is freed as soon as the money changes hands. Further, the Christian 'buyer' is not a buyer strictly; for he does not recieve the 'goods' that he traded for- he never takes the slave into posession.

Even more then, when there is no buying whatsoever, for the embryos. The new parents, especially the new mother, are in fact giving not money, as the Christian 'buying' the slave, but much more: themselves. How beautiful! Doesn't it just scream Christ?!

I echo: Julie how commendable. I too am sorry to hear it did not work out.
Jacob G. | 05.18.05 - 7:05 pm | #

John C,
You are correct. We do not mourn the loss of the embryo as much as the loss of a two year old; the reason is because of proximity. I know many two year olds and hence can relate to the loss of one. I do not know many, if any, embryos and hence the loss is less as relative to me.
The parents mourn because it was their child; a friend mourns because he knows the parents; I do not mourn, except in hope that the embryo is in heaven as I do for any human. That sounds right to me but it's off the top of my head...
Jacob G. | 05.18.05 - 7:14 pm | #

What about a case where your liver could save my life?

That misses my entire dilemma. I'm not talking about trading one life for another. If I were, it'd be relatively simple. We're talking about creating lives that would not otherwise exist.

Consider a child via IVF. Are you saying that child shouldn't be alive? That the cost of bringing him or her into the world was too high? Creating embryos have no chance at a real life makes me uncomfortable, but it doesn't seem to me that the world would be better if those children born via IVF hadn't been conceived.

Kate B. - I didn't mean "free" just in terms of cost--I meant "free" in terms of "available". Bad choice of wording on my part. I understand from people who looked into both IVF and adoption that finding healthy babies without the risk that birth parents will take them back is quite a challenge. I'd love to be wrong here. (And, just so no one else has to says it, if we outlawed abortion, the number of available newborns of adoption would go up.)

My objection to IVF is purely because of God's command: thou shalt not commit murder.

If embryos were only created if they were also to be implanted, would you be okay with IVF?

Personally, if someone were to give me the following choice:
(1) You can not exist, or
(2) You can exist as a frozen (or dead) embryo created as a byproduct of the process that produced Joe Smith

I'd choose (2), no question.
Kris | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 7:17 pm | #

That misses my entire dilemma. I'm not talking about trading one life for another. If I were, it'd be relatively simple.

Ok, some confusion seems to be arising (not that you're confused, but I was, for a minute) from the fact that this discussion is actually two discussions: IVF and embryonic stem cell research. Sorry if I wasn't clear (I probably wasn't).

Because I believe that an embryo must be treated as a human life, IVF is relatively simple: the process involves discarding numerous embryos in the hopes that one might "take." It is to the creating of these embryos for the simple destiny of involuntary participation in such a lottery that I object.

But the context of my liver question was the same as Dawn's original blog entry, and her commentary that the rational for ESCR constitutes killing life at one end of its cycle in order to extend it at the other end.

These two issues (EVF and ESCR) hinge on whether you believe an embryo is human life. If you do, then logically you'd have to preserve that life. If you do not believe an embryo is human life, then logically extending from that view leaves both EVF and ESCR as acceptable practices. I think each of us has been consistent and logical, but we are starting from two very different premises.

If embryos were only created if they were also to be implanted, would you be okay with IVF?

I have to grin when you ask me that question, because frankly it has been knocking around in my head all day. In that scenario it certainly wouldn't be a moral dilemma about murder, which remains my central objection to EVF in the real world.

Outside of that, I'd have to say it still smacks strongly of human experimentation. Everything else doctors do must adhere to the Hippocratic Oath. The whole pursuit of doctors ought to be to preserve and improve the health of existing lives. So even if IVF wouldn't be murder, it still wouldn't be medicine in my book. But this is a moot question until the success rate of implantation is 100%.

Personally, if someone were to give me the following choice:
(1) You can not exist, or
(2) You can exist as a frozen (or dead) embryo created as a byproduct of the process that produced Joe Smith

I'd choose (2), no question.

This makes no sense. How can we evaluate the relative merits of not existing? There's no way to be in a state of not existing and make some observations about what it was like. The unpleasantness of not existing can never be recorded or even observed, because observing and recording require an exister to do the observing and recording. If you had never existed, how would you look back wistfully and wish you'd been at least a frozen embryo? When humans like you or me talk about the option of not existing, we are generally imagining the option of ceasing to exist, which is, of course another matter.

