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March 10, 2009 10:19 PM UTC
42 Comments
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You can take a lot of credit for this.
Me, I’m an opponent of federal funding for this field of research, on religious and moral grounds.
As I understand it, the Bush ban was NOT a ban on research, but a ban against making taxpayers who also oppose it on religious and moral grounds pay for it.
Your achievement, then, is in compelling such people to pay for research they find morally reprehensible. So you see why conservatives oppose giving you and the rest of the federal government so much power.
The Constitution doesn’t give you that power.
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I’m a pacifist – how dare the government use my taxes to fund the military.
I believe in the sacantity of life – how dare the government use my taxes to implement the death penalty.
I believe in civil rights for all – how dare the government use it’s monopoly of power to outlaw gay marriage.
Barron – it’s called Democracy and that means compromises will include actions you find morally objectionable. Doesn’t make it wonderful, but it’s not unique to this one case.
we are immoral and in the minority…..
Hey, wait a minute….we won the election.
Baron, while I don’t agree with your position, I respect your right to hold it. However, I am troubled by some aspects of it.
The whole field of in-vitro fertilization leaves many embryos in a frozen limbo. As of 2002:
On moral and religious grounds, isn’t this wrong? The same report says that 2% of these embryos were to be destroyed. Isn’t that wrong? Should it be a crime to destroy these embryos? What should happen to all those embryos?
Do you support the death penalty? How do you reconcile that with your stance on stem cell research?
Do you support going to war? Most soldiers have no say on whether they go to war or whether they find themselves on the front lines. Is it OK to kill them just because they were born in the wrong place and time?
Should everybody who opposes the death penalty or war get a tax break? Or, should we eliminate either because a minority of voters oppose them under all circumstances on moral and religious grounds?
And the last thing I don’t understand from your post: On what grounds is federally-funded stem cell research unconstitutional?
I’m not sure it is worthy of a serious public policy discussion.
Barron’s position is held by a slim, slim minority of the population and the amount of discussion spent on this issue is out of proportion to the numbers represented by the opposition.
That Dems were in the minority. We didn’t like it then. Republicans don’t like it now.
There are many issues, particularly abortion, which we need to discuss in a way that we can identify common goals (reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies) and seek solutions that work for the greatest number of people. So we ought to listen to what people like Baron have to say.
However, when it comes down to it, when you have the majority, you also have the responsibility to lead. An you will inevitably make decisions that not everyone agrees with.
There are things that are not worthy of discussion.
With regard to abortion, I agree, we can discuss ways to minimize the numbers of abortion while still protecting a woman’s fundamental right to control her own body(safe, legal and rare). We should not, however, discuss making abortion illegal.
When Barron resorts to the “I am opposed, so I shouldn’t have to pay” argument; that is not worthy of discussion. As has been pointed out here several times (by myself and others), part of living in a civilized, homogenious society with means that we are all going to have to pay for things that we may disagree with.
As was told to so many of us when we were expressing disgust at the Iraq war, if you don’t like the way we do things in the good old USofA, then leave…
concerning the death penalty and the whole in vitro thing. When Barron claims to be pro-life you can believe it. I know because I recently posed questions to him on those subjects and the internal logic behind his views is perfectly sound and consistent.
He is on much shakier ground in his indignation over tax payer money being used for that which some find morally reprehensible for reasons already cited by you, ajb, and David. We don’t get a menu with our tax return of those things we want to support and those we don’t.
Elections have consequences. We had to support silly ineffective abstinence only sex non-education with our tax dollars for years. That’s the way it goes.
Do you oppose a ban on in vitro fertilization? As we all know, to be successful, IVF necessarily results in the creation of embryos that will never be implanted. Most of those excess embryos will be discarded as medical waste.
The Bush executive order was, in effect, a ban on embryonic stem cell research in the U.S., given the difficulty of performing any research in this country without a nexus to federal funding. That is why so many top U.S. researchers in this field have moved to countries such as the U.K. and Israel to pursue their work.
If you support IVF, why is it preferable to throw away excess embryos rather than use them for research? (Don’t tell me that the thousands of excess embryos will be “adopted” as “snowflake babies.” No one believes this is a realistic option.)
If you oppose IVF, how can you justify telling an infertile couple that the rights of an eight-cell cluster outweigh their opportunity to bear a child?
is that this is the corner that the prolife people have painted themselves into by insisting that life is created at the moment of conception. If these embryos are in fact alive, how is it that they can exist outside the womb, indefinitely, in a frozen state? Are they alive, with souls, but dormant like a seed in winter? Can such a thing really have a soul?
