Human embryos: Property or persons?

A judge ruled last week that a San Francisco woman's frozen embryos must be "thawed and discarded" against her wishes. The woman sought to gestate and raise the embryos, but her ex-husband, with whom she created the embryos through in vitro fertilization, wanted them destroyed. The couple had signed a consent form indicating that the embryos should be destroyed in the case of divorce, and Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo decided that the agreement is legally binding.

Massullo writes: "It is a disturbing consequence of modern biological technology that the fate of nascent human life, which the embryos in this case represent, must be determined in a court by reference to cold legal principles."

Legal disputes over the fate of frozen embryos—and over who "owns" them—seem increasingly common. A high-profile conflict is ongoing between actress Sofia Vergara and her ex-fiance, Nick Loeb. "When we create embryos for the purpose of life, should we not define them as life, rather than as property?" asks Loeb in a New York Times op-ed.

This is the fundamental issue at stake. The embryos in these legal cases are treated as property. They are treated as things. Things have merely instrumental or extrinsic value. We may use them for our own purposes or discard them if we feel like it. Things may be owned as property.

Persons, by contrast, have intrinsic value: they are valuable in themselves. They have rights. They are not objects to use but individuals whom we must respect. The great philosopher Immanuel Kant famously wrote: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end."

Should we treat human embryos as property or persons?

Embryos are living human organisms (human beings) at the embryonic stage of their development. Under our law, however, they are not treated in the same way as older human children (infants, toddlers, adolescents). Simply being human is insufficient for protection. Human beings during the earliest developmental periods are not considered persons. All of us (at least those born after January 22, 1973) were once "non-persons" by law.

Our current legal situation, then, has effectively divided humanity into two categories: persons and things. Some members of our species are persons whom we respect and some members are things that may be owned, used, or killed by other members (those who do qualify as persons).

This should be alarming. As philosopher Christopher Kaczor observes, every instance throughout history in which such a division of humanity was implemented (e.g., slavery, genocide) is now recognized as a horrific moral mistake. Every single time. If those who today deny the value of human embryos are correct, it marks the first time in the history of the world that the division of human beings into persons and property is not a moral disaster.

What is the justification for this current discrimination? Embryonic human beings are tiny. They are less developed. They lack the cognitive abilities of older members of our species.

But none of these differences are morally significant. Big people are not more valuable than small people. A teenager does not have a greater right to life than a less-developed five-year-old. A toddler, who is self-aware, does not deserve more respect than a newborn baby, who cannot yet exercise higher mental functions.

Intrinsic value doesn't depend on age, size, or ability—any more than it depends on gender, race, ethnicity, or religion. When we treat some human beings as property, we prioritize differences that don't matter while dismissing the one characteristic that human beings have in common: We are all human. We are all the same kind of being. And that's what matters.

Human beings by nature are persons rather than property. We ought to treat our fellow members of the human family accordingly.

Investigation reveals that Planned Parenthood harvests the organs of aborted unborn children

Undercover videos released this summer reveal that Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading practitioner of abortion, sometimes harvests the body parts of babies killed by abortion. Planned Parenthood receives payment in exchange for the parts from companies that provide the tissue to researchers.

In one video, Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services, discusses how Planned Parenthood alters the dismemberment abortion process in order to preserve the desired organs and fill specific pre-orders.

"I'd say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they'll know where they're putting their forceps," she says. "We've been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I'm not gonna crush that part, I'm gonna basically crush below, I'm gonna crush above, and I'm gonna see if I can get it all intact."

A second video shows Mary Gatter, president of Planned Parenthood's Medical Directors' Council, negotiating the compensation for aborted baby parts with prospective buyers. She says that "the money is not the important thing, but it has to be big enough that it is worthwhile." Gatter concludes: "Let me just figure out what others are getting, and if this is in the ballpark, then it's fine, if it's still low, then we can bump it up." She then laughingly adds, "I want a Lamborghini."

Sarah Stoesz, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, writes: "While Planned Parenthood in our state does not have a [fetal] tissue donation program, we stand behind our colleagues around the country [who do harvest fetal parts]."

A few key facts about Planned Parenthood:

• Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota (PPMNS) is Minnesota's leading practitioner of abortion. The organization performed 4,981 abortions in 2014, nearly half of the statewide total.
• PPMNS billed taxpayers $295,216 for 1,287 abortions in 2013.
• PPMNS received more than $5 million in government grants and contracts in 2013.
• Abortion facilities in Minnesota, including Planned Parenthood's abortion center in St. Paul, are unlicensed and uninspected by the state.
• Planned Parenthood Federation of America is the nation's leading provider of abortion. The organization performed 327,653 abortions in 2013.
• Planned Parenthood received $528.4 million from the government in the year ending in June 2014.

