Comments on: A Culture of Life

By: carissa

carissa — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 05:10:30 +0000

wow. my college years made me extremely opinionated. though i knew i never had any answers, i at least believed something or leaned one way or the other. somewhere along the way age set me down in the middle of the road with weak opinions.

’cause i just don’t know.

but i like how you go back to discuss the beginning reasoning behind the embryo’s in the first place. i had no idea and am pretty turned off anyway by any artificial means to creating a life because humans egos are bigger than their hearts. (they need the child to look like them (?) over taking in a child in need)

here’s an idea: let’s try some research on ole george w. wonder what we’d find.

By: Amy

Amy — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 04:15:19 +0000

Kirsten, I’m glad you’re delving into issues without fear. For my part, I can say I strongly oppose abortion, but I am in favor of stem-cell research, (because, on one hand, it does support life in the end). Yes, they do seem like contradictions. But, perhaps like you, I think I may be in a fantastic place of my faith where I can honestly accept two opposing ideas without having to reconcile them. And I have to admit, it’s kind-of nice.

By: Kristen Rudd

Kristen Rudd — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 03:47:13 +0000

Well, part of this is one of the cans of worms I didn’t want to open in the post - and that is this: I don’t think those embryos should even be there to be able to discard in the first place. I think it’s horrible that so many embryos are created in the hopes that one or two will “take” and that the rest are simply thrown away.

Which brings up even more issues about fertility and treatments and reproductive rights, etc., that is way too much to get into on the blog. To me, it’s along the lines of two wrongs don’t make a right - they (the embryos) shouldn’t be there in the first place, so just because they are, doesn’t mean they’re game for research. But I totally understand the argument. It makes a lot of sense.

You also have people who are “adopting” and surrogate parenting many of these embryos to life - the Snowflake Babies. I don’t know that’s the answer either. I had a good, long conversation with a friend about that when I first heard about it. Debating the ethics of all of these issues isn’t really something I want to dialogue about in blog format, with the obvious limitations involved, but they’re all good issues to be thinking about, and they’re not black and white, cut and dry. There’s lots of gray, and people’s lives and choices and desires and convictions wound up in them that makes the whole mess real sticky.

Shouldn’t the fact that so many are set up to be “wasted” be a cause for grief, anyway?

With euthanasia, in thinking about it, on one level it seems cruel to end people’s lives prematurely, and on another level, it seems just as cruel to keep them alive in a state of pain. I left personal anecdotes out of the post for a reason. Things are trickier when it’s someone you know and/or love. We don’t ever want to see people suffer. I don’t know that I necessarily agree with a view that prolongs life at all costs - the baby born that everyone knows won’t survive, the perpetually comatose, or the ransacked, diseased body… It makes me wonder more about whether the technology we use to keep and sustain life at those levels is just as ethically flawed as euthanizing. On both sides, just because the technology is there, does that mean we should use it?

I don’t have answers, just trying to sort through some of this.

By: Jill

Jill — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 23:46:08 +0000

I think the bigger “disconnect” is that he doesn’t seem to appreciate the importance of research to save and improve EXISTING lives (through stem cells) as part of a ‘culture of life’. Frozen embryos have a shelf life, they don’t last forever and most of them WILL be destroyed. If the only other option is “use them for research and THEN destroy them”, why wouldn’t you? They are not all going to result in children, regardless of anyone’s opinion about when life truly begins or whether or not the president supports stem cell research. I also happen to think you can value life and still see a use for euthanasia (anyone who has watched someone die in pain can attest that their life ended long before they died)& stem cell research, the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.