The “abortion problem” is not really about choices. It’s not that some person has to decide whether an unborn human is also person. It’s not that s/he has to decide whether intentionally ending a pregnancy is better than subjecting the child to a particular start in life. The problem is almost as old as sin: some children are simply unwanted.
In some places, it may still be in fashion to dispose of unwanted children by exposing them to the elements, without care, until they die. When that sort of thing was done routinely in the west, Christians were well-known for objecting to it. It won them friends, and also enemies.
Abortion is pretty much the same thing: the disposal of unwanted children. There are differences, but it becomes apparent that the two practices are the same in kind, when you ask why someone would submit to an abortion. The answer is so obvious that the question doesn’t even need to be asked: to escape having a child.
In the United States there is an abortion industry, which we probably ought to call “Big Abortion.” It has at least as much influence upon the government as Big Tobacco and Big Oil. Ironic that Big Tobacco is accused of not caring about human lives, while Big Abortion is heralded by many of the same people as a humanitarian good.
The stem cell debate in the United States has become ridiculous. How many hundreds of treatments are there now from stem cell research? Offhand, I don’t know. It’s a lot. Now, how many of them are from embryonic stem cell research? Last I heard: none. All those advances were from so-called “adult” stem cell research, which can be done without any harm to a human life. As if that were not enough to show the vanity of destroying human embryos for research, medical research heroes have now actually made the equivalent of embryonic stem cells from adult stem cells — again, without harm to a human life.
So, why do some continue to insist upon federal funding (i.e. my money) for embryonic stem cell research? It’s not because of any therapeutic promise. It’s not for the economics. The answer is obvious, isn’t it? Because embryonic stem cell research depends upon harm done to human life. If you know of another reason that makes more sense, do tell.
If that sounds morally twisted, you’re right. But then, any student of history will gladly inform you that moral twistedness is nothing new. This insistence upon federal funding is an outgrowth of Big Abortion, which is founded upon the desire for (or at least apathy toward) the harming of human life.
All this leads us to an important realization. Our society is in a moral crisis. There are these thousands of frozen embryos, and Big Abortion salivates at the possibility of destroying them. Dubious claims are made that nobody wants them anyway. In most cases, the parents probably just don’t know what else to do with them, and have a praiseworthy moral reluctance to discard them. Christians like me claim it’s wrong to destroy them with medical experimentation, because they are human. But what can be done about these unwanted children?
I’m happy to say that people are already working on a morally acceptable solution. It’s possible for parents to adopt these embryos. See http://www.snowflakes.org . Meanwhile, maybe we should reconsider whether it’s a good idea to create so many fertilized human embryos in the first place. It may be a practical way to accomplish something, but is it a morally responsible way to do it?
I’m not saying there should be a law, necessarily, but that individuals should learn to exercise their freedom with good, informed judgment and love for their neighbors — even the ones yet unconceived. If that became the norm, Big Abortion might just go right out of business.