AMERICAN LIFE LEAGUE NEWSROOM

Embryos a ‘means to an end’?

American Life League president Judie Brown cited as "reprehensible" ethicist Arthur Caplan's comments regarding an estimated 50,000 frozen embryos in the nation's in vitro fertilization banks. Caplan is director of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

The "leftover" embryos are considered the likely source for embryo research. Caplan said in an interview with Medcast Networks, "The likelihood that they'll be turned into babies or fetuses is tiny if not zero. Sacrificing some of them...is tragic, but morally defensible."

"To speak of human embryonic babies as if they are "turned into" human beings by some magic spell or the pushing of a button is incomprehensible. They are already human beings," said Mrs. Brown. "The destruction of embryonic babies is not a morally acceptable tragedy, as so-called ethicist Arthur Caplan says. It's first degree murder of a defenseless innocent human being for the benefit of another. It seems that Mr. Caplan has dropped the word 'ethic' from ethicist."

Mrs. Brown went on to say that Congress does not have the right to sanction the deaths of innocent individuals, which is why members must uphold the ban on federally funded stem cell and embryo research.

"Let's not get caught up in some kind of political debate about Congressional funding. The human embryo is a human being at fertilization, and what that person 'turns into' happens through growth, maturity and perhaps the acquisition of the gift of wisdom—a gift that seems to have eluded the likes of Caplan and his fellow philosophical hacks."