catholicsphere

The following “Letter to the Editor” appeared in our local paper this past Sunday, and I think its worth sharing — along with my response — because of the contradictions present in it. Hopefully it will help others to not make the same mistakes, or to help you answer them when they’re made.

[A previous writer] does not explain why a microscopic blob of undifferentiated cells is worth more than a living, suffering person.

“If allowed” to develop is not all it takes to get a person from an embryo.

Anti-abortionists like to confuse the issue by claiming a blastocyst is a person or somehow a sacred entity.

If I was well, I would want all stem-cell research to go forward, but being a ovarian cancer survivor and 10-year Parkinson’s disease prisoner, I am outraged that I have to fight not only a hideous, incurable disease, but people such as her as well.

I see letters that contain such fundamental flaws as this all the time in the “Opinion” section. The writer’s attempts to make the point that “a living, suffering person” has more worth than “a microscopic blob of undifferentiated cells”. Granted, the writer says that the previous writer does not explain why one is worth more than the other, but in doing so, she infers that “the living, suffering person” is of greater worth, and therefore the previous writer should have explained why that was not the case.

There is a problem with this statement. It claims that the worth of a human life is determined by the quality or developmental level of that life. If one holds, as this writer seems to, that the “blastocyst” is of lesser worth when compared to a “living, suffering person”, then it would follow that a “living, suffering person” is of lesser worth than a living, non-suffering person. That position may be unintentional, but it is nonetheless a logical conclusion that stems from the erroneous position the writer takes.

Anti-abortionists are not “confusing the issue” when they state that a blastocyst or a zygote or an embryo or a fetus is of worth. Rather, they are applying a consistent position on human life, respecting that life from the moment it is creating — not placing caveats on the conditions for that life to have worth.

While I think it is wholly acceptable to attempt to better one’s life, the question I have for this writer is why it is acceptable to destroy and innocent human life in order to better the life of another?

[tags]stem-cell, quality of life, abortion, catholic, church, doctrine, apologetics[/tags]