New breakthrough in human cloning should recall ethical problems

Yesterday the journal Cell published research from a group of scientists (most of them from Oregon Health and Science University) indicating that they successfully derived stem cells from cloned human embryos. This breakthrough—after years of technical difficulties that stalled cloning efforts—should refresh the many ethical concerns regarding the enterprise of human cloning.

The Oregon researchers used the cloning process known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), in which the nucleus from a somatic cell (a regular body cell) is transferred into an enucleated egg, which is then stimulated. The result (when successful) is a developing human embryo that is genetically (virtually) identical to the donor of the somatic cell. The researchers were able to grow these cloned embryos to the blastocyst stage, at which point they were killed by the derivation of stem cells. Such cells are sought for the purpose of biomedical research.

The biggest concern here is the destruction of human life. Cloned embryos are living human organisms at the embryonic stage of development. They are members of the species Homo sapiens, like each of us, attempting to traverse a period of life through which each of us once passed. The Oregon scientists created these young human beings in order to then kill them by harvesting their useful parts. They treated them as a natural resource, mere raw material, to use instrumentally for the theoretical future benefit of others. This practice is utterly incompatible with a commitment to the equal and intrinsic value of every member of the human family, at all developmental stages and in all conditions, a value that we share simply by virtue of our common humanity.

Human cloning also raises other ethical concerns, including the commodification of human life; the dangers to the health (and possible exploitation) of women, from whom eggs must be harvested; the tenuous barrier between "therapeutic cloning" (SCNT for the purpose of killing cloned embryos to derive stem cells) and "reproductive cloning" (SCNT for the purpose of implanting cloned embryos in a woman's uterus and allowing them to develop toward maturity), which could result in the birth of a cloned baby; and the possible development of other Brave New World technologies, such as genetic engineering.

Cloning can also be rejected on practical grounds. Indeed, Ian Wilmut, who famously used SCNT to clone Dolly the sheep, abandoned human cloning research for precisely this reason. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) seem to offer the same potential benefits as stem cells from cloned embryos (they are pluripotent and patient-matched), and they are easier and less expensive to produce. Moreover, every proven stem cell treatment to date has used ethically-uncontroversial adult stem cells. In short, the therapeutic benefits sought from human cloning can be achieved without it.

Dr. David Prentice notes that 60,000 people worldwide receive adult stem cell transplants each year. Dozens of diseases and conditions are treated. "Given that science has passed cloning by for stem cell production," Prentice writes, "this announcement [by the Oregon scientists] seems simply a justification for making clones, and makes reproductive cloning and birth of human clones more likely."

The lead Oregon researcher said that "the ethics of human cloning ... is not our focus." But it should be.

Organ donor awareness: Know your risks

The following was released today, May 15.

A shocking article in this month's Discover magazine has renewed concern over end-of-life treatment for those willing to donate their organs after death. Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life is calling attention to the issue on behalf of donors and recipients.

"One of the pro-life movement's guiding principles is that every human being, regardless of their strong or weak physical state, has an inalienable right to life and that right cannot be infringed upon by others," said MCCL Executive Director Scott Fischbach.

The Discover article explains how, in 1968, a group of doctors established an entirely new definition of death: the loss of "personhood." This subjective, philosophical determination of "brain death" is now the standard which enables physicians to declare a person to be dead, and then keep the "beating-heart cadaver" warm, pink and breathing until transplant procedures can be performed. Dr. Michael DeVita of the University of Pittsburgh's Medical Center describes this new category of humanity as only "pretty dead."

In 1971, a Minnesota team observed reflexes in moribund patients that looked like signs of life, and pregnant women declared brain-dead have gestated their babies for weeks—in one case, for 107 days. Transplant physicians are reluctant to discuss the possibility that a "brain-dead" organ donor can feel pain.

The cover of this month's Discover offers an ire-and-dire quote: "The organ harvest proceeded over the objections of the anesthesiologist, who saw the brain-dead donor react to the scalpel ..."

"Being a 'donor' means different things to different people. Caution is advised and education is the key for any donor," Fischbach added. "A donor's compassion and generosity represent pro-life ideals—donating blood, plasma, bone marrow and even a kidney can result in little to no impact on the donor's health. We just want them to be well informed when they give their consent."

Knowledge of current health care directive laws is crucial. In Minnesota, health care providers are required to follow a patient's advance care directive (living will, etc.). A patient cannot be denied nutrition and hydration, even at the end of life.

"Nobody knows what, if anything, brain-dead patients experience, and none of them could plausibly return to consciousness to tell us," wrote Discover Editor-in-Chief Corey Powell. "All we can do is read on and take one more step toward an information-based ethics—one that respects death while giving primacy to life."

Human fetuses: Researchers' new prized tissue source

The following news release was issued today, March 16, 2012.

