Pro Life Churches fighting for blastocyst rights in Missouri
I just had a (loud) discussion with a pro-life friend who told me what his church is telling people about this amendment. Now, this guy is intelligent and literate, but has fully bought into the Bible-as-inerrant-literal-truth philosophy. Maybe you’ve read Erich’s Missouri Amendment 2 entry from April. Maybe not. Here is the amendment text.
I had wondered why they started pushing this amendment so early in the season. I am always skeptical of any product that is loudly ballyhooed. In this case, I guess it’s because they knew the level of Red State resistance they would be up against.
My friend has been told (and I’ve seen billboards that say) women will be selling eggs for research. But section 38(d)2.(4) says:
(4) No person may, for valuable consideration, purchase or sell human blastocysts or eggs for stem cell research or stem cell therapies and cures.
They are taught in these political rallies (Sunday services) that to implant a nucleus in an egg is the definition of cloning. And that cloning is evil.
They have it gently drummed into them that, although there have been proven cures derived from adult (umbilical cord) stem cells, no cure has been created from fetal stem cells in 30 years of research! I tried to explain the difference between Pure Research and Applied Research, and between theoretical possibilities and the current state of the art. No luck.
Their real argument is that anything in the sequence of
{human zygote - blastocyst - embryo - fetus - child - adult}
is a person imbued with spirit and inalienable rights. This attitude is that, if you would allow a 20-cell blastocyst to be mutilated, you might as well join the Dr. Mengele school of Medical Research and wear a swastika. Killing a blastocyst in research is evil, whereas disposing of leftover embryos from fertility clinics is a regrettable necessity for lack of willing donor wombs.
I expect that this amendment will follow the pro-life/pro-choice demographic pretty closely. The Republicans couldn’t have picked a better issue to get out the vote for their Senatorial candidate in a few weeks. This issue from back in April must be grumpy’s October Surprise.
- What do you say to someone who prefers that real children die so that stem cells can live? Notes on Proposed Missouri Amendment 2
- Sophie’s Choice II: Stem Cells in the Balance.
- Cloning is a Silly Issue
- Actors, athletes, tell us not to try to save lives using stem cell research
- Why does cloning scare people?
Dan-As you know, this vote is a critical one in Missouri and emotions are running high on both sides. My neighbor is now prominently displaying his yard sign against the Missouri Constitutional Amendment that protects the right to do stem cell research. I consider my neighbor’s position to be the “let real babies die in order to save the blastocysts” position. That gruesome thought provoked me to write a post in which a hypothetical woman (I called her “Sophie”) struggled as to whether to save a blastocyst or her walking talking daughter, assuming she could only save one of them. See here.
http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=462 “>I also wrote on this topic in August, with additional links to relevant sources of information on the Missouri stem cell initiative.
It is very unpopular to speak in these terms, but what the heck.
People hang their sense of self-worth on a number of things, but one of them that is the most tenacious and least supportable in a kind of innate quality of personhood that requires the individual DO NOTHING to merit it. This has become an unstated given in law concerning human rights violations, genocide, and hate crime. It’s perfectly understandable in an age when defining “human” may determine who live, who dies, who gets all the toys in the interim.
Unfortunately, like any useful tag, it has its limits, and this is an instance wherein those limits have been ignored, probably on both sides. What constitutes a human being? Biology? Intelligence? Custom?
Though it is nothing upon which I would enact law, the fact is we probably all know people who have reached adulthood who on some scales do not qualify as “human.” But we ignore this. It is innately understood that “human”–in the nonbiological sense–is ineffable, numinous, impossible to quantify. Yet…
How can there be personhood without a person? And if a person is something that interacts, demonstrates a capacity for humanlike behaviors, and a potential for characteristics which resonate with others in a positive manner, how can something which has never been “present” to develop those traits be considered human other than be legal definition, which is in this instance a fiction which we agree to because it makes the defense of certain rights viable?
But what most people desire, stated or not, comprehended or not, is admission to club without the least effort to qualify. They want the innate quality to be sufficient. But once you establish that innate qualification, you run into the other problem of establishing limits on the assumption.
Prolifers often treat as established the humanity of things which cannot possibly exemplify what is commonly meant by the term, because it is easier, more comforting, and less problematic than doing the work to know what Being Human actually means. Perhaps this is not a bad thing.
But if one of the aspects of Being Human is the right to have choices and order your life as you see fit, then such definitions of ease and comfort are superlative nonsense. In this instance, inevitably, the exercise of being human is blocked by prohibitions based on assumptions which cannot be supported any other way than be legal fiat. This has emotional resonance among people who do not wish to think that hard, do not wish to make decisions for themselves which seem cold and callous, and do not wish the choice even to be on the table for others lest they feel compelled to reassess their assumptions.
It doesn’t become obvious, often, until we get to a part of the argument where the absurdities become unendurable and utterly unsupportable by the nature of conflicting perceptions of an issue.
“…This has emotional resonance among people who do not wish to think that hard, do not wish to make decisions for themselves which seem cold and callous, and do not wish the choice even to be on the table for others lest they feel compelled to reassess their assumptions.”
Indeed, as Jason’s comment observes, especially in the above excerpt, pro-lifers might actually be trying to protect themselves as much as they are trying to protect blastocysts and fetuses. Creating a rigid, if nonsensical, rule that blastocysts are equivalent to people eliminates the need to think, to debate, to weigh competing interests, to decide and, most importantly, to take responsibility for the consequences. People can hide behind the rule instead of acknowledging their own complicity with the outcome.
That is the one great “benefit” of absolute rules, whether they are civil or moral: they remove the need to think. Courtrooms would need no judges: law books would mechanically define the penalty for each offense. Citizens would need no discussions about moral problems: the Bible (or some other book) would mechanically define moral behavior. But who would want to live in such a society? Indeed, what would be fair — or even human — about such a society?