Judie Brown
Life News.com
December 15, 2012
In today’s twisted ethical environment, the status of the human
person increasingly depends on the opinion of the individual closest to
the microphone, the person teaching the college ethics class, the
individual making a personal “reproductive health” decision, or someone
in charge of the surgical suite. It is objectively true that nothing any
longer shocks most of us because nothing is objectively right or wrong.
Our culture is, for the most part, suffering from moral amnesia.
The qualities of the human person that might define him as such are
subject to all kinds of caveats. Taking the life of someone may or may
not be deemed a crime; using human beings for research may or may not be
acceptable. Everything depends on the slide rule of human opinion.
Recently Rebecca Taylor addressed this subject in her article, “Human
Caviar, Eating Human Embryos as a New Delicacy?” She was referring to
an article by Jewish ethicist Leon Kass entitled “The Meaning of Life—In the Laboratory.” Kass
does not argue that the human blastocyst is a human individual, per se.
Rather he flounders, suggesting that this entity at his earliest stages
of development “is not nothing.” Kass embraces the idea that this early
human possesses “potential,” but he does not define him as a human
being. He writes that the human embryo deserves our respect not because
it has rights or claims or sentience (which it does not have at this
stage), but because of what it is, now and prospectively.
http://www.lifenews.com/2012/12/14/human-embryos-as-hors-doeuvres-devaluing-human-life/
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