The use of fetal remains from abortion for research continues in U.S. laboratories, according to recent reports. The dehumanization of nascent human life, applied to human embryos in order to justify the exploitation of embryonic stem cells, also is being applied to the harvesting of brain tissue from more developed unborn babies with functioning brains.

The latest experiment, a clinical trial approved by the Food and Drug Administration, uses brain tissue from aborted unborn babies to treat macular degeneration. StemCells Inc. will inject fetal brain stem cells into the eyes of up to 16 patients to study the cells’ effect on vision.

In its press release announcing the clinical trial, StemCells Inc. was careful to refer to the fetal brain material as "purified human neural stem cell product" or HuCNS-SC cells, rather than "fresh human fetal brain tissue," a description which can be found elsewhere on its website.

"StemCells Inc. is not using embryonic stem cells. A five-day-old human being at the embryonic stage does not have a brain, but a fetus at 10 or 20 weeks of development with visible fingers, toes and ears has a functioning brain," said MCCL Executive Director Scott Fischbach. "Developing human beings in the womb are treated simply as raw material for laboratory experimentation by StemCells Inc. and other companies seeking to monetize aborted unborn children."

The misleadingly-named Birth Defects Research Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle is known within the research community as a top government distributor of fetal tissue. The lab has been sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for over four decades, according to a report in WORLD Magazine. The Puget Sound Business Journal stated that the lab "in 2009 filled more than 4,400 requests for fetal tissue and cell lines." WORLD reports that the Seattle facility has retrieved the products of 22,000 pregnancies to date; the lab collects aborted fetuses from abortion centers across the country.

Experimental fetal stem cell treatments have yielded horrific results. Dr. David Prentice, an internationally recognized expert on stem cells and cloning, cites trials in which fetal stem cells have been used unsuccessfully to treat Parkinson's disease. The New York Times called the outcome of a 2001 study "devastating" after "the patients writhed and jerked uncontrollably." Another large clinical trial published in 2003 showed similar results.

"The use of morally illicit material in the biomedical industry violates the 'do no harm' principle that has governed the practice of medicine for millennia," Fischbach said. "Adult stem cells offer the ethical and efficacious alternative. Unborn babies deserve dignity, not dissection and destruction."

It is not known whether the University of Minnesota is experimenting with material from aborted fetuses, but it does use stem cells extracted from human embryos, which are killed in the process. Minnesota's Human Conceptus Statute 145.422 prohibits the use of a living human conceptus for any type of research or experimentation.

"MCCL calls upon the U of M to pledge not to purchase or use fetal material in its research," Fischbach added. "Such gruesome work violates human dignity and has no place in our state-funded institutions."

How aborted babies are used in medical research

WORLD Magazine has published a revealing story on the use of tissue from aborted babies for medical research. Some excerpts:

Federal and some state laws permit fetal tissue research, and although some regulation of the practice exists, there appear to be gaps in oversight. Few have firsthand knowledge of the secretive networks that procure the tissue, and no central agency or organization tracks them. But an uncomfortable reality is clear: The overwhelming majority of fetal tissue used for research in the United States is obtained from aborted babies. ...

To learn firsthand how tissue makes its way to research labs, I reached by phone the executive director of an abortion clinic that allows women to donate their fetuses. Jennifer Boulanger of the Allentown Women's Center in Allentown, Pa., said her clinic supplies tissue to the University of Washington. She said her clinic is not paid for the donations, but the university provides her staff with the supplies needed to collect and ship the specimens.

In order to abide by state law, the clinic's workers don't tell women about the donation program until after they have made the decision to abort. Boulanger explained that although women must be a certain number of weeks along in their pregnancies to qualify for the program, "I would say the majority of those who are eligible choose to donate."

To ensure tissue freshness, "the specimens are FedExed overnight" to Seattle, she said. Boulanger didn't have at hand the number of specimens her clinic provides annually, but she estimated, "I don't think it's any more than 10 a week."

The recipient, named misleadingly the Birth Defects Research Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle, has been sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for over four decades. It's known within the research community as a top government distributor of fetal tissue. Last year the Puget Sound Business Journal stated the lab "in 2009 filled more than 4,400 requests for fetal tissue and cell lines."

The lab's grant records indicate it received $579,091 from the NIH last year. To date, it has retrieved the products of 22,000 pregnancies. According to a description the lab provided in its most recent grant applications, an increase in nonsurgical abortion methods has "created new obstacles to obtaining sufficient amounts of high quality tissue. To overcome these problems and meet increasing demand, the Laboratory has developed new relationships with both local and distant clinics." ...

Theresa A. Deisher, a scientist specializing in adult stem cells, told me stem-cell lines from aborted fetuses have been used to create cosmetic products and several common vaccines, including chickenpox vaccines: "I know the most terrific abusers of the products of abortion are academic scientists, across the board."

