Incidentally, I feel the same way about those who oppose therapeutic cloning of organs. I can think of no greater injustice than some people having to unnecessarily endure dialysis so other assholes can pretend they have magic invisible souls inside themselves.

So. True. And I hate how people try to hide their own cruel beliefs behind Christianity – ’cause we all know Jesus was all letting people die, stoning slutty women, preaching to the embryos, etc., etc.

Secondly, a large percentage (I think it’s more than 50% – but I’m not certain) of the published scientific studies involving embryonic stem cell lines involve lines approved for federal funding.

Kyra,
I’m not sure if you understand my question. From my memory (and it could be wrong) Jill uses the bodily autonomy argument to back her preference for legal abortion. This argument has nothing to do with whether the unborn are “persons” or “people” – it is used regardless of whether the position’s holder believes that or not.

This argument doesn’t work for killing embryos outside the womb because they aren’t in a woman’s body so her bodily autonomy can’t justify killing an embryo outside the womb solely on her bodily autonomy.

The restrictions on funding are broad enough that they effectively block further embryonic research outside of those strands.

That’s correct, but it really isn’t broad a broad restriction. Keep in mind that before the current policy was established, there was a complete ban on federal funding for ESC research. IIRC, that was under a Clinton executive order. What we have now is the first authorization of funding, which is entirely insufficient.

The rest of your comment is spot on. There’s an unresolvable contradiction in the position that holds IVF embryos are each individual human beings and still allows the implantation procedure and prefers simply discarding them over using them for research. It always amazes me when people can hold 2 or more completely contradictory beliefs concurrently.

I once had someone who insists that each embryo is a human being justify discarding embryos because you’re not really killing them like you would be if you derived the stem cells from them, and they “die” on their own, which is somehow more moral. I countered that they must also believe it to be OK to leave a baby in a dumpster since you’re not really killing it, you’re just letting it die on it’s own. That’s when the namecalling started. :-)

Both abortion and PID cause ectopic (tubal) pregnancies which lead to infertility in many women. The number of ectopic pregnancies has also sky-rocketed in recent years.

It is ironic that one result of the “sexual revolution” is a rise in infertility.

The damage here attributed to abortion can also be caused in child-birth. Indeed, in many of these pregancies wherein abortion leads to infertility, likely child-birth, which is far more physically traumatic, would so lead to infertility as well — indeed, in some moral systems which generally oppose abortion, the lower risk of infertility following abortion rather than carrying a problematic pregnancy to term is considered an acceptable reason for having an abortion.

Of course, the whole tone of this article is that “infertility is a punishment for sin” — do people still believe that? And what if the woman didn’t sin but rather her partner did? Should she still be punished? This line of thought is just so bizarre I cannot pursue it further without wretching.

Another odd aspect is their use of the word “ironic”. A sexual revolution (the significance of which has been highly overstated, FWIW) ought to result in an increase in infertility when talking about a K-selected species like humans in order to keep the reproductive rate about even. But having more sex to get the same number of kids is a problem, how?

If embryonic stem cell research had as much potential as its proponents said it did, and had produced any result other than tumors in rats, private investors would want to fund it. – Quartermaster

This is simply not the case: there are many things with plenty of potential that private investors or enterprise simply are not going to fund (this here internets has plenty of potential — I didn’t see private enterprise rushing to create it: government built it and then private enterprise has used the results to it’s own profit — and good for enterprise!). A lot of scientific development really amounts to a thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters (I know — I’m one of the monkeys) trying to thus produce the works of Shakespeare. Private investors, rightly, don’t have the patience for this — which is why government and non-profit entities generally take the lead in scientific development.

Not only does everything have external costs (that must be paid in taxes) reflecting services private enterprise needs but won’t pay for, but also a lot of R&D similarly won’t happen unless private enterprise can treat it as an externality and government can do. Private enterprise did not create the interstates, the internet nor (despite what the drug companies would have you believe) AZT and Taxol. So why should private enterprise be able to create stem-cell technology even if it can work?

Now, onto innovation in reproductive science. I think it’s fascinating and inevitable. We are moving towards designer babies. I, for one, rather not have a child with congental or genetic defects, if modern medicine is able to prevent it. I however do think that limitations will eventually be placed to prevent abuse.

The main problem, is that people who view embryo as living, will always oppose anything that destroys it. On, the other side, people who don’t consider embryo as a cogniscent being, have no problem, killing it. You can’t make someone change their ideals forcefully. I can not condone, forceful implemenation of one person’s faith on another. This is why I support the separation of Church and State.

Personally, I think the conservative objection to the use of IVF embryos for research is based in a complete refusal to back away even slightly from their accepted definition of the point at which a human life begins. Those embryos lack the crucial element that permits any argument against abortion; they lack the capacity, in the state which they exist, to ever become a human life.

I think that any argument against stem cell research on behalf of these embryos is so completely, objectively wrong in assessing these one-celled, unimplanted embryos as having greater moral import than the lives that could be saved by the research, that I can view opposition to this research as nothing less than evil.

This was done over the impassioned pleas of Nancy Reagan, who cared for her husband, a conservative icon, as he slowly succumbed to a horrible disease, and she begged them to leave this research alone to spare others that fate. I’m not unsympathetic to conservatives on a number of issues, but anyone who can express greater concern for invisible specks in a petri dish than for Alzheimer’s patients, hell, than for Ronald Reagan, subscribes to a morality that’s just completely alien from anything I can see as decent or compassionate.

Their success in shutting down new stem cell research may someday kill me or one of my loved ones, and accordingly, I view this movement as incompatible with my future survival, and I see it as my self-interested obligation to oppose this movement and its very existence, irrespective of any reservations I may have about abortion, which is of trifling moral concern one way or another compared to the politicization of research that could save the people I care about from dying horribly.

Incidentally, I feel the same way about those who oppose therapeutic cloning of organs. I can think of no greater injustice than some people having to unnecessarily endure dialysis so other assholes can pretend they have magic invisible souls inside themselves.

What’s more, the moral objection to use of excess IVF embryos for research implicitly indicts all IVF procedures, because the process entails the creation of excess embryos and the insertion of hundreds more embryos than could ever implant, which means that every treatment is a de-facto mass-murder.

These people believe that folks who don’t want babies should have to have them anyway, that folks who do want babies should not be able to take achievable steps toward having their own children, and that everyone should die of Alzheimers.