The president attended the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast this morning in DC, and addressed his ongoing (and alleged) desire to establish a “culture of life” in America. From the transcript:
“Renewing the promise of America begins with upholding the dignity of human life. (Applause.) In our day, there is a temptation to manipulate life in ways that do not respect the humanity of the person. When that happens, the most vulnerable among us can be valued for their utility to others — instead of their own inherent worth. We must continue to work for a culture of life — where the strong protect the weak, and where we recognize in every human life the image of our Creator. (Applause.)”
Obviously, in light of this week’s Senate vote on expanding federally-funded stem-cell research, this was an easy applause line. But it’s also a reminder of how entirely vacuous the president’s ideology really is. Indeed, there’s every reason to believe that Bush doesn’t even believe his own remarks.
Now, I suppose the easy knock on Bush’s “culture of life” is to note the hypocrisy. If the president was so concerned about the dignity of human life, he wouldn’t pursue a failed war policy in Iraq. If he wanted to promote a culture that honors the worth of humanity, he wouldn’t take pride in his record of executing people. If he were committed to “protecting the weak,” he wouldn’t place tax cuts for millionaires at the top of his domestic agenda. If he really wanted to promote a culture of life, he’d support potentially life-saving medical research, instead of hampering it to cater to the demands of his party’s base.
Ultimately, though, that’s too easy. Let’s instead consider the president’s comments at face value. Bush said he rejects the “temptation to manipulate life,” an obvious reference to stem-cell research. He condemned the notion of viewing “the most vulnerable among us” in the context of “their utility to others,” another obvious stem-cell reference.
But this doesn’t make any sense. Or, at a minimum, doesn’t comport with the president’s own policy.
There’s occasionally confusion over the specifics of the stem-cell debate. For the most part, this is not a conflict between those who would ban the research and those who support it. If it were, the debate would be easier and more straightforward.
Instead, the president, when creating his stem-cell policy in 2001, tried to strike a muddled compromise, whereby the government would continue to fund stem-cell research on existing lines, but restrict any further advances in the field. Now, Bush was clearly lying about the available lines for research, but let’s put that aside for a moment.
You probably see the problem in the president’s logic. If Bush were convinced that the research is a morally repugnant “manipulation” of life, he could advocate banning the research altogether. Indeed, if Bush is convinced that embryos are people, as he apparently claims, he’d have to try and ban the research. As far as his ideology is concerned, this would be mass murder on a grand scale. Instead, the president merely asks researchers to try and save lives blindfolded with one arm tied behind their backs.
For that matter, these embryos that need protection within the Bush “culture of life” are from fertility clinics — which the president praises. As Michael Kinsley explained several months ago, there’s a disconnect in the logic.
In any particular case, fertility clinics try to produce more embryos than they intend to implant. Then — like the Yale admissions office (only more accurately) — they pick and choose among the candidates, looking for qualities that make for a better human being. If you don’t get into Yale, you have the choice of attending a different college. If the fertility clinic rejects you, you get flushed away — or maybe frozen until the day you can be discarded without controversy.
And fate isn’t much kinder to the embryos that make this first cut. Usually several of them are implanted in the hope that one will survive. Or, to put it another way, in the hope that all but one will not survive. And fertility doctors do their ruthless best to make these hopes come true.
In short, if embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility clinics are death camps — with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics. No one who truly believes in the humanity of embryos could possibly think otherwise….
Proponents of stem cell research like to emphasize that it doesn’t cost the life of a single embryo. The embryos killed to extract their stem cells were doomed already. But this argument gives too much ground, and misses the point. If embryos are human beings, it’s not okay to kill them for their stem cells just because you were going to kill them, or knowingly let them die, anyway. The better point — the killer point, if you’ll pardon the expression — is that if embryos are human beings, the routine practices of fertility clinics are far worse — both in numbers and in criminal intent — than stem cell research. And yet, no one objects, or objects very loudly. President Bush actually praised the work of fertility clinics in his first speech announcing restrictions on stem cells.
It appears the president simply hasn’t thought this through. Until he does, his “culture of life” rhetoric is shallow and meaningless.