The nonprofit group that Deisher founded in 2008, Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute, stands in Seattle as a sort of rebuttal to the University of Washington's birth defects lab. "Its mission is to educate people about the pervasive use of morally illicit material in the biomedical industry" and other industries, she said. ...

With state regulation of fetal donation spotty, Deisher fears that young women facing unplanned pregnancies may be enticed to abort with the promise that "great medical advances" will come from their fetuses: "What a terrible thing, to exploit those young women in such a vulnerable period."

But as long as fetal tissue is in demand and sparsely regulated, they'll continue to be solicited.

Some contend that since aborted unborn children have already died, we might as well make use of their bodies for a good end. But there is a moral difference between using the remains of a human being who has died of natural causes and using the remains of someone who has been unjustly killed.

"Only if nothing can be done to prevent the ongoing evil does the argument from salvaging good have merit," write J.P. Moreland and Scott Rae. "Surely one is not justified in obtaining a benefit from evil while doing nothing to prevent it."

The death of euthanasia advocate Jack Kevorkian

Jack Kevorkian -- the notorious euthanasia advocate -- has died, ironically of natural causes. Known as "Dr. Death," Kevorkian facilitated the suicides of some 130 people, and spent years in prison for murder after killing a patient on national television.

Author, bioethicist and euthanasia/assisted suicide expert Wesley J. Smith writes:

[Kevorkian's] driving motive was always obsession with death. Indeed, as he described in his book Prescription Medicide, Kevorkian's overriding purpose in his assisted-suicide campaign was pure quackery, e.g., to obtain a societal license to engage in what he called "obitiatry," that is, the right to experiment on the brains and spinal cords of "living human bodies" being euthanized to "pinpoint the exact onset of extinction of an unknown cognitive mechanism that energizes life." ...

[W]hile the media continually described him as the "retired" doctor who helped "the terminally ill" to commit suicide, at least 70 percent of his assisted suicides were not dying, and five weren't ill at all according to their autopsies. It. Didn't. Matter. Kevorkian advocated tying assisted suicide in with organ harvesting, and even stripped the kidneys from the body of one of his cases, offering them at a press conference, "first come, first served." It. Didn't. Matter. And as noted above, he wanted to engage in ghoulish experiments. It. Didn't. Matter. He was fawned over by the media (Time invited him as an honored guest to its 75th anniversary gala, and he had carte blanche on 60 Minutes), enjoyed high opinion polls, and after his release from prison was transformed by sheer revisionism into an eccentric Muppet. He was even played by Al Pacino in an HBO hagiography.

Kevorkian was disturbingly prophetic. He called for the creation of euthanasia clinics where people could go who didn't want to live anymore. They now exist in Switzerland and were recently overwhelmingly supported by the voters of Zurich in an initiative intended to stop what is called "suicide tourism." Belgian doctors have now explicitly tied euthanasia and organ harvesting. In the U.S., mobile suicide clinics run by Final Exit Network zealots continue unabated despite two prosecutions, as voters in two states legalized Kevorkianism as a medical treatment.

Time will tell whether Kevorkian will be remembered merely as a kook who captured the temporary zeitgeist of the times, or whether he was a harbinger of a society that, in the words of Canadian journalist Andrew Coyne, "believes in nothing [and] can offer no argument even against death."

Misinformation, poor thinking in an age of biotechnology

The Washington Post has a story about Timothy Atchison, the first-ever patient to undergo an experimental embryonic stem cell injection. (All other stem cell treatments -- dozens of different conditions have already been successfully treated -- have used ethically-uncontroversial adult stem cells.) We do not yet know whether the embryonic stem cells can or will help Atchison, who is paralyzed from the chest down; there are concerns (including from advocates of embryonic research) that the study is premature, poorly designed and too risky for the patient.

Atchison seems like a really, really great guy, and we all wish him the best. But the Post story indicates to me that he was a victim of more than just a car crash. He was a victim of misinformation and poor thinking -- from doctors, a local pastor and apparently everyone else around him, who should have been a source of truth and wisdom, not falsity and confusion.

From the story:

Raised Baptist in a small town where the main road has more churches than fast-food restaurants, Atchison nonetheless has no moral qualms about helping to launch the first U.S. government-sanctioned attempt to study a treatment using embryonic stem cells in people. The cells implanted into his spine were obtained from embryos being discarded at fertility clinics, he said.

"It's not life. It's not like they're coming from an aborted fetus or anything like that. They were going to be thrown away," he said. "Once they explained to me where the stem cells were coming from, once I learned that, I was okay with it."

They "explained" wrong. Is the embryo "life"? Biologically, it is living. But is it human life? Biologically, it is human. But is it a living human organism, a member of our species? Biologically, yes, it is: As the National Insitutes of Health explains, an embryo is a "developing organism from the time of fertilization until the end of the eighth week of gestation, when it is called a fetus." In short, a human embryo is a human being in the embryonic stage of his or her (sex is determined) development, needing only a suitable environment and nutrition (no different than any of us) to develop himself or herself through the different stages of life (embryo, fetus, newborn, toddler, child, etc.). There is no doubt about this. It is a matter of scientific fact.

