President Bush’s speech last night was pitiful — not in his delivery so much, as in the thinking of his communications staff, which went for a largely technical talk, when a more personal one was what the moment called for. Having said that though I actually thought that Bush’s decision, politically, may have been about the best he could do in a bad situation.
Few seem to be making the point, however, that the president’s decision simply fails to meet the standard of simple logic.
Everybody realizes that thousands upon thousands of ‘extra’ embryos now sitting on ice in fertility clinics are going to be destroyed. The principled pro-life stance says that even if good could come of destroying these embryos it’s still wrong to exploit the good that could come of it. I, of course, completely disagree with this position. But it’s not an incoherent one, if you buy into the principles of the pro-life argument.
The principle is not unlike that which makes us recoil from the alleged Chinese practice of scheduling executions to maximize organ harvesting. As ethicists would say, it’s the fruit of the poison tree. It doesn’t matter that some benefit may come of it. The underlying act is wrong, tainted, impermissible and thus benefiting from it is wrong.
Again, that’s not an incoherent ethical stance. The only problem is that that stance also prevents using stem cells already harvested from embryos. Precisely what President Bush has now endorsed.