My (very sweet) sister-in-law, with whom I apparently disagree mightily about both politics and religion, has a nice post-election blog posting.
I considered responding with a blog post of my own, but ended up just dropping a comment in on her post. My comment is so long I probably should’ve made it into it’s own post. Whatever. Feel free to yell at me either here or there. 🙂
“Stem cell research is a hot button for sure. What about unused in vitro embryos? A great many would be destroyed anyway. Is that destruction as abhorrent to you as stem cell research? I’m kind of agnostic on the stem cell issue, so I’m not baiting you here, just curious (this goes for you, too, Jeff)”
Assume you were talking about a different Jeff, but I’ll bite. 🙂
Fundamentally, my issue with embryonic stem cell harvesting is that anything that contributes to devaluing life should be avoided. Research itself is certainly not that case and perhaps there are embryos that are naturally aborted that are not that case, but there are many (million) more that are aborted purposefully each year. This being the case, I am not in favor of ANY action that would contribute to the worsening of the problem. That said, I also love that there are medical gains to be made through stem cell research. Adult stem cell research has provided a vast array of successes and has to date, not been proven ANY less effective. Shouldn’t we thus err on the more cautious side of things? Some information here if you care to read: http://www.frc.org/life–bioethics#stem_cells
Be forewarned, it is a pro-family web site, you might have to cleanse yourself of the cookies to remain Obamic… 😛 (kidding….)
JeffV
Thanks, (other) Jeff. I appreciate the thoughtful comment re: stem cell stuff.
Putting on my fundy goggles and heading over to read that site… 🙂