[Mb-civic] When an Embryo Isn't an Embryo - William Raspberry - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

When an Embryo Isn't an Embryo

By William Raspberry
Saturday, August 6, 2005; Page A19

Well, they've nailed Bill Frist. The Senate majority leader let himself 
get caught proclaiming both the sanctity of human life and his opinion 
that maybe we ought to expand embryonic stem cell research.

Whatever else you think of the Tennessean (and physician), doesn't his 
newest position -- that more of the embryos left over from fertility 
treatments should be made available to researchers -- paint him as 
morally inconsistent and perhaps even hypocritical?

For whatever comfort it may be for Frist, I say: me, too. Maybe most of 
us. Life's difficult questions almost always produce a measure of 
inconsistency -- otherwise they wouldn't be so difficult.

I'd like to have $100 for every American who espouses the sanctity of 
human life and still believes in the death penalty. Catch them in their 
little inconsistency and they'll say that embryonic stem cell research 
would destroy innocent life. So go ahead and ask them about their 
support of the war in Iraq, which, whatever its ever-shifting 
justifications, has taken uncounted innocent lives from the moment of 
the very first U.S. bombing raid.

<>Not for nothing did Emerson dismiss (foolish) consistency as "the 
hobgoblin of little minds."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/05/AR2005080501435.html?nav=hcmodule 

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