Christian Worldview Concepts

What is at Stake in the Stem Cell Debate?

Funding, Approval, and Erosion

Embedded in the rhetoric surrounding the stem cell debate, despite its being cast in the language of compassion, hope and humanitarianism, is clear evidence that proponents will not be satisfied with being given a key to the federal treasury. It is unlikely that researchers and their political supporters will be content with federal dollars flowing into their projects. They will want society to give tacit approval to the morality of their deeds as well. Obtaining government financial support makes it much easier to obtain widespread social support for the claim that what is being funded in moral.

Once this becomes a settled matter of law (just as so many consider abortion to be), it becomes harder for a disenfranchised minority to have a voice in other public policy debates that involve human beings at the entrance gates of life. With the moral status of the human "fetus" undermined by the law of the land, a law that permits millions of abortions annually, a further erosion of a sanctity of human life ethic occurs.

What comes after human embryonic stem cell research proves effective? Human cloning, of course. If "left over" human embryos can be strip mined for their stem cells successfully, then there is sufficient scientific and public interest to support proposals to clone human embryos. What argument of sufficient public potency could be made to oppose this?