Furthermore, your "embryo or nothing" dilemma makes it sound like you're arguing that it is unfortunate if any potential embryo that didn't get created wasn't created; as though every egg ought have its spermatazoa. But I don't think anybody's arguing that an egg is in some way human, or that the sperm cell is in some way human. It's when you put them together that something different happens. It's the first and most basic experience of all humans: we were not, and then we were.
Joel | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 8:52 pm | #

Id like to point out that the millions of miscarried embryos that everyone is talking about dont really exist. I belive it was a study on birth control specifcally depo in canada and norplant in one of the smaller spanish speaking countries. They studied these woman with controls, discovered that they were regularly miscarrying and extrapolated that out to see how much those ON BIRTH CONTROL were miscarrying. This had nothing to do with those of us who dont use hormonal BC. And Id like to also point out that I practice sympto thermal NFP. If I were miscarrying Id know it. Your body responds to the embryo while it is in the fallopian tubes before it ever hits the uterus. Your temps go up the day you ovulate and stay up if your pregnant. If your going to miscarry you might have an extended period of time over the 19 days to confirm pregnancy. There are woman who had been using NFP for years who dicovered regular miscarriages and had the appropriate therapys or surgery to correct the problem but they are beyond rare. The body does not regularly make babies and destroy them. You simply cannot take a group of contracepting woman and apply thier miscarriage rate to the rest of the population. It is unrealistic. The underlying cause of those miscarriages that do happen is clear to me. It is hormanal manipulation of the human female. It offends the dignity of the woman, the man and mostly the child.
josephine | 05.18.05 - 9:11 pm | #

There are some couples who use IVF but insist on only creating 1 or 2 or 3 embryos at a time, with the intent of implanting ALL of them. There is never any "surplus".

I find it difficult to condemn this. Yes, there is a risk of miscarriage, but we already accept this risk when creating embryos in the ordinary, natural way. I have 4 children, but we also lost two in the 3rd month of pregnancy, and (we believe) several others in the first 3 weeks (though that's harder to tell). After the two for-sure miscarriages, which came between our 3rd and 4th children, when my wife was in her late 30's, we tried again and were blessed with a healthy girl.
Joseph | 05.18.05 - 10:32 pm | #

These two issues (EVF and ESCR) hinge on whether you believe an embryo is human life.

When discussion ESCR, I agree with your statement above. But when it comes to IVF, I'm not sure I do.

Before IVF: x people in the world
After IVF: x + 1 person, + frozen or dead embryos

That plus one person didn't take anything from anyone who was living before the process started (any more than a baby born w/o IVF). What makes the post IVF world worse?

But this is a moot question until the success rate of implantation is 100%.

The "natural" pregnancy success rate is less than 100%; do we have to hit 100% or just equal the natural rate? If implantation does not occur, there's no way for a woman to notice that fertilization has happened.

If you had never existed, how would you look back wistfully and wish you'd been at least a frozen embryo?

Yes, I agree, the setup is silly. But the question of IVF is about creating life, not taking it. Some of the lives created don't live up to their full potential, and die very young indeed. But that's not the same as killing someone to make room for someone else, or killing someone for bodyparts, or using embryos in stem-cell research. There's more total life, more souls in the world, after a successful IVF treatment; is the cost just too high?
Kris | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 11:16 pm | #

"You presuppose the non-existence of soul."

No I don't. I simply presuppose that the existence of the soul requires the existence of the brain.

In a materialistic universe, yes, you'd be right, because "as far as I can tell" might very well reveal the whole truth of the matter. But soul, if there is such a supernatural thing, and is by its definition super natural;"

It's also centered in the brain. You can cut off any other body part you like, and if the brain lives, the soul remains, whether or not it can communicate. If the brain dies and the rest of the body works perfectly, the person is gone.

"Ken
What sort of life does the embryo have? Is it a dog? A mouse? A human? It is a human, for the embryo has THIS sort of life- namely human. It also has being. Hence it is a human being!
What sort of distinction is being drawn by saying it is a human being but not a person? I've never understood this, please explain."

"Human" and "person" are two separate things. A human is simply a member of our species. Other intelligent species may exist elsewhere in the universe; if they do, then members of those species would not be human, but they would be bona-fide persons, at least once they had grown the equivalent of a brain.
Ken | Homepage | 05.18.05 - 11:44 pm | #

Kris, putting aside my belief that it is wrong for man to create life period, it is absolutely wrong to create life knowing that there is a chance that life will be destroyed in the process. Good intentions do not mitigate this.