Atchison -- We wish him the best.

But isn't destroying an embryo okay if it is "going to be thrown away" anyway? Only if the embryo is not a valuable human being who ought to be respected and protected (go here for reasons to think it is). For a human being's imminent death does not justify intentionally killing him or her. Dying soldiers on the battlefield may not be killed and harvested for their organs. In any case, the advent of embryo adoption has meant that "leftover" embryos need not "die anyway."

More from the story:

Immediately after the accident, while undergoing surgeries and other treatments to repair his shattered spine, broken collarbone and pinky, and nearly severed ear at the University of South Alabama Medical Center in Mobile, Atchison was befriended by the pastor of a local pentecostal church. When he found out the next week what Atchison had agreed to do, the pastor [Troy Bailey of the Reynolds Holiness Church] was uncertain how his community would respond. ...

Bailey said he realized that he had to sort out his own stance, given that some people — himself included — who oppose abortion consider embryonic stem cell research to be immoral. But Bailey concluded that he, too, thought that this treatment was acceptable because the cells were obtained from embryos that had never been implanted in a womb and so had no chance of developing into a fetus.

"I am adamantly against abortion in any form. It did cause me some searching and researching biblically what is the proper answer," he said. "I don't really see a baby's life was destroyed for this to take place."

Bailey announced his conclusion to his parish the Sunday after Atchison's Oct. 8 stem cell procedure and invited the congregation to come to him with objections. But, he said, he has never heard complaints from anyone in the town ...

Bailey then devoted three weeks of Sunday school lessons to stem cells and issues he thought were related, such as birth-control pills and genetically designed babies.

"I'm definitely not wanting to encourage harvesting embryos for all kinds of crazy reasons," Bailey said. "And that definitely led some people to have some hesitancy about some of these things."

I'm sure this pastor means well, but it is hard to make excuses for him here. Did he manage to "devote three weeks of Sunday school lessons to stem cells" without learning what an embryo is?

Bailey says killing embryos is okay because the embryos "had never been implanted in a womb and so had no chance of developing into a fetus." But location (in the womb or out) is obviously not relevant to a human being's moral status. And the embryos in question could, in fact, develop into a fetus given only the appropriate environment and nutrition, just as any human being at any stage of development can develop to the next stage given those same necessities. What if disability or environment prevents a human being (say, a disabled toddler, or a neglected newborn) from properly growing? We still may not kill her in order to harvest her useful parts.

Biblically, human beings are recognized from their conception (Psalm 51:5; Luke 1:41-44). Human beings are made in His image (Genesis 1:27), and ought not be killed for the potential benefit of others (Matthew 19:18). Bailey probably knows this -- the main problem is that he is working with the wrong scientific "facts." And apparently not a single member of his congregation knows those facts or has bothered to learn them!

To be decent and respectful of human dignity in an age of biotechnology, a society must be much better educated than this. Human lives are at stake. There are no excuses.

Thinking clearly about 'ethics at the edge of life'

Dr. Scott B. Rae, a professor of philosophy, and Scott Klusendorf, president of Life Training Institute, recently taught a seminar for M.A. students at Biola University titled "Ethics at the Edge of Life." All 14 sessions are now watchable on YouTube.

Klusendorf presents on "advanced pro-life apologetics," with the following sessions:

- What is the Issue?
- What is the Unborn?
- What Makes Humans Valuable Part 1: Substance View of Human Persons
- What Makes Humans Valuable Part 2: The Religion Objection
- Abortion: Law, Metaphysics, and Moral Neutrality
- Bodily Autonomy Appeals: Analysis of Thomson, McDonagh, and Boonin
- Catholic Social Justice Teaching, Assumed Moral Equivalence, and other Common Objections
- Equipping Your Local Church to Engage

The detailed notes for Klusendorf's sessions are available here. He follows the basic approach of his book, The Case for Life.

Dr. Rae presents, among other sessions:

- Death, Dying and Assisted Suicide Part 1
- Death, Dying and Assisted Suicide Part 2

Surely watching just one of these videos is more edifying than a typical television program. For pro-lifers, few tasks can be more important than educating and equipping ourselves to make a difference in this great cause.

Abortion to save the mother's life

I was asked recently if abortion is ever justified. That depends on what is meant by "abortion" (because I've noticed people use the term in two ways with regard to this matter). Let me explain.

I think it's always wrong to intentionally kill an unborn human being. But there may be (extremely rare) cases in which the unborn child must be surgically removed or expelled from the mother in order for the mother to survive, and if this happens before viability the child will die (e.g., in the case of an ectopic pregnancy or cancerous uterus).

