The conservative line on in-vitro fertilization has never made a lot of sense in the context of stem-cell research. The right says IVF is great — modern technology is helping people who want children have babies — even though it leads to unused embryos being discarded. In a nationally televised address, the president even praised in vitro fertilization, saying it’s a “process…which helps so many couples conceive children.”
As Michael Kinsley explained a few years ago, the logic here is seriously flawed.
Stem-cell research does not cause the creation or destruction of a single additional embryo. It uses embryos that are routinely discarded as part of IVF. Once a stem-cell line is created, it can be reproduced in the laboratory and requires no embryos at all. So Bush’s ban on federally funded stem-cell research involving embryos destroyed after Aug. 9 [2001] will not directly save any embryo’s life. His rationale is that allowing such research implies federal government approval of the creation and destruction of embryos, and thus may encourage it indirectly. Meanwhile, the government encourages and even subsidizes IVF directly, Bush praises it, and has done nothing to stop it.
Enter Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). Bush may take a logically inconsistent tack, but Brownback doesn’t. He’s against stem-cell research, and, as he explained over the weekend on “This Week,” he’s not crazy about IVF either.
Brownback: In a number of countries, they limit the number of these in vitro fertilizations from outside the womb. They say you can do this, but you have to do these one or two at a time, and so that they’re implanted in that basis, and that might be the better way to look at this.
Stephanopoulos: So you’re calling for that here?
Brownback: Well, what I’m saying here is that that’s a way you can look at that instead of going on this massive scale, what we’ve done here. And you can also see, George, I mean that these are human lives. President Bush holds in his hands a child that was a frozen embryo. This isn’t medical waste or something you discard. This is human life and it’s sacred per se, just as your life is.
This is, to Brownback’s credit, logically consistent. It’s also a completely untenable policy.
Couples have come to rely on IVF for years. Indeed, to borrow a page from Bush’s playbook, it’s easy to imagine a gathering of “snowflake”-like babies and their families, all of whom were born by way of in-vitro fertilization.
But Brownback apparently wants to turn back the clock, even if it denies some families from having children through the medical breakthrough. While Bush is resigned to discarding unused embryos instead of using them for life-saving research, Brownback is against both.
We may have fewer families having children, but for Brownback, it’s more important to limit the number of embryos created. They have may have fewer physical human qualities than a mosquito, but Brownback believes they are people, with all the rights to which people are entitled.
I can appreciate the logic of Brownback’s position. I can even comprehend Brownback’s desire to put the proverbial genie back in the bottle by pretending the modern scientific breakthroughs don’t exist. But therein lies the problem — in order for the conservative line to make sense in this debate, the right has to stand in the way of potentially life-saving research and reject a common practice that helps couples have children.
Let’s take these to the nation in an informed discussion and see which side of the debate is considered the “pro-family” position.