And others pose the question that the prolifer seems unable to answer – is it alright to throw these embryos away? Is that not murder in your eyes? If it is, what do you intend to do? Find surrogate uteri to ensure they all get a chance to embed themselves and grow into babies? Or just do the easy thing and ban in vitro? (Try selling that to all the prolife families who used it.)
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I am also unable to give a comprehensive answer. That’s a tough one.
According to my simplistic (I would say “elegant”) answer to when life begins, each of these embryos is already a human life.
In the same vein, a fertilized egg that fails to attach to the uterus wall is also a human life.
Throwing out a frozen embryo is a taking of a human life, but not all homicides are murder.
The complexity of the issues raised suggest to me that this IVF “medical care” is neither necessary, appropriate nor moral. Don’t hold my church accountable for this rambling, but this type of procedure seems to try to overcome natural limits in a very different way than excising a malignant tumor or administering penicillin, for example.
It offends me as an attempt to try to “play God.”
For all I know, my church may approve of IVF, but I don’t.
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The Post ran a well-balanced article about IVF yesterday: http://www.denverpost.com/sear…
It does not seem very Christian to tell a couple that suffered five miscarriages they must abide by a “natural limit” and that their efforts to have a child through IVF are “immoral.” IVF is no more “playing God” than extending the life of a terminally ill patient through medical technology. Are not feeding tubes, respirators, and the like a violation of “natural limits,” as well?
An eight-cell embryo is a potential human life that lacks consciousness and self-awareness. Morally, it is an error to equate it with an infant.
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is not ended or put in the position of likely being ended in the end-of-life mechanical interventions. I presume that life was almost over when the interventions started.
In IVF, lives are created (without any apparent participation by God) with the knowledge and expectation that they likely will not ever result in a pregnancy or further development. To me, that’s an even bigger problem than throwing them out when they lose their commercial value.
The article did state the church position, but the tone favored the procedure. Somewhat balanced.
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“In IVF, lives are created (without any apparent participation of God)….”
If a child is to be born with a soul, God must be involved;
and if children created by IVF are created without participation of God;
then children produced via IVF have no souls.
If that is the case, then exactly why are you trying to protect these soul-less blobs?
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in explaining the implications of my religious beliefs to anyone who mocks them.
Which, of course, you are encouraged to do, since that could accidentally get you to think seriously about them.
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your religious beliefs.
I’m merely attempting to point out to you the contradictory assertions that there is no “apparent participation of God” in the creation of life via IVF and that these life forms are more worthy of protecting than say a lab animal.
That’s not as good of a descriptor of the prerequisite for human-ness as one might think. Throughout or lives, and from one person to the next, our consciousness and self-awareness change. It’s not a constant. Are you less human when you’re sleeping than awake? Is someone suffering from very late-stage Alzheimer’s, who’s only rarely lucid less human than you or I? Do we even need to consider the limitations placed on people by other mental disabilities here?
While it seems simple enough, the argument you make is well on the road that leads to eugenics.
We can have discussions on what defines “human life” all day long. I’m just very, very wary of this particular argument. And if you think about what that definition means when applied to humanity as a whole, I think you would become so, as well.
to seek a definition of human life other than…, human life. A cluster of cells isn’t human life. It’s something that might become human life. There is a point at which the issue becomes difficult, and all other defintions attempt to avoid this inevitable reality: Human life emerges gradually, not instantaneously, and there simply is no magical moment when it begins. Birth is too late, and conception is too early. Human life comes into being sometime between those two events.
But the issue really isn’t when “human life” begins, either. The issue is what set of rules by which to order our lives make the most sense, all things considered. our typologies, our definitions, are reductions of an infinitely fluid and subtle reality to oversimplified reifications which we can grasp and hold, are a means to an end, not an end in itself. When dealing with issues that are not well served by such reductions, we should not rely too heavily upon them.
The problem with “slippery slope” arguments is that any position can be supported or refuted by recourse to them, and every policy is a choice of where to draw the line. To oppose the drawing of the line here because further down is a bad place to draw it (so let’s draw it as far away from that bad place as possible, even if the opposite extreme is also a bad place to draw it) is the most ridiculous of all arguments. All slopes are slippery. The trick is to pick the optimal place on those slopes and dig in, until compelling arguments suggest a move to a new location. We have all the traction we choose to have, and won’t slide down any slope we don’t choose to slide down.
