Vivisecting Human Embryos and the First Amendment

"We ask our friends and supporters in Massachusetts and all over this nation to give this government back to the people."

Sen. John McCain, at a July 10 press conference in Boston, urging passage of a House bill similar to his Senate campaign finance "reform" proposal

"Evil is seldom the result of some one, single, conscious decision. We grow into it. Until the conscience is nicely calloused, and no impediment at all. So long as we don't call things by their right names, we're safe. It's only when we do - - a baby, the unborn, a human life - - that we are in danger of awaking."

Pulitzer Prize-winner, Paul Greenberg

When I first sat down to write a draft of this editorial, the wire services were running the initial stories about a press conference that had just been held in Boston run by media darlings Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold and Congressmen Chris Shays and Marty Meehan. In language as wrongheaded as it was hyperbolic, Sen. McCain sternly announced that democracy itself was at stake in the battle over campaign finance "reform."

But, on second thought, Sen. McCain is on to something. Only, as usual, he has it backwards. The threat to the underpinnings of our democracy comes from the self-described "reforms."

Granted, for every inch of media criticism of McCain-Feingold and Shays-Meehan, there are several yards worth of uncritical hosannas. Yet in this case quality far outpaces quantity. A couple of examples will suffice.

Columnist Charles Krauthammer, writing about McCain-Feingold, said, "It is hard to think of a more frontal assault on the First Amendment." A "reeking mess...an unsupportable, unconstitutional assault on the rights to speak and associate freely," wrote an indignant Michael Kelly. Even Washington Post columnist David Broder, ordinarily solidly in the "reform" camp, observed, "[T]he authors of the Senate bill have gone way too far in restricting freedom of speech."

Literally, moments after I wrote these first few paragraphs, I learned that the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine had leapfrogged the debate over using stem cells lethally culled from "spare" embryos left over at places just like the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine. In a press release, the institute proudly announced that it had specifically created new human embryos with donated sperm and eggs from whom they would cull stem cells. (See page 5 for more details.)

And then, the following day, news that a Massachusetts firm has admitted that it is cloning human embryos for the express purpose of harvesting their stem cells.

What do these three items have in common? If you were to sit down to brainstorm what would be the ultimate example of the slippery slope, you'd be hard pressed to surpass these two, both for the sharpness of the descent and the Kafkesque, 1984-like use of language.

For instance, if you think about it for a moment, "reform" that muzzles free speech is an oxymoron. And ponder these ramifications. NRLC, its affiliates, and all other 501(c)(4) advocacy corporations (but not PACs) would be prohibited from funding TV or radio ads that even mention the name of a local member of Congress for 30 days before a state's congressional primary and for another 60 days before the general election (or runoff).

Referring to Shays-Meehan, NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson pointed out, "The sections on 'coordinated' activity would create a web of trip wires that would place incumbent lawmaker and advocacy groups at great legal risk for engaging in cooperative or parallel activities in support of common legislative goals." What constitutes "coordination" is impossibly vague, and therefore threatens everything, no matter how innocent.

Vivisecting young human embryos, gruesome as this is in its own right, is also establishing a precedent that eventually not just pro-lifers will rue. There will be a new benchmark. Whenever we get caught up in a frenzy of unsubstantiated promises - - as is the case for fetal stem cells' supposedly miraculous curative power - - the question will not be whether we will kill one class of human beings for the benefit of a "superior" class of human beings, but rather who will be the next "source."

This really is dangerous, dangerous stuff. If the innards of early human embryos are wonderful "source material," supposedly ideal for curing, say, Parkinson's, what if scientists tell us that they have discovered that much older embryos/fetuses are nothing less than living repositories which they tout as a cure for cancer?

William Buckley, the famous publisher and columnist, taught me a very valuable lesson eons ago. Sometimes when you agree to proposition "A," you really are powerless to stop "B."

If, as some insist, the human embryos "left over" at fertility clinics are not "human beings" or "persons" because they are either insignificant or (alternatively) have never been implanted, what happens when a baby can be created in a tube and grown, like a crop, in an artificial womb? Have we learned nothing about what happens to "non-persons"?

The lone redeeming feature of both debate over stem cell research and, believe it or not, Jack Kevorkian is that they bring to the forefront one of the most scary undertows in our culture. Kevorkian, long before he became "Dr. Death," was obsessed with experimenting on prisoners who were scheduled to be executed. And why not? They were "going to die anyway."

Ditto, we're told, for "spare" embryos at fertility clinics, who would never be implanted. (This is not necessarily true. See story, page one.) Ghoulish as the Jones Insti-tute example mentioned above is, no sooner is this atrocity justified than the next - - and even worse abuse of human rights - - comes racing down the pike: Let's create human life to experiment on. And then let's clone human beings to extract their stem cells!

There is no climbing back up these ravines. The time - - the only time - - to stop it is before it begins.

dave andrusko can be reached at dha1245@juno.com