Embryonic Stem Cell Parts Greater Than The Whole?

THINK OUTSIDE THE STEM CELL BOX

The stem cell debate is coming down to the wire next week on the Hill with competing bills on how to promote medical research and health advancements using expanded lines of stem cells, including embryonic on the one hand in a bill titled The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act (H.R. 810), and on the other, two Santorum bills The Fetus Farming Prohibition Act (S. 3504), and The Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act (S. 2754), which propose collectively a way to promote some type of stem cell research but prohibits use of embryonic stem cells which were gestated in human or animal wombs.
There are already a limited number of approved lines of stem cells and the first approach seeks to expand that line regardless of where the stem cells came from and what type. The Santorum approach favors a way to develop medical research while at the same time favoring medical advancement also for embryos by not allowing their harvesting. Apparently Pluripotent Stem cells are quite effective.
Some people like Santorum, others can’t wait to get rid of him. But I don’t think his opponent for the Senate Casey in Pennsylvania is going to have a much different view on this question. I don’t know Santorum from Adam but he’s from Pittsburgh so he can’t be half bad. And I wouldn’t hold any of his other votes against him when it comes to this question because on this question, he appears to be trying to think outside the box.
The question might be: Are embryonic stem cell parts greater than the whole?
It's a dumb question, but isn't that really the question. Do we as a society value the potential and ability for that embryo to become whole or do we want to turn medical research into auto chop shops for parts, stripping cars to sell the pieces to the highest bidder.
The debate is not going to go anywhere if both sides of the aisle shout at each other moral condemnation and platitudes about who respects “life” more, who is more moral or religious, etc. because the people who respect doing everything conceivable to further medical research believe they promote “life” by promoting serious health advancements and curing fatal disease with stem cell research. The Santorum side believes it favors “life” by promoting medical advancement with these pluripotent stem cells and that embryos are people too so you can’t leave them out of the equation when considering life promotional issues.
It strikes me as a no-brainer that we don’t want people giving permission to doctors to extract embryonic stem cells that will either terminate or damage a viable embryo, e.g. a baby-to-be. My sister, a very successful executive, is 42 and pregnant for the first time. Hallelujiah. She would have and does consider it absolutely repugnant and reprehensible to smoke, drink, or do anything to harm her “bump” aka “Master Peanut.” Criminal in fact. That’s how people who want their children feel. Do we want the ones who do not want their children to feel “yeah- now I can pay off my visa bill by selling the stem cells.”
Some may argue that as long as abortions are legal, they should allow whatever tissue is extracted including embryonic stem cells to be put to good use. While people get abortions for a variety of reasons and no one reason, it is clear that a good portion of women get them for reasons of financial insecurity or just plain poverty. If child slavery is illegal, how can having an abortion or terminating a pregnancy and selling off your embryo not be? You don’t think an industry will develop around this cell extraction putting financial pressure to create more supply? We don’t now allow the selling of body parts. An embryo is another different entity from a mother with a separate distinct DNA code and will develop to have possibly a different blood type and even gender from the mother. It is not the mother’s body. Do we want to foster trade of other people’s body parts? Do we want poor people trying to get pregnant for the stem cell money? Why don't we just have stem cell brothels where you can try to have sex and get pregnant all the time-you could get rich!
There is a slope slipperier than vasalined jello here.

Whether or not one thinks one should have a choice to have an abortion, it strikes me that no one can really want a profit motive financial incentive to factor into having one. Do we want people to be paid for being sexually irresponsible and for not wanting their children? Do we really want to devalue potential human life to a point where it registers as an asset on a medical research lab or pharmaceutical company’s balance sheet and prospectus?
Some things should “shock the conscience” as outrageous propositions, and it seems to me that harvesting embryonic stem cells from viable embryos gestated in a human womb is just one of them. –Especially if and when there are cells to be derived from elsewhere that are just as useful, such as from the placenta perhaps, the “afterbirth” material, and elsewhere.
I am not a scientist admittedly. But it seems that we should know more about the potential for developing research from stem cells that do not require the destruction of an embryo.

It was recently reported in the Guardian, the British paper, that One in three babies born in the United Kingdom were conceived by in vitro fertilization. The IVF process does generate lots of unfortunate embryos who usually get frozen-tens of thousands of these exist. Many die in the dethawing, many more die trying to be implanted long after they were created in multiples, many are destroyed for lack of takers.
Moral theologians will battle whether these frozen creatures have souls, but its clear that they have DNA uniquely coded. Many of them just have no takers as it were. There are far more of them than women lining up to get someone else's embryo and genetic material implanted in them. The same concerns regarding incentivizing abortion by extracting them from a womb do not exist when they are in frozen limbo and cannot survive ultimately outside a womb.
I wonder what God thinks of these pitiable creatures frozen inbetween heaven and earth.
What I don't really wonder is whether God sent them here for us to slice and dice for experiment. Do you?