It’s no longer just about abortion. A huge example of the failure of the Right to Life movement to respond to the new emerging challenge against the sanctity of all life occurred in Missouri in 2006. On November 6 of that year Missourians approved a “ban on cloning.” Unfortunately, it was a fake ban that actually allowed cloning for “therapeutic” purposes. Put off by the use of the word “therapeutic,” the grassroots pro-life voter failed to discern that a human life hung in the balance. The so-called ban changed the Missouri constitution to allow for a human somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) to be “grown” for 14 days, subjected to human experimentation, and then destroyed. The pro-life base failed to understand the issue, recognize the danger, or reject this assault on human life and dignity. More dramatically, this case verified that the word “therapeutic,” when placed in front of any unethical or life-assaulting biomedical practice, assured that the vast majority of voters will condone the practice in question – in this case the destruction of children at an embryonic level. After all, so the thinking goes, the procedure must be moral if it seeks to discover cures for grandma’s Alzheimer’s or Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease or if it embodies the promise that someone like Christopher Reeve could walk again.
Destruction of human children at the embryonic level has now expanded beyond research laboratories to be enshrined as a “procreative right” of infertile couples seeking to become parents. It is not uncommon to create between 15 and 20 embryonic children at one time and then, through the process of selective reduction or the eugenic practice of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), to kill all but one or two of those children. As tragic as it may be for a couple to struggle with infertility, when did it become acceptable for a couple’s “right to parent” to supersede another’s right to life? Infertility is not a justification for murder. Neither is infertility untreatable. A pro-life couple must be fully informed of all options and consequences before embarking on a path that assures the IVF clinics and biotech industry more human subjects to sacrifice on the altar of technology.
Drug companies and biotech businesses need human subjects in order to perfect their products; steady supplies of human embryos are needed in order to conduct these lethal experiments. Because fertility clinics cannot possibly supply the large number of embryos needed, the biotech industry has resorted to a transgenic solution: combining human and animal DNA to form a human-animal hybrid known as a “chimera.”
Efforts to promote a culture of life in the 21st century require the development of a clear and consistent message to alert the culture to the dangers that lie ahead if the definition of “person” is allowed to be eroded from its historical meaning. Personhood is the clear battleground of the pro-life movement in the 21st century and emerging technologies are the new adversaries being faced.