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 esterday
an old and revered friend in casual conversation over the telephone
said that President Bush will soon be ruling on the matter of embryonic-stem-cell
research. "Of course, I'm for it, and you're against it." His wife
suffers from aggravated Parkinson's disease, and the planted axiom
of his enthusiasm for embryonic-stem- cell research was that it
carried the hope that other women in future times would not suffer
from what his wife, to whom he is so devoted, has borne. In such
situations one maneuvers to change the subject; but you can't do
that when at the opinion bar, which prompts from this quarter some
pragmatic observations.
Embryonic-stem-cell
research (ESCR) is going to take place. There are three policies
our government could take on the matter. 1) The president could
direct federal money to research centers that could proceed with
the experimentation. 2) The president could veto the use of federal
money for ESCR. 3) Congress could pass a law prohibiting ESCR within
the borders of the United States.
If
Bush says okay, use federal money, a body of Americans will be morally
affronted. If Bush says no, ESCR will proceed in private laboratories
at a lesser speed. If Congress prohibited the research, ESCR would
struggle on in less sophisticated laboratories, and the benefits
of successful embryonic manipulation would not inure to American
embryology until complicated interactivity was effected across national
medical frontiers.
Mr.
Bush could temporize without moral ignominy if he reasoned as follows:
We live in a society in which abortion is permitted. That being
so, we have come to civil terms with the termination of fetal life
every day, routinely. However much pro-lifers disapprove of the
woman's decision to abort, they do not treat her as a pariah. If
termination of fetal life is, under the law, permitted, then ESCR,
which deals with pre-fetal life, cannot reasonably be denied without
vitalizing a new moral consensus on the issue of the integrity of
the unborn. But what Mr. Bush needs to avoid is the quandary of
encouraging federal participation in ESCR, which translates to federal
participation in the embryonic equivalent of abortion. The distinction
here is vital.
The
moral difficulty lies in presidential association with one or the
other body of thought on embryonic-stem-cell research. The learned
and quick-witted Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review is unyielding
on the rigors of the slippery-slope argument. "Slippery slopes are
slippery because the logic that starts you down them will lead you
further down. During the stem-cell debate, people have said that
it's okay to use embryos for research because we already 'discard'
plenty of embryos as a byproduct of in vitro fertilization; they
could with equal validity say that we should allow research on five-month-old
fetuses because we allow them to be aborted." And he reminds us
of diminished sensibilities. "In 1973, not even pro-abortion lawyers
were challenging Texas's law against partial-birth abortion. Back
then, embryo-killing research would have seemed monstrous."
Richard
Brookhiser, the historian and essayist, writing in the New York
Observer, acknowledges that in the Clinton years there was crystallizing
resistance to partial-birth abortions. "With the debate over ESCR,
the empire strikes back. On one side, the public is given to understand,
are the opponents of abortion, certainly fanatical and probably
religious, keening over lumps of cells. On the other is the research
arm of the medical profession, asking only to be allowed to discover
cures for Parkinson's disease…. Should Mr. Bush swallow an
existing evil to ban a new and growing one? …The scientific
supporters of ESCR, and their political allies, want research untrammeled
by any restrictions. If that involves what pro-life author Wesley
J. Smith calls 'strip-mining human life,' so be it. They strip-
mine mountains in Pennsylvania; they can strip-mine embryos."
So
then the political question is, really, whether there should be
evidence of passive resistance by George W. Bush. Leadership here
requires him to formulate ways of saying that opposition to the
use of federal money for embryonic-stem-cell research is not the
equivalent of indifference to the pain suffered by victims of Parkinson's
disease. "It's too late in the day to be taking polls," Mr. Brookhiser
concludes. "All they would show is that there is nothing to be gained,
whatever he does. Senator Specter won't love President Bush even
if he supports ESCR; Catholic voters, lazy and indifferent, won't
support him if he agrees with the Pope. The only standard that can
possibly guide Mr. Bush is to do the right thing. We will see if
he knows what that is." That is the challenge, to know what is the
right thing.
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