It’s an interesting point that the performance of late-term abortions makes the distinction between the abortion of embryos that don’t possess fully formed brains and nervous systems, and those that do extremely dubious. At the moment in the UK abortions cannot be performed on fetuses that are over a certain number of weeks old. I can remember that there was a campaign a little while ago to lower the age at which abortions could be performed, but I have a feeling – though I’m certainly not sure – that this was defeated.

As for the scenario where even aborted fetuses could be successfully brought to term by the kind of technology depicted by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World , I have a feeling that even there, there would be objections, quite apart from the moral problems created by the very existence of the technology itself.

Kangas does acknowledge this briefly but moves on to say that the debate must continue, though I suspect what he means is, is that the issue is settled for the moment, and he cares not to change his mind unless some earth-shattering medical advance or discovery is made.

Even at that, if we’re aborting almost full-term babies, it is unlikely some would be moved by even the ability to harbor and grow a non-uteral fetus from blastocyst stage to “birth” (a la some “Brave New World” dystopian scenario).

THAT is exactly the problem here, though for his part, while Kangas mentioned it, one suspects that the late Kangas would support abortion up to the moment of birth a la “partial birth” scenarios and others, which in itself (since he’d not be alone among secularists in this thinking) calls into question about WHY even bother making distinctions in “mere embryos” that have no true brain function to speak of vs. fetuses that can, with some help, make it after modern albeit expensive neonatal care and much hand-wringing for the parents.

The inherent problem with Kangas’ viability line would be that medicine continues to move the line. Premature babies do survive with various degrees of medical help. If those procedures are to be abandoned for viability sake, how far should we go?

I watched a show called ‘Ghost Adventures’ over the weekend. (this is the one CJ recently filmed with Beast but not his episode) They spoke of the spirit of a child killed by flu. Her death occured less than 100 years ago. Would Kangas advocate removing flu remedies from store shelves?

Human viability is and will continue to be a very fluid and blurry line.

It seems to me that if you take Kangas’ views to its logical conclusion, then it would demand the removal of such basic procedures to keep the patient alive and healthy after surgery, and indeed the closure of intensive care units, where patients require a large degree of medical intervention in order to stay alive until they recover.

A doctor at medical school was instructing his class on abortion and the ethics involved. To demonstrate that one does not know that an unborn child will not only be normal, but a genius who contributes vastly to human culture, he presented his students with this problem.

A woman is married to an alcoholic and abusive husband. He has infected her with syphilis. Several of her children have already been born with the disease, and now she is pregnant again. Should she have an abortion?

At least one of the students said ‘yes’. The lecturer looked at them, and said, ‘Then, my friend, you would have killed Beethoven’.

Which is exactly your point, Murray.

I have to say that I think you’re probably right about the creation of the frozen embryos, and that it would probably have been much better if they hadn’t been created. However, this is easy for me to say as, unlike you, I haven’t had to deal with infertile couples, so I can’t pretend to have the same experience with the problem as you have.

I said “Serious war wounds that in ages past would have killed the average person are not reparable with full recovery and treatment schedules”

Meant to say ARE NOW reparable.

Make that NOW, not NOT!

….as they ARE reparable.

Just ask any lucky American or British soldier from either of the Gulf Wars!

For better or maybe worse, the world-yes, the secular one, DOES expect the Christian community to rise above the fray and go with the Christian choice–which they will of course mock all the same as the other more pragmatic choices.

But then no one said it would be easy, else we’d have clear and good reception on a whole host of issues with which Christians and the World disagree.

Also, there is the thorny matter not address before but that I meant to bring up from the late liberal activist Steve Kangas, in his answer to critics about abortion, called the “viability vs. survivability” issue, for short.

Here Kangas attempts to say that while it might be true that fetuses might be able to survice outside the womb with special medical care, this is not the same as true “viability”–the V-word is his demarcation level for what constitutes a true human being. In other words, in normal temperatures and contexts and with a mother to help, a full term baby born is totally “viable” and needs not help from lung machines, respirators, blood transfusions, etc, etc.

This is generally NOT the case with premature babies and those born prior to say, about 26 weeks (full term being about 39 weeks).

Kangas explains that Viability is what Mother nature intended for survivability, wheras survivibility in the human context today is the intervention of medical science to the extreme and often expense (to society) degree.

My problem with Kangas’ argument (and Kangas elsewhere acknowledges this can be a problem as medical science evolves) is that MANY people could fall under the rug and end up dead if “mother nature” has her often ugly way.

Serious war wounds that in ages past would have killed the average person are not reparable with full recovery and treatment schedules. Serious illnesses that wiped out multitudes of children are now treatable, with no doubt more on the way. Babies that are premature? Does Kangas say these are not human then, since they have to be placed in an incubator??

I remember reading in college about some medical “ethicists” worrying out loud about the high social and even genome cost (weakening the human gene pool) of having expensive treatments made available to the weakest members of society, notably at both ends of the age spectrum, the eldery of course no longer being “productive” members of society, and then the premature and feeble.

But if we are talking what mother nature wants, are a couple of things not to be kept in mind here? In nature, even the strongest can fall to disease and war wounds, for example. And a human dropped off at the north pole is more vulnerable to cold and polar bears than even the simplest of other creatures. Where is the true demarcation line, then?

Many humans have begun life and pulled through despite horrific odds stacked against them.

Is that line then “Merely what Kangas and abortion supporters deem as unworthy life?”

That case could theoretically be made for mass murderers far more so than premature children who need respirators and constant monitoring and at least have potential. Yet the Liberal mind has no problem using the public dime to fund the food and housing and clothing and cable TV for the murderer more so than the electric chair.

Christian: I do not believe that God will view the destruction of frozen embryos the same as “Thou shalt not kill”. God is probably more upset that the procedure was created in the first place. I understand the desire to conceive by any means possible but frozen embryos may be too close to playing God. Ending this practice, including those embryos already created by it may be the Christian way.

Practical: Frozen embryos are a business. We may discuss it in ethical, emotional terms but, it is a business. Eventually all businesses fail. Usually the products would be sold cheaply or auctioned off to the public. That is not an option with embryos. Eventually, regretfully they will be destroyed.

Emotionally I am in a different place WT and BR. I have dealt personally with infertility and with disabilities that ESC might fix. My opinions are not nescessarily what I want but they are what I feel to be correct.

BR as far as I know Anna Quinlin I (a Catholic, interestingly) is the only one to MY knowledge who for her “side” of this moral issue has stated the “A-word” in such stark terms. Others deny this, and I can only guess at the motives for the connection elsewhere. My only proof so far is that there seems to at least be some ideological connection between “choice” (abortion) proponents and those who favor expanding federal funding of ESC research here in the U.S.

For the most part it seems the only real connection, though I think at some deeper level the connection would be the devaluing of life in their mind’s eye. If you can justify abortion to almost the day of birth, then certainly the embryonic version of life, where the proponents point out there is not so much as a brain but rather merely chemical relays present at most, is of lesser importance.

Murry perhaps I need to ask the question I had earlier in another way, and if you or BR answered it in part please forgive me; however, we STILL are left with the dilemma of WHAT to do with all those embryos still frozen, most of which will most assuredly NOT be adopted by loving parents. The Bush administration made much of the so-called snowflake babies (those brought from frozen embryo status to being implanted), but this is rare….