I think this is morally justified (in fact, obligatory) given two requirements:

(1) If no action is taken, both mother and child will die.

(2) The intent of the act is not the death of the child, but to save the mother by correcting a life-threatening pathology, with the foreseeable (but unintended) consequence that the child will die. This precludes most abortion techniques, which involve dismembering or suctioning apart the unborn human being (where killing is intended, as an end or as a means to an end); the child must instead be removed or expelled with care, consistent with his or her status as a valuable member of the human family, and allowing for the possibility of survival if the child is old enough (the doctor should always do his or her best to save both patients).

When we treat both mother and child as valuable persons (the pro-life view), it becomes clear that this is the correct course of action. If two people are drowning in a lake, and I am only able to rescue one, it is better to rescue that one than to let both drown. It is better to save one life than to let two die.

Does removing the child to save the mother qualify as an abortion? Only insofar as "abortion" refers to the premature ending of a pregnancy (the pregnancy is aborted), rather than the intentional killing of the developing child (the baby is aborted). On the latter definition, abortion is never justified; on the former definition, "abortion" (sometimes called indirect abortion) to save the mother's life, even with the unintended consequence of the child's death, is morally justified.

This, I think, is the proper application of pro-life principles to a terrible situation.

'Discarded anyway'? The rationale for embryo-destructive research

The following is from the March 2009 issue of MCCL News.

Human embryos used for embryonic stem cell research (which results in the embryos' destruction) are donated from fertility clinics, where they are "left over" from the in vitro fertilization process. Advocates of embryo-destructive research say these "excess" embryos would otherwise be thrown away, so rather than letting them go to waste, we ought to use them for research that could possibly benefit others.

This has been perhaps the single most prevalent argument in defense of embryo killing. But it fails for more than one reason.

First, it poses a false dilemma: So-called "excess" embryos need not be discarded or killed for research—they can now be adopted by loving parents. The Snowflakes Frozen Embryo Adoption Program and others have been very successful in facilitating the adoption of frozen human embryos. With so many infertile couples in the United States waiting to adopt, every embryonic human can be given the chance to grow up.

Second, even assuming that excess embryos will be killed anyway, are we thereby justified in slicing them up for experimentation? Not if the embryo is a valuable human being. Human beings ought to be treated with dignity and respect, not farmed for their useful parts. No one suggests that we kill and extract organs from terminally ill patients, death row inmates or dying soldiers on the battlefield—even though they are "going to die anyway." The human embryo, like every other human being, warrants our respect even if she will soon die.

Third, the debate over using spare embryos is actually a red herring. Advocates of embryo-destructive research acknowledge that fertility clinic embryos are not nearly adequate to their demands; the goal, rather, is the mass production of human embryos by cloning. Cloning is necessary to (theoretically) avoid embryonic stem cells' problem of immune rejection, as well as to supply enough embryos for researchers. Only 2.8 percent of the 400,000 frozen embryos in U.S. fertility clinics are designated for research, and even many of these may be unusable (RAND Law & Health). That's why recent legislation around the country has been written to explicitly sanction somatic cell nuclear transfer, or cloning, as a means of creating brand new humans to kill for experimentation.

The "discarded anyway" argument, therefore, fails on every count. "We should offer these extra embryos to infertile couples to implant and allow them to be born, and not kill them either by experimentation or by disposal," says Dr. Micheline Mathews-Roth of Harvard Medical School.

The scientific facts of embryology show that human embryos are distinct, living and whole (though immature) human organisms. Whether the result of natural fertilization, in vitro fertilization or somatic cell nuclear transfer, they are individual members of the human species at a very early stage of their development.

Embryo-destructive research relegates this class of vulnerable humans to the status of a natural resource we may harvest and exploit. It is a profound violation of the equal dignity and rights of human beings.

What is human dignity?

That's the question philosophers Patrick Lee and Robert George answer in this journal article, entitled "The Nature and Basis of Human Dignity." Note the very serious implications for how we treat human beings in their most vulnerable stages and conditions, including the unborn, newborn, elderly and disabled.

Is embryo destruction worse than abortion?

Both abortion and embryo-destructive research are the unjust killing of innocent human beings, and ought to be stopped. But is one actually worse than the other? Professor Richard Stith explains:

Embryonic stem cell research ... is wholly dehumanizing. When parents turn the living human embryos they have begotten over to science, they not only forget them as children but also turn them into commodities, donate them for eventual body parts. The embryos become wholly instrumental, they become resources to be calculated and consumed. They are degraded before they are destroyed. Like human embryos created by cloning, they do not die as unwanted children, or even as human beings, but as things to be used and used up. No greater negation of human dignity is possible.

Read the rest of his argument.

What accounts for the rise of assisted suicide?

Wesley J. Smith wonders why we're seeing a push for physician-assisted suicide now -- at a time when it's less "necessary" than ever.