First, my opposition is not merely that it’s a slippery slope. My opposition to this line of argument is that any line drawn is going to be inherently arbitrary, and therefore extremely easy to alter toward the negative. It’s a slippery slope, but in every way that “flies bring elephants” is not a true slippery slope.
We don’t understand consciousness and self-awareness enough to define a point along its continuum, let alone recognize that they’re never constant.
Personally, I prefer defining the terms “human” and “life.” When one does that, the “complicated issue” becomes quite simple, and obfuscation and claims to the contrary become more grounded in a refusal to acknowledge the facts (for whatever reason) than in any honest contrary definition.
But it does not simplify the consequences. There are many serious implications and consequences to how we make this definition, or how we define these rules. On the one hand, there is the danger of serious moral error, and on the other a slew of dangers including risks to health, safety, and welfare of both those directly involved and, often, the rest of society.
By every measure other than the moral imperative derived from the definition of life as beginning at conception, the costs of treating embryos as human beings whose lives are protected by the proscription against murder are simply enormous. It deprives women of autonomy, contributes to the impoverishment of women and children, increases health risks to women intent on getting an abortion, obstructs a very promising line of medical research that may lead to cures for a huge spectrum of crippling and fatal diseases, and, possibly, even contributes to future rises in crime rates (see “Freakonomics”).
Does all of that mean that the evil of murdering innocent babies is justified in order to avoid this host of horrendous costs? No, certainly not. But the question of whether it really is the murder of innocent babies is clearly, at best, an open one, and at worst, a semantic game and a mystification of reality. I would argue that we really do know enough about consciousness to know that a zygote doesn’t have it, and that the only argument against that is a purely mystical one.
Given all of these considerations, is it really in humanity’s best interest to declare zygotes human beings, and impose all of these costs on ourselves in order to protect them? Or is it wiser to say, “who knows? But modern science strongly suggests that they have neither consciousness, which is a product of cerebral activity, and, lacking a cerebrum, they must therefore lack consciousness, along with all that comes with it, such as any sensory perception, experience of pain or fear, or knowledge of self or of their own existance. So maybe it would be a good idea not to screw ourselves completely by making the leap of faith that, despite all of this evidence to the contrary, zygotes are human beings, and that therefroe we must incur all of the costs associated with that assumption. Maybe it is wiser to err on the side of a scientific rather than mystical definition, and to treat the proscription against murder as the practical one that it has always been, rather than as one to be applied in circumstances in which it really doesn’t apply.”
The answer I’ve come to is entirely derived from scientific definitions. The following are all scientifically proven facts:
A zygote is genetically human.
A zygote is genetically unique from any other human.
A zygote, in its matter of metabolizing nutrients and growing, is a living creature.
QED, a zygote is scientifically categorized as a living human.
Precisely what value that living human being has, legally, morally, or ethically is up to argument and interpretation. After all, there have been moral arguments for and against war, or for and against the death penalty. Clearly that admission doesn’t end the discussion; I think these discussions would be much more civil if everyone would admit that.
Indeed many tacitly do admit that, when they claim to want to minimize abortions, or that these are “difficult issues.” The elephant in the room is precisely why these are difficult issues. I think there would be a lot more mutual respect between sides if everyone would admit the scientific evidence of what the subject in question is, and therefore admit the difficulties through which they’ve come to reach the position they have.
The question is not whether it’s in our best interest to admit scientific fact. That’s a dogma that would receive relentless criticism when used to defend any other point of view, and rightfully so. The question is to what level a living human zygote requires legal and moral defense. And that’s a very tough question.
recourse to a taxinomic argument still misses the point, IMHO.
A zygote is what a zygote is, not what a list of supposedly dispositive characteristics force one to conclude that it is. It is a cluster of cells, without arms and legs, without a brain, without a heart, without any of the characteristics associated with a human being. That is a much more dispositive set of facts than the sophistries you listed.
I’m not trying to be antagonistic, but the line of argument you are relying on is only scientific to the extent that science serves the conclusion you prefer, but otherwise is “scholastic.” This was the form of logic used by Medieval monks to prove the conclusions they had already accepted as true.
A human being is commonly understood to be an anatomically recognizable animal. A zygote is not that anatomically recognizable animal. That is the form of reasoning relevant to this discussion, if our point is to discern the relevance of the application of law to the protection of that entity, not the purely taxonomical conclusion that a metabolizing complement of DNA definable as a human being is therefore a human being.
