Your last comments were reasonable hocndoc. As far as they go, I don't really see anything to object to. If we were to discuss this further, I believe you would say that legislation should be passed that would make the penalties as stiff on researchers as on the mass murderer of a family or other group of people. I don't.
I had hoped that this might bring home to some of you the absurdity (use another word if you like, inequity or whatever) of stating that a person who causes less than week-old human embryos outside the body to die, is the same as a person who kills adult humans, and as such should suffer the same penalties.
On a moral level, I do see killing the embryos as problematic. I do not see it as warranting exposure to severe or lesseer civil penalties. I obviously do see the killer of adult humans as deserving of severe civil penalties.
I have viewed the moral problems with this to be something that could be weighed against the benefits to other fetuses, infants children or adults.
This being said, for the last time, I do not support abortion, the terminating of life inside a host mother. I only support the manipulation of human embryos outside of a womb at the earliest stages, a week or less. In excess of seven days old, I also object to the manipulation of human embryos or cells outside of the womb.
I would welcome you to make a closing statement regarding these comments. I won't be responding.
You folks take care. I'll see you around.
Science is not done in a vacuum nor is it a moral agent. Society imparts the moral tenure. It is clearly possible (likely in fact) that scientists will be able in the near future to conceive and engineer embryonic individuals who will not be able to survive outside of life support and will be kept alive artificially. These individuals will have more utilitarian value if allowed to develop into the fetal age, perhaps four, five or even six months, then be euthanized to harvest the target tissues for which they were conceived. Upon what would society base the proscription for such utilitarian cannibalism if the embryo is not a member of the human race even if never implanted in a woman's body?
In your world, there is nothing to prohibit such cannibalism because it is not inhumane or even an affront to humanity. I and many like me are working very hard to inform our fellow Americans of this grave 'loop hole' you gladly endorse for exploiting individual human lives. And if you even try to assert that such a heinous potential is absurd, I would point you to Nazi history, and to the outcome of Roe v Wade (partial birth abortion), and the more than a billion dollars per year fetal harvesting industry. The step you endorse is one gigantic leap down the funnel of 'slippery slope'. Your excuses are one line around the funnel slope, Hank's are another, and XBob's are yet another, but you all share one clear common principle ... you all endorse the exploitation of human lives conceived and dissected for their body parts because of their utilitarian value regardless of their humanity.
The embryo fits the protocol which protects comatose or vegetative state alive individual human beings from being 'harvested' for their organs. That you refuse to acknowledge or even try to address debate over that science, that reality, says a lot about the transactional world of non-absolutes you favor for the utilitarian wonders it may hold, with the resulting dehumanization and commoditization of human beings vulnerable and of exploitative value. The Declaration of Independence states absolutes, saying we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, not granted by government, unalienable as obtaining from the Grace of our Creator! You choose to ignore the science on the side of a particular class of human lives you wish to see exploited. That is your right, but you will have opposition when you try to candy coat such an embrace of cannibalism, I assure you.
...the absurdity (use another word if you like, inequity or whatever) of stating that a person who causes less than week-old human embryos outside the body to die, is the same as a person who kills adult humans...
...I only support the manipulation of human embryos outside of a womb at the earliest stages, a week or less. In excess of seven days old, I also object to the manipulation of human embryos or cells outside of the womb.
I understand how you feel, and the point I would like to leave with you for your consideration (if you will indulge one more instance of my overworked thought experiment:^) is as follows:
According to your principle, if it were around Christmas, 1953 and the means had been available, and yours truly, that is, good 'ol me, myself and I were one of the human embryos who had been produced by our mad scientist, then you would not have objected to my death being deliberately caused to 'benefit humanity' up to 7 days after I began to exist. As this is my life we're hypothetically talking about here, you can see how I could object to the utterly arbitrary nature of the line between the seventh and eighth day. Because the seventh day was the ontologically necessary condition for my life on the eighth day (and thereafter) there is no coherent, rational unity of principle for support of my death on the seventh day AND support of my life on the eighth day for the very simple reason that on the eighth day I would have no life to support if my death were supported on the seventh day. This contradiction is a fundamental flaw in the principle that is fatal to it. I'm sure you can understand my revulsion at the notion that it would be ok to snuff out my life at some point in it, because if it had been I wouldn't be able to be here writing this to you (not to mention the wife, the children, the dog and "It's a Wonderful Life" and all that:^)
To sum up, I leave you the words of another Man:
Matthew 25
40 "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."
Thank you again for writing.
Cordially