100 years ago when people did die in agony from such illnesses as a burst appendix, there was little talk of legalizing euthanasia. But now, when pain and other forms of suffering are readily alleviated and the hospice movement has created truly compassionate methods to care for the dying, suddenly we hear the battle cry "death with dignity" as "the ultimate civil liberty."

Part of the explanation may be the general devaluing of human life that undergirds and connects the issues of abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and embryo-destructive research. Another part may be a kind of "convenience" or "comfort" mentality, a tendency to do what's easiest (abortion for a pregnant woman in distress, euthanasia for a suffering patient) rather than what's right. Smith writes:

Social commentator Yuval Levin, a protégé of ethicist Leon Kass, described the new societal zeitgeist in his recent book Imagining the Future: Science and American Democracy. While not about assisted suicide per se, Levin hit the nail on the head when he described society as no longer being concerned primarily with helping citizens to lead "the virtuous life." Rather, he wrote, "relief and preservation from disease and pain, from misery and necessity" have "become the defining ends of human action, and therefore of human societies." In other words, preventing suffering and virtually all difficulty is now paramount. In such a cultural milieu, eliminating suffering easily mutates into eliminating the sufferer.

These two ideas -- devaluing life, doing what's easiest -- seem to work together whenever we dehumanize or abandon the most dependent and vulnerable members of the human family. One provides justification and the other motive.

Do we really think embryos are people?

Many people -- bioethicists, op-ed columnists, state legislators -- have offered a thought experiment along the following lines: Suppose a research lab is on fire, and you can rescue either 10 frozen human embryos or a four-year-old child, but not both. Whom do you save?

The idea is that, since most people would save the four-year-old, no one really thinks embryos are as valuable as the rest of us. We don't act as if they are. Equating embryos with children or adults is counterintuitive.

But this is not a good argument for permitting embryo-destructive research and abortion, for at least three reasons. First, choosing to save Person A over Person B is not to deny that Person B is a valuable human being. I might legitimately choose to save my own kid over a bus-full of cheerleaders, but that doesn't mean I think the cheerleaders are not persons with equal dignity. It just means there are emotional or other factors involved that would lead me to save my kid first.

Likewise, I would choose to save a loyal friend over a stranger, and I would tend to save children ahead of adults, since they have more life to live and seem to deserve special regard. But none of this means I'm denying fundamental human equality. The saying "women and children first" doesn't imply that men are inferior.

In the burning research lab, one might choose to save the four-year-old because she would experience great suffering, while the embryos would not, and because she likely has parents and family who would be devastated by her death. These sorts of considerations "can play a legitimate role in determining how we may allocate scarce resources, and, in some cases, whom we should rescue," write Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen.

Second, a preference for saving a four-year-old over 10 embryos does not justify killing those embryos, which is what embryo-destructive research and abortion entail. Those practices are not cases of choosing whom to rescue, but of choosing whom to deliberately kill, and there is a tremendous moral difference. It is one thing to save Person A over Person B when only one of them can be saved; it is entirely different to murder Person B. George and Tollefsen explain, "Choices about whom to save are subject to the particular facts of the situation without requiring a comparative valuing (or devaluing) of lives. But choices to kill are always devaluing choices."

Third, our intuitions can be wrong, and about embryos they often are. Ethicist Scott Rae writes, "The surface appearance of an embryo seems too distant and impersonal. But surface appearances and the emotions they engender are, by themselves, inadequate guides for moral reflection." Consider that slave owners in the 19th century could have used a similar thought experiment when debating abolitionists: "Would you save 10 black guys or one white guy?" At the time most people would have chosen the white guy, but that doesn't disprove racial equality. People were simply mistaken.

What this debate needs is a bit of moral reasoning. Pro-lifers use such reasoning, together with the scientific facts of embryology, to show that human embryos -- despite their size and appearance -- are indeed valuable human beings deserving of respect and protection.

What 'choosing the sex of your child' really means

This story in Britain's The Guardian profiles some couples who have used in vitro fertilization (IVF) and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to choose the sex of their children.

The author mentions some of the serious ethical concerns:

Any discussion of sex selection is haunted by the spectre of the millions of missing girls of India and China. The 2000 Chinese census showed there were 117 boys under the age of five to every 100 girls. A similar trend is reported in India, which also has a deep-seated cultural preference for boys. ...

In a Mori poll, 82% of the [British] population opposed sex selection for non–medical reasons. As the report said, "A great many respondents felt that sex selection was unqualifiedly wrong because it involved interference with divine will or with what they saw as the intrinsically virtuous course of nature." There was also mention of sex selection being a little farther down a slippery slope towards designer babies.