You are right, though, that if you want to rely on taxonomic argumentation, there is a legitimate argument that a genetically complete, metabolizing human zygote is a “human being.” That is, one might say, a correct biological categorization. A human zygote is not a rat, or an amoeba, or a fern. Therefore, it must be classified as a human being.
But, as I argued before, the object is to determine policy that is of optimal value in a reality more complex and subtle than out classifications. To engage in the art of taxonomic categorization, and use a conclusion drawn from that serves not to answer the question at hand regarding social policy, but rather to answer other kinds of questions of distinction among organisms, is a form of artful misdirection.
The real question is: Is a zygote a human being for the purposes of the relevance of the proscription against murdering human beings? The answer is pretty clearly “no,” for all of the reasons described above.
You argue that something that only something that is physically identifiable as a human is a human. Any number of things that are not identifiable as human are human: Pictorial representations of humans, creepy Japanese robots, a computer simulation of a human being.
The latter two can be imbued by their creators with something approaching artificial intelligence. And often, that intelligence is more complete than that of some more unfortunate members of humanity.
Any number of arguments can be made as to what a living individual human is. Mine is clearly the most complete definition.
I’m willing to grant that such a definition is not the end of the argument. It’s only the beginning of a truly honest one. At what point does a human being become a human being that must be morally defended? What is it about a person that is most valuable, and the cause for his or her defense?
In short: What’s the big deal with human life?
No small question. But a very important one – if we can all work at seeking that answer, we’ll make ourselves part of a more perfect world.
Until then, all we’ll be is a bunch of people shouting each other down, disingenuously sympathetic to a trouble we refuse to name.
over the definition of a human being, but rather over which definition is most relevant to each issue of devising appropriate social policies. It’s that simple. Freedoms that are allowed to adults are not allowed to children, because for those purposes, children are not in the same class of human being as adult. If you want to define a zygote as a human being, for every context, that’s fine with me, but then you have to define the proscription against murder as not applying to all human beings, if you want to arrive at the most reasonable and useful social policy.
From my point of view, your argument relies on mysticism rather than reason. That’s your choice. But I will revert to reason in every instance. There is no rule that is not amenable to the application of reason. That’s my position, and it’s what you disagree with. Your argument is a perfect syllogism relying on one mystical premise and one taxonomical conclusion: Human life is always sacred (an assumption, not something that is an inevitable conclusion), and therefore if you can succeed in defining something as human, it has become protected by that sacred status. Since you have found an irrelevant biological basis for defining a zygote as human, and since, when combined with the mystical premise that human life is by definition sacred, ipso facto, the destruction of zygotes is a moral crime of the greatest magnitude.
But I do not accede either to your mystical premise or your taxonomical certainty. I would argue either that those human beings who have no brain, no sensory perception, and no self- (or other-) awareness are not so sacred after all; or, alternatively, that those entities that have human genetic composition and metabolize nutrients are not necessarily human beings. Take your pick. It doesn’t matter, because I am focused on the reality rather than on the taxonomical artifacts or mystical assumptions.
Okay, I really have to get some work done. We’ll have to agree to disagree: We’ve both made our arguments as well as they are going to be made. See you next time!
We get to the point. Anyone who agrees with the anti-abortion and anti-stem cell premise is a mystical religious nut. That’s your position and you’re sticking to it.
On the contrary, I feel I’ve made some very reasonable arguments – particularly given that another word for what they used to call “scholarly” reason was logic. Indeed, I’ve agreed every step of the way that with this definition, the inherent value of that which we’re defining as human life was up for argument. I’m well aware that my personal assumption is that any human life is valuable and defensible – but I’ve never once used that in any portion of the argument, nor have I taken a stance regarding it either way.
And yet, it ends up the same – logical and science-based arguments notwithstanding, anyone who’s against abortion or embryonic stem cells simply must be a religious nut.
I’ve admitted my bias here. Have you admitted yours with equal candor?
You have now mischaracterized my argument to win a rhetorical point. I didn’t arbitrarily claim that your argument is based on a mystical assumption, but rather painstakingly demonstrated it. You don’t have to consider it an insult, either. It is the bottom line for any argument that defends the right to life of a bunch of cells, and that fact is almost obvious at a glance. A bunch of cells would never be defended without a mystical assumption backing up the sense of a moral imperative. There are some who would argue that such a mystical assumption is warranted. But no one can win an argument that it doesn’t exist. That’s the fundamental difference between relying on reason from top to bottom, and relying on reason to defend conclusions that depend on an inherently non-reasonable (not necessarily “unreasonable”) assumption.
