I’ve long looked for consistency — intellectual, moral, ethical — among opponents of stem-cell research, and I’ve never found any. If someone believes a fertilized egg that has grown to a few dozen cells is a full-fledged human being, deserving of the full protection of the law, then IVF would constitute nightmarish science. Conservatives would be compelled to protest at fertility clinics, and condemn families that try to have babies through the procedure. After all, the IVF process is designed to include discarded embryos.
But no one is making that argument. There’s a high degree of comfort level with discarding embryos at fertility clinics, but intense conservative opposition to medical research involving embryos that offer the promise of life-saving science. I’ve never understood this.
Of course it doesn’t make sense. These people are religious whackadoodles. When a religious argument is tremendously unpopular politically, what happens is that the politicians bend the religious principles. That’s why, for wingnuts, it’s murder to have an abortion unless the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. Logically, it would still be murder, but that’s not politically viable. Likewise, if destroying an embryo is murder when you use it for research, it is also murder when you don’t implant it in a womb and throw it in a hazardous waste bin. But no political party wants to ban fertility treatments, so you get this kind of nonsense. The religious conservatives hold absolutist views on complex moral issues that are rendered absurd when cast in a politically viable context.
The shorter version is:
When it can be used to punish – women, non-whites, gays, poor people – we are for it. When it limits our expression of wealth and power, we’re against it. Even when it’s the same “it”.
It’s all about beating up the little guy.
Only if the little guy is brown.
While I agree that many individuals don’t have systematic reasons for their beliefs, I think this happens no matter what the ideology. I have to say the quoted excerpt is quite under informed considering the Catholic Church (the largest single religious denomination in the U.S. and World) has maintained a philosophically consistent and largely philosophical (not based on the bible) argument that condemns contraception, IVF, stem-cell research, abortion, and the death penalty.
As a politics/philosophy double major in college I am cursed with the knowledge that both sides often represent philosophically valid points, but the vast majority of individuals promoting those points are unable to reason through the ontology to validate it.
But then I remind myself that politics isn’t about truth, it’s about power.
That being said, I realize that this forum will now turn into a Catholic bashing forum so do what you will, just thought I’d offer my 2¢
The quoted excerpt is talking specifically about conservatives.
Properly executed, Catholic theology is not really conservative. It’s not really liberal either. It crosses back and forth between the poles – admittedly leaning heavily on the “conservative” side when it comes to sex, sexuality, the role of women, and the general question of humans governing themselves via the democratic process. But heavily on the “liberal” side when it comes to when the State should be waging war, how prisoners should be treated, and what kind of a wage workers should be receiving for a day’s work.
In the US we have terrible exemplars because the bishops and priests who are interested in the social justice side of things tend to keep their mouths shut and work their asses off helping the poor, while the priests and bishops who lean more conservative ignore the social justice side of their own theology in the service of their conservative politics. But such is life – in the history of the world that’s been the story of the Church forever. Good people do good work and sometimes get recognized for it centuries after they’re dead, while the regressive elements work on climbing the ranks of power within the hierarchy and get to be the face of the Church.
Wingnuts are the religious who don’t believe in life after birth.
The only halfway coherent reason I have ever heard has been from a speaker who was anti-abortion/contraceptives etc. but who was also a self-proclaimed atheist.
His reasoning was that in IVF yes, embryos are dying but they are dying because the couple is attempting to have a child. They are attempting to create new life. Since abortion is simply the removal of potential life, it’s objectionable, and so with contraceptives.
I was unpersuaded but at least he tried.
Pretty consistent, too. I mean, if you’re against abortion–especially in the early stages–how can you support condoms? It’s all potential life.
Evangelicals are going to be the death of this country. I can’t wait for them to be aged out of existence.
Actually, your claim is just not correct here about inconsistency among stem cell research opponents. The same people who are so agitated about stem cells today were also as agitated about IVF and largely remain so today. The only difference is that IVF is in the past — water under the bridge — while stem cells are the issue of the day which can actually still be affected by collective action.