And then the real clincher: wasn't sex selection for the benefit of the parents, rather than of the child? The report noted that, among some respondents, "The view was that it is one thing to wish to have a child of one sex rather than the other and another thing to take steps to bring it about, since positive intervention in this area changes one's relationship to the outcome, replacing hopes with expectations… Respect for the future child's value as an individual precludes the exercise of control by parents over the kind of child it is to be, including over its sex."

But the story fails to discuss what seems to me to be the gravest moral problem with this practice: It entails the killing of innocent human beings. Let me explain.

The couples in the story each used IVF to create a number of human embryos, which were then screened for their gender via PGD (PGD is also used to screen for diseases and other traits). Only embryos with the desired gender were transferred into the mother, potentially leading to implantation in the uterus and then (nine months later) birth. Presumably the other, undesirable embryos were discarded (killed).

The whole point of using PGD for sex selection is to "weed out" those embryonic humans with the "wrong" sex, "selecting" those with the right one. And since human embryos are distinct, living and whole organisms of the species Homo sapiens (just at a very early stage of their development), to kill an embryo is to kill a young human being.

We've talked on this blog about sex-selection abortion -- abortion because of the baby's gender -- but sex selection before implantation in the mother's womb is really no morally different: Offspring with the desired gender are allowed to live, and the others are killed.

Top 10 stories in bioethics

Wesley J. Smith lists -- in his opinion -- the 10 most important bioethics stories of the past decade:

10. The ascendance of an anti-human environmentalism
9. The growth of biological colonialism
8. The increase in American pro-life attitudes
7. The struggle over Obamacare
6. Legalization of assisted suicide in Washington
5. The success of adult-stem-cell research
4. "Suicide tourism" in Switzerland
3. IVF anarchy
2. The Bush embryonic-stem-cell funding policy
1. The dehydration of Terri Schiavo

Read about each one here. At the heart of all these issues is the question of whether we will maintain a commitment to the equal dignity of all human beings, especially in the wake of new technological and cultural developments.

Smith writes:

We are in danger of supplanting human exceptionalism — belief in the intrinsic dignity and equality of human life — with a "quality-of-life ethic" in which some of us are deemed to matter more than others. But the path to such a brave new world is proving to be neither straight nor unimpeded. Indeed, there are encouraging signs the sanctity of life could make a comeback.

Undermining the enterprise of bioethics

"When politicians insist that they cannot allow their private, religious convictions to influence bioethical policies, the clear implication is that science and philosophy can shed very little light on the moral status of the embryo. Such weighty questions are simply trapped in the darkness of religious metaphysics. Yet, those on the bioethical Left have provided no justification for taking such a dim view of human reason. Worse still, they have quietly undermined the entire enterprise of bioethics, which must begin with the assumption that human reason can shed light on such questions."

-- Jon Shields, Claremont McKenna College

A market in fetal organs? If you're 'pro-choice' ...

In a piece from earlier this year in the Huffington Post, bioethicist and medical historian Jacob M. Appel writes: "Professor Richard Gardner of Oxford University, a renowned expert on human reproduction and an advisor to Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, recently raised the prospect of using organs from aborted fetuses for transplantation into adults" (emphasis added).

Appel (who's not exactly a fringe figure in bioethics) then suggests that creating a legal market in aborted baby organs is a good idea, both for the women who would benefit financially (by selling the organs) and for the other members of society who would be the recipients of transplantations.

Let me make two points. First, this is incredibly sick, morally speaking -- I believe (I hope) it would shock the sensibilities of most people. Consider, as Appel writes:

The supply [of fetal organs], for all practical purposes, is unlimited. ... Pregnant women who provide fetal kidneys could do so repeatedly ... If only a small percentage of those women [having abortions] could be persuaded to carry their fetuses to the necessary point of development for transplantation, society might realize significant public health benefits. The government could even step into the marketplace to purchase fetal organs for patients on Medicare and Medicaid. ... A market in fetal organs would empower women to use their reproductive capabilities to their own economic advantage. ... Someday, if we are fortunate, scientific research may make possible farms of artificial "wombs" breeding fetuses for their organs.

Sounds like science fiction, doesn't it?

Second, the moral permissibility of creating a market for fetal organs follows logically from the pro-choice position on abortion. Appel makes this case well: "I believe we have a moral duty to women to give due consideration to the legalization of such a fetal-organ trade. ... If a woman has a fundamental right to terminate a pregnancy, why not the right to use the products of that terminated pregnancy as she sees fit?"

If the human embryo or fetus merits no moral respect -- and may therefore be killed (by abortion) for any or no reason if the mother chooses, as NARAL, Planned Parenthood and others argue -- then there seems to be no good justification for prohibiting a market in fetal organs. The unborn offspring is the property of the mother, and she may do what she wants with it. And that includes growing babies in the womb in order to kill them to harvest their useful parts.

This disturbing conclusion is absolutely wrong -- evidence of the total bankruptcy of the pro-choice position. It should cause those who are pro-choice to reevaluate their initial premises.