My Word for July 24, 2001

Oftentimes, the purpose of this segment is to make people mad so they will write me emails.

I now expect to be buried in email, because I think this is going to make a lot of people deeply angry.

I think Pres. Bush got some good advice from the Pope, who told him not to fund stem cell research.

Bush said he'd think about it. Here's why I think the Pope is right, and people like Christopher Reeve are wrong about this.

Remember that old line about stealing candy from a baby? That's exactly what stem cell research is, only it's even easier because that embryo has less appeal than a baby, even though it is one.

What stem cell research proposes is that people who are out of the womb — already among us, already able to speak and organize politically, and put pressure on Congress — can rob a baby, who can't speak and can't organize, of everything it needs to sustain life.

If scientists could take out the stem cells, copy them, and put the originals back... like making Xeroxes of the cells that would help cure spinal cord injuries and Parkinson's and the rest, then fine.

But once you take that embryo's stem cells, the baby that embryo could have become has been robbed of the very things that would make it a baby.

The argument goes that those embryos would be destroyed. I know that they would be, but they shouldn't be. How many thousands of women, how many thousands of couples want babies, but can't have them?

Why is it we will spend millions of government dollars counseling young women on abortion, and virtually nothing on helping those young women connect with people who would raise and love that child?

Fixing that would be compassionate conservatism.

How come all these embryos are laying around in petri dishes and not getting to a place where they could grow into a baby for people who want them?

Look ... I'm getting to the age where I might benefit from some stem cell research too. I feel for those who need it. But they have had a life. Maybe shorter than would have been fair, maybe more painful, maybe more tragic … but it was a life.

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