Enough. If you don’t get that at this point, you won’t get it after I waste another hour of my time trying to explain it.
people who have done their research primarily on complex dynamical systems rarely consider taxonomical argumentation to be the final word in scientific wisdom. Arguing from definition is not very compelling.
it wasn’t scholarly. It was circular: The conclusion was arrived at first, and the “logic” was used to arrive at it. For an excellent illustration, see “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” in which an accused which was proven to be guilty.
You are starting with your conclusion, and creating an agument to arrive at it. Since it is a conclusion and argument designed to pre-empt a discussion of what policy is most reasonable, I don’t need to make any argument to say that I focus instead only on what policy is most reasonable, unconstrained by the mystical assumptions and arbitrary definitions upon which you depend.
I have a hard time understanding not only why you are up-set that I point out that you are relying on a mystical assumption, but how on Earth you can even begin to claim otherwise. Everything you have argued is based on the assumption that “a human life is sacred,” and your argument then reverts to the task of proving whether something is a human life or not. It may be mystical, but it is also almost universally held to be true. So what’s the problem? I’m the odd-one-out, saying that I do not automatically except what is almost universally held to be true, if doing so is a culturally ingrained assumption rather than a well-derived conceptualization.
I’m truly confused by your reaction.
The support is broad-based for this legislation, including Nancy Reagan. Also, thank you for pursuing this legislation rather than relying on the administration. It’s a far stronger position.
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Is it because you look to her for moral guidance generally, or only on those topics where she already agrees with your position ?
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or so it seems. We can’t help but get a kick out of having his widow on our side.
I’ve come to respect your humility, Barron, and your tolerance of others. I disagree completely with your logic regarding the beginning of life, and when and how god is involved (always or never, I would say, but nothing in between). As for the sanctity of life, I have always maintained that if it is out of respect for any reality that can be discerned through the power of human consciousness, rather than blind faith in a doctrine created over the millenia by human beings engaged in their own imperfect creative process, then to consider the slaughter of large mammals, such as cows, who feel pain and terror at the moment of death, as morally acceptable, but to consider the “slaughter” of clusters of cells that have no consciousness or sensory capacity whatsoever, immoral, is utterly hypocritical. I say that not to inflame or insult, but as a mere statement of my perceptions, and I do so respectful of the fact that you accept a faith which ends the argument for you. (Though I remain motivated to try to raise logic and evidence to a position, in the formation of beliefs, above that of faith, for, if the referent of faith is a human concept rather than an objective fact, as I believe it to be, then faith is less reliable than skeptical inquiry for arriving at sound and useful understandings of nature and life).
lived with the horrible disease of Alzheimers and knows what a hell on earth the fundamentalists want to consign to all those who could be helped with this research. Like the Catholics excommunicating the mother of the nine year old daughter who had an abortion after being brutally raped, the fundamental extremists don’t give a damn about the living. It is all about worshiping the Golden Calf of the “Unborn” and ignoring the real need that is around them daily. Why help someone who is alive when you can worry about the “Unborn”?
You deserve much of the credit for this.
As a Christian who values life, I share the view of Nancy Reagan and I am a strong supporter of federal funding for this type of research because, as you point out, it holds great promise to alleviate suffering.
Contrary to what Barron seems to be implying, our system of government does not allow people to “opt out” of funding specific items with which they have moral qualms (my tax money was used to fund the war in Iraq and to torture political prisoners in Guantanimo both of which I find morally reprehensible).
She put in a long long loooooong effort on this. Thank you for fighting the good fight.
So now… What next for you?
No need to ask – someone’s already sped off in the getaway car.
And many, many thanks, Congresswoman, for remaining such a vigilant force in regards to this important issue.
Sanity returns!!!
I will congratulate you on that legislation when it happens.
That sums it up. Scrub, rinse and repeat, over and over and over and over. It will take a while to undo the years of neglect and incompetence but we will get there. My father in law passed away last year from parkinson’s. I hope this research leads to a cure to save others from this terrible disease. Thank you President Obama.
and for science.
for the sanctimonious and self serving serious minded people who “know” that everyone else should live by their dictates. Here’s a finger to everyone who believes that the “Unborn” are more important than healing those who are already among us.
But my understanding is that stem cells do not constitute unborn humans