This one may ruffle some feathers

We have now entered the age of "embryo politics". In the last week or two, the story of embryo adoption has spread in the media, and for those of us trying to get our heads around it, the possibilities and pitfalls in reproductive medicine today are dizzying indeed. A pair of articles in Slate (one linked above, the other here), reveal the complexities of the issue with several provocative quotes. It may help the discussion to break them into points.

1. Both sides see embryos as human life only when it suits their purposes. The pro-life camp considers human life to begin at conception, whether in the womb or in the lab, and the loss of an embryo to stem cell research or discarding due to failure to pay storage costs is a loss to humanity-except for all of the embryos that are lost on a daily basis without ever implanting for natural reasons and end up in the toilet. These are written off and forgotten, if ever thought about at all-even the adopted ones that don't take, say, if four are implanted and only one develops. IVF clinics and state governments, on the other hand, see embryos as property of the parents, tissue that is owned and under the control of those whose DNA they were created with. They can donate the tissue to research or throw it away, or give it to someone else-but they can't sell it. To quote the author of one of the articles, Liza Mundy,

   Though the fertility industry likes to promote the idea that they are multicelled clumps of tissue, it accepts that it would be morally unacceptable to pay money for an embryo, just as it's morally unacceptable to pay for a baby.

   This is to equate the buying and selling of human embryos with slavery, and nobody wants that.
2. A woman who heads an embryo adoption clinic and switched sides on abortion after finding herself infertile is described in Mundy's article as coming to believe every aborted baby is one she could have adopted. But there are plenty of babies in the world that need to be adopted already, so why not pick one of them? The answer, I think, is because it's more expensive than adopting an embryo, and there are bureaucratic hurdles to jump through that don't yet exist in the fertility industry. Science has made it more convenient, and that's what people like. Also, the article points out pregnancy is now considered by many women to be a right that one can be "cheated out of", as opposed to a potentially life-threatening burden to be carried.
3. By mixing up embryos from different donors, it's possible to give birth to twins (or more) with unrelated genetic lines. This mixing is apparently common practice, although it's not clear from the article how many such multiple pregnancies are carried to term. I wonder what the future holds for them when, say, one is white and one is black, each facing discrimination the other will never know.
4. In the other article, William Saletan lays out the battleground the pro-life movement faces regarding in vitro fertilization. He quotes a pro-lifer referring to an embryo as a "child", and others talking about restricting the number of embryos that can be created at one time for IVF procedures. There have already been bills in several states introduced to that effect, and requiring counseling like that for abortion is apparently on the agenda as well. Since there's currently almost no regulation of the industry, this is likely to see major resistance.
5. As articulated by Saletan, the pro-life position appears to be moving farther and farther away from its conservative roots. Instead of limiting government, they now want the government to determine the fate of your embryos if they disagree with your choice. "Pro-lifers don't think anyone, including a parent, has the right to doom an embryo to death," he writes, later quoting a Republican Congressman from New Jersey saying

   Parents of human embryos are custodians of those young ones. They are not owners of human property, and the public policy we craft should ensure that the best interests of newly created human life is protected … The cryogenically frozen male and female embryos that the genetic parents may feel are no longer needed for implanting in the genetic mother are of infinite value to an adoptive mother who may be sterile or otherwise unable to have a baby.

Infinite value? The problem I have with these kinds of statements, and the attitudes of pro-lifers in general, are that they reject the idea of cost/benefit analysis when it comes to pre-birth human life, something not even the Bible does. Even if you accept the idea that human life begins at conception, to promote the idea that a clump of 4-8 cells that may or may not develop into a baby after thousands of dollars, 9 months, and the risks and effects of pregnancy on a woman's body is inherently equally as valuable as a cure for cancer or any other disease is foreign to my way of thinking. To believe that an embryo deserves the same rights and protections under the Constitution as a living, breathing, tax-paying citizen, is preposterous. An embryo is potential, unrealized.

What's going to happen when it becomes medically possible for a fetus to be transferred to another woman's womb, or an artificial womb? Will the pro-life movement be clamoring to adopt the fetuses that are scheduled to be aborted? Will the government pass laws requiring it? What kind of nightmare would that be? The cost to society and to humanity of going down this path seems to me to outweigh the benefits by many times.

On the subject of abortion, I believe that any woman who decides to have an abortion for reasons other than rape, incest, or risk to her health has made the wrong choice - but it should be her choice to make. Neither I nor the hundreds of men running the government will ever know what it's like to be faced with that decision. I think the phrase "safe, legal, and rare" does a good job of conveying my attitude, the more rare the better. That means I support the morning after pill, which prevents embryos from attaching to the uterus and prevents abortion from becoming a possibility in the first place.

I'll conclude this long post with one last thought: I don't believe stem cell technology will solve all our problems, or that genetic engineering should be used to tailor babies, or a number of other things that have been suggested by technophiles and futurists. But I do believe it has the potential for great advances in making sick people better, and that makes it valuable and worthy of pursuit. I'm clearly not alone, and the progress being made in other parts of the world is progress the U.S. will be missing out on the longer our current government leaders resist the idea that science is a tool, not an enemy.