What about stem cells? A Question

[Jenny AU-92 0]

Life begins at conception, abortion is murder. Period. Thats how I see it. Either your pro life or pro baby muder.

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I have a dilemma about embryos and stem cell research and so forth. No position yet, still thinking through it.

An egg and a sperm meet and the egg is fertilized. To some people, that is life.

But here's my question - that "life" is not able to grow past a certain point until it is implanted in a mother's womb. It is nothing more than a bundle of cells WITH THE POTENTIAL to create life under the appropriate circumstances - i.e., a uterus, a placenta and an umbilical cord. You cannot grow a child from an embryo by artificial means or under any other circumstances, at least not yet. So why do people consider that bundle of cells life, when it has ZERO chance of becoming a baby without a uterus to carry it? I can see why using these embryos for research is controversial, and people compare it to abortion, but I am beginning to think that the difference between the destruction of an embryo and an abortion is the difference between the POTENTIAL for life, and the EXISTENCE of life. SO I can make a distinction there.

On the other hand, you could even make the argument that God intended children to be born to parents, not created in a lab, so by following that line of thought, even IVF and other outside the body fertilization is wrong. But on the OTHER OTHER hand, what if said embryo was created for the express purpose of implantation and giving someone a much wanted child that they could not have any other way. All you did was create an artificial "blind date" so to speak, and then everything got put back right where it was supposed to be.

Here's what got me thinking - my cousin is pregnant now only because of IVF. The embryos are from her eggs and her husband's sperm. She had 4 miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy that cost her a fallopian tube and an ovary, so she while she can carry a child, she could not actually conceive normally. She is pregnant, end of discussion, and because of the HORRIBLE experience she has had even getting this far in her pregnancy (8 weeks, with muchof it on bed rest already), this will probably be their only pregnancy. But there are now ten other embryos frozen in storage. Each is the potential for another child, but not a guarantee. She actually had two implanted, but only one "took". So that failed embryo still is and always was just a bundle of cells - no life there... or was it, and now it is "dead"?

Man, lots of angles to this... :huh:

[tiger88 934]

What about someone who has embryos made and then elects not to use any of them? Are there similarities between that and an abortion? Sure seems like it to me. At least there is if you use the life begins at conception argument.

[Bottomfeeder 244]

Life begins at conception. See "Immaculate Conception." Being Pro-Life does not make me a Republican. It makes me Pro-Life, and that means I believe life begins at conception. What it doesn't mean is that I will impose my beliefs on another's circumstances through comdemnation. That is not love, that is control. There is a difference. George Bush is still a jackass.

[AURaptor 1,125]

George Bush is the 1st President to fund Stem Cell Research. He is not a jackass, sorry BF.