Most people do not understand what the stem-cell debate is really about. It is not an argument about when life begins, for it is a simple and uncontroversial biological fact that a human life begins when an embryo is created. The real question is a profoundly ethical one: Is a microscopic proto-human, with no self-awareness and no resemblance to us, morally equal to walking, talking human beings?
For much of human history, it was a brutal fact that people were NOT created equal; the wealthy and the strong dominated the weak with no qualms, assuming that this was the natural order of things. But in the Declaration of Independence, our country’s Founders asserted a revolutionary idea — that the youngest and the oldest, the weakest and the strongest, all of us, simply by virtue of our common humanity, are in some basic and inalienable way equals.
This essentially liberal proposition is now being challenged by biotechnology, aided and abetted by our natural impulse to help the sick. But if we exploit and kill human embryos for humanitarian ends, we will have decided that some lives are worth more than others. Making that choice will require us to sacrifice our highest ideals.