THE VALUE OF THE HUMAN EMBRYO

• First, a few weeks ago, a new book was published that makes the argument for the value of the human embryo.  Entitled Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, the book is written by Robert P. George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton and a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, and Christopher Tollefsen, a philosopher at the University of South Carolina.  George and Toellfsen present a purely scientific and philosophical case that the fetus, from the instant of conception, is a human being, with all the moral and political rights inherent in that status.  Therefore, stem cell research that destroys a viable embryo represents the unacceptable taking of a human life.  They reject the idea, rooted in a strange “moral dualism,” that sees being a “person” as merely another stage in a human life span.  The embryo is not a “preperson” with no rights or legal protection; instead, it is a human being (a person) and that status begins at the moment of conception.  Just as no one should be denied moral and legal protections based on race, sex, religion or ethnicity, no one should be excluded on the basis of age, size or stage of biological development.  Thus, the state must protect, as an ethical and moral obligation, embryonic human beings in the just the same manner that it protects every other human being.

George and Tollefsen are most concerned about stem cell research using human embryos and all the accompanying technological developments involving human embryo research.  They write:  “Whereas, in the past, the humanity of the fetus, or its moral worth, were ignored or denied in favor of an alleged ‘right to privacy,’ or considerations of the personal tragedies of women who experienced unwanted pregnancies, what is now proposed is something quite different.”  Among these “new proposals:” “the creation of millions of human embryos—human beings in the early stages of development—in order to perform scientific experiments on them, and in order to harvest their body parts for medical therapies for others.  We have sadly seen the destruction of millions of human beings before, in a litany of tragedies of the 20th century.  But we have never seen the creation of human beings precisely for the purpose of destruction and use.”  They conclude:  “So the creation of a massive industry for producing human embryos by cloning for research in which they are killed really does seem to use an entirely new kind of social evil, on a scale of almost unimaginable magnitude.” 

In a recent interview, George and Tollefsen argue:  “Our freedom and reason are what is God-like (albeit, of course, in a strictly limited way) about us, what likens us to God.  But to [be] like God in these respects ties us to our Creator in a special way in our creation:  He makes each of us, knowing us, in doing so, as the unique individuals we are.  We do not intend to deny any of this in claiming that we are human animals, or in claiming that even those who do not share biblical faith can understand the biological, philosophical and ethical truths that ground our claim that all human beings, including those at the beginning stages of life, have a profound, inherent, and equal dignity.”

Why does the political and medical community not recognize the innate value of all human life, including the embryo?  They argue that the human embryo has two distinct disadvantages:  (1)  The disadvantage of distance.  Embryos are distant from our awareness.  We cannot see them; we do not know them personally; and they cannot ask for our help.  (2)  Embryos suffer the disadvantage of numbers.  We cannot adequately respond, emotionally, when thousands of persons are killed or otherwise harmed; it would “overwhelm us.”  Further, there are hundreds of thousands of embryos currently cryopreserved (i.e., frozen) and considered “spares” from in vitro fertilization procedures.  Among other issues, these two disadvantages have made it politically and medically difficult, if not impossible, for the political and medical communities to embrace the human embryo as inherently valuable and eternally significant.  Therefore, the primary goal that George and Tollefsen have in writing this magnificent book is “We should never abandon the principle of equal respect for all members of the human family, and our goal must be to make that principle a legal and cultural norm.”  They make this proposal:  “The United States should acknowledge, in law, the obligation to protect embryonic human life by prohibiting all embryo-destructive research.  As a necessary means to this, the United States must maintain its current prohibition on federal funding for such research, and states should adopt similar measures prohibiting taxpayer-funded embryo-destructive research” (p. 210).

I recommend this book highly.  It is one of the most profound books I have read in some time.

• Second, new research is confirming that the fetus in the womb can experience and feel pain.  In a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, Annie Murphy Paul summarizes research that indicates pain is a real issue in terms of the fetus.  This premise has been hotly debated for years and has been central to the debate over abortion.  However, as Paul shows, research by Anna Taddio has demonstrated that “a single painful event could produce effects lasting for months, and perhaps much longer.”  Taddio concludes:  “When we do something to a baby that is not an expected part of its normal development, especially at a very early stage, we may actually change the way the nervous system is wired.”  Do such long-term effects apply to fetuses?  The answer seems to be yes.  Dr. Marc Van de Velde argues:  “We know that the fetus experiences a stress reaction [to pain], and we know that this stress reaction may have long-term consequences—so we need to treat this reaction as well as we can.  Whether or not we call this pain is, to me, irrelevant.”  Kanwaljeet Anand has testified that “If the fetus is beyond 20 weeks of gestation, I would assume that there will be pain caused to the fetus.  And I believe it will be severe and excruciating pain.”  For this reason, Sam Brownback of Kansas has presented to the Senate the Unborn Child Awareness Act, requiring doctors to tell women seeking abortions at 20 weeks or later that their fetuses will feel pain and to offer anesthesia “administered directly to the pain-capable unborn child.”  It has not passed the Senate, but over the past two years, similar bills have been introduced in 25 states, and in 5—Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Minnesota and Oklahoma—they have become law.

See Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen, Embryo:  A Defense of Human Life (Doubleday, 2008); interview with the two authors in World (26 January 2008), p. 27; and Annie Murphy Paul, “The First Ache,” New York Times Magazine (10 February 2008), pp. 45-49.

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