Do mosquitoes have more dignity than human embryos?

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Oct 29, 2003

George Neumayr delivers a well-aimed blast at Michael Kinsley on the subject of human embryo research:

Whenever liberals want to justify an indefensible act -- such as using human embryos as experimental fodder for their research -- they twist language to obscure the nature of the act. If they want to squash a human embryo like an insect, they compare it to a mosquito. If they want to starve to death a comatose woman, they call her a vegetable.

The brutality of liberalism is neatly concealed inside calls for compassion. And it is true that liberals do feel great compassion -- for themselves. Bush, says Kinsley, is "insulting to the people (including me) whose lives could be saved or redeemed by the medical breakthroughs Bush’s stem cell policy is preventing."

Bush’s resistance to a medical culture in which human embryos are treated as guinea pigs for research will save and redeem lives. But not the lives Kinsley considers important. His life is important; the lives of human embryos aren’t.

Liberals normally hate Republican presidents for what they see as a lack of moral concern toward the defenseless. But Kinsley encourages liberals to hate this one for extending too much concern to defenseless human embryos.