Healthcare Discussion Response: Embryonic Stem

Healthcare

Discussion Response: Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Given that abortion and fertility treatments that result in the nonuse of some embryos is legal in our nation, to prohibit putting the embryos discarded in such technology to good use, in a way that can save human lives not only seems absurd, but contradictory. I do not really believe that it is an ethical debate, but that the issue has become symbolically significant on a political level for some elements of the religious right. Opposing stem cell research has become a kind of litmus test for right-wing politicians, regardless of whether they -- or their conservative constituents -- understand the full implications of the technology. The main issues that embryonic stem cell research raise, and the prohibitions surrounding it, are the questions of the difficulties in having non-scientists consider legislation about issues surrounding technology that they often do not understand.

When viewing the potential gains from the technology, and the moral cost of denying people suffering from terrible, debilitating illnesses the full power of medical research because of the religiously-based objections of people who hold a very narrow definition of when life begins (but show little concern about people living with Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's, etcetera), supporting stem cell research to be seems like a clear-cut decision.

Discussion Response: Abortion don't think abortion should be ethical dilemma for 'Americans,' but only for the American women contemplating an abortion. No woman (or at least, hardly any woman) considers having an abortion lightly. It is a personal, not a political decision. No government can make a decision that a woman must go through the pain, stress, and emotional and physical trauma of an unwanted pregnancy. But no father can, either. Could a father compel a woman he impregnated to risk her life, but not his, in a pregnancy (because all pregnancies carry some risk)? Could he force a woman to have an abortion she did not want, because he did not want to have a child? After birth, the parents have equal rights over the life of their child. But before birth, in a world where visibly unwed mothers are still prohibited in some areas from going to the same high schools as their peers, and where men do not incur the physical and social stigma of having unwanted children, abortion must always be the woman's choice and a woman's choice alone.