God can create good from evil, and so He creates goodness in the lives of IVF children and their families. But that does not mitigate the fact that creating children by IVF is evil. Likewise, as one commenter to this blog has said in the past, if you kidnapped a child and the child was happy in your home, that would not take away the evil of kidnapping.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 05.19.05 - 12:00 am | #

Hey, Ken,
I just found out that a girl I went to college with--wife, mother of one, and pregnant with another--collapsed with some sort of brain hemorrhage. Brain death, no chance of recovery. She's in ICU, where doctors are trying to keep her alive long enough so that the premature baby will at least have a chance of survival when extracted--they're hoping for July 11. And I found this out after reading your comments that, in effect, state that she is no longer a person. Needless to say, I disagree with you, both in the case of the brain-dead pregnant mother, and in the case of the embryo. Why? Newsflash: the brain in a jar is not a person. The person cannot be reduced to a single body part any more than it can be reduced simply to the body. Nor can "human" be separated from "person." Dehumanization of anyone with human characteristics is the first step toward atrocity. Embryos have human characteristics that are invisible to the naked eye--doesn't mean they're not there. Yes, I sound angry. No, not at you. I'm incredibly upset, but wanted to pass on this chance to examine the brain issue in a light larger than an embryo's pinpoint. PLease, everyone, if you pray, pray for Susan Torres, her husband Jason, her son Peter, and her unborn baby. Thank you.
Kate B. | 05.19.05 - 10:39 am | #

Ken,
What is the difference between a rock and a plant? A: simply that one has a principle of life. This principle has the charactersitics of reproduction and nutrition.

What is the difference between a plant and an animal? A: Animals have a principle of life which has the characteristics of reproduction, nutrition, instinct, and locomotion.

What is the difference between an animal and a human? A: Humans have a principle of life which has the characteristics of reproduction, nutrition, instinct, locomotion, and reason.

This principle of life, no matter which one, is the definition of soul. That's right plants, animals, and humans, have souls (Humans are the only one in which the miracle occurs that God keeps the soul alive without the body- after death). The Nutritive soul, instinctual soul, and the rational soul- each higher soul having the powers of the lower.

The soul is not found solely in the brain. The soul cannot be found soley in any one part of the body- it is everywhere in the body. Otherwise, one must say the absurd- my arm is more me than my leg. My brain is more me than my toe. No. I am found everywhere...well, that I am.
It is true that some parts of the body are more necessary than others, ex. my heart is more necessary than my finger. That does not mean in any way that my heart is more me than my finger. If you don't agree with this simple, if not first, principle then it is useless to continue.
Jacob G. | 05.19.05 - 4:27 pm | #

I doubt anyone's going to read this at this point, but I should point out that there are some states and insurance companies which do mandate IVF coverage. Adoption coverage, especially if you want to start out where everyone else does, with an infant? (Don't care about the colour). Not so much. My husband and I were in this position. Our annual income is $20,000 - but our insurance coverage, thanks to a fluke, will cover up to six IVF cycles. Being able to do IVF does not always mean that you are ploughing money into it which could otherwise have gone into adoption.
Sonetka | 05.19.05 - 4:54 pm | #

Up north here, nobody buys 'em,
And I said, "But I will."

You have a great observation, Sonetka. Apparently insurance companies think of IVF as something natural (bearing your own children) and adoption as some sort of happy extra. Food for thought, that.
Nightfly | Homepage | 05.19.05 - 5:12 pm | #

Dawn,
I think you go too far when you say that it is wrong to create life when one knows there is a chance life will be destroyed. Seems to me this applies to all cases of conception - a miscarriage is always possible. This would also make out someone deliberately trying to get pregnant who had a high rate of miscarriages to be doing something morally wrong.

Were you to generalize your statement into "x is wrong if there will be chance life will be destroyed becuase of it" that would exclude me driving my car, and so on.
Sarah | 05.19.05 - 8:54 pm | #

Sarah, I'm sorry you misinterpreted me. I was referring only to artificially created life, which is why I said I believe it is wrong for man to create life period. I don't think it's wrong at all for God to create new life within us, or for people to try to conceive naturally despite poor odds.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 05.19.05 - 9:10 pm | #

But that really IS my question, Dawn. As far as I know scripture does not address this issue directly. The comandments against killing require that we take a very conservative attitude towards defining the start of life. But there are two bits of evidence which strongly suggest that a human soul is not created at the moment of conception. First is the existance of identical twins. I think it's clear that while they may have similar personalites, they have two different souls. The second soul had to be created after the moment of conception. Second, research into near death experiences and brain mapping strongly suggest that the 'hardware' for body soul interaction is located around the right temporal lobe. I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist till past the first month. We also know that not all living cells create a person, because we can remove living cells from a person and not loose the person. When you give blood for example.

All that's not enough for me to start advocating morning after pills or embrionic research. I wouldn't want to take even a 1% chance of killing what might be a human. But I do think it's worth thinking about. I wish scientists would deeply consider these questions rather than blow them off as the ravings of some religious fanatic.
Richard J. Stuart | Homepage | 05.21.05 - 2:03 am | #

Your link to the site for images of abortion has a
after it which makes it get a 404
Don Singleton | Homepage | 05.21.05 - 7:40 pm | #

Thanks for the tip-off, Don. I've fixed that link and the other Priests for Life link.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 05.22.05 - 2:02 am | #