Hats off to President Obama:
US President Barack Obama is expected to lift restrictions on federal funding for research on new stem cell lines, according to reports.
Officials say Mr Obama will authorise the move by executive order on Monday.
President George W Bush blocked the use of any government money to fund research on human embryonic stem cell lines created after 9 August 2001.
Scientists say stem cell research will lead to medical breakthroughs, but many religious groups oppose the research.
I can see the argument for restricting late abortions. I’m not an advocate of rolling back the law, but I think this is at least a policy choice which is worth discussing.
But unimplanted, undifferentiated zygotes?
No heart, no brain. No capacity to feel pain. No plans, no hopes, no sense of self.
Certainly, they have a genetic uniqueness: but what is the moral value of that? One in three zygotes fail to implant, and we may not even know that it passed. And if we did, who would mourn, rather than shrug and try again?
The restrictions on federal funding for research on new stem cell lines were an atrocity. They constituted nothing less than the enactment of religious superstition.
How many who might have been cured, were not?
How many will now have hope?
