I’m simply saying that it would be perfectly constitutional to clarify whether the 14th Amendment applies to unborn babies or not. Is that so difficult? Yes, it is. There are many things that it is, or likely will be, possible to do with embryos that render vague the terms "create" and "destroy".
For example, please identify at which point in the following sequences of events embryos are created and/or destroyed:
- A lab technician takes an embryo, removes a chromosome, and implants the corresponding chromosome from a different individual's adult cell; the embryo is then implanted and grows to term.
- A lab technician takes an embryo, removes a chromosome with what would have been a fatal defect, and replaces it with a non-defective chromosome from a different individual's adult cell; the embryo is then implanted and grows to term.
- A lab technician takes an embryo, removes a chromosome and replaces it with one from a different individual; he then removes that replacement and puts back the original; the embryo is then implanted and grows to term.
- A lab technician takes an embryo, removes half the chromosomes, and replaces them with corresponding chromosomes from a different individual; the embryo is then implanted and grows to term.
- A lab technician takes an embryo, removes all the chromosomes, and replaces them with chromosomes from a different individual; the embryo is then implanted and grows to term.
- A lab technician takes an embryo which had an extra chromosome and removes one of the extra chromosomes; the embryo is then implanted and grows to term.
Does changing the DNA in a fertilized egg make it a different individual? In all cases or only some? What if the purpose of such change is to correct a fatal defect?
We don’t know the answers to some of this and that is one but not the only reason why all of them should outlawed. If we just stuck with natural means of conceiving and nurturing babies we’d be okay. All the stuff you list will eventually destroy all of us, even if along the way some kind of “positive” desease-fighting result is achieved, in the end it will come back to bite us and destroy us as a people.
So pose all the “what ifs” you want. They only underscore my point. Human life begins at conception and we should nurture it rather than monkey with it or kill it.
Period.