A reader of my previous post expressing gratitude that President Bush vetoed the stem cell bill writes:
I REALLY REALLY don't see the 'morality' in being opposed to stem-cell research. My friends' 6 year old boy who has cancer happens to find this veto very disheartening.
Save your breath, I already know what your all going to say. I've heard all the objections. Just try not to be so rigid with this subject in public. You never know what illnesses people are facing and the depression they cause. They are going through enough pain, they don't need Christians singing a victory song that their disease will remain uncurable.
Christians oppose embryonic stem cell research (ESCR), not adult stem cell research, because we do not believe it's right to kill a child, even a very, very, very young child. Or rather, especially a very, very, very young child. Such a child is the very picture of helplessness and must depend upon the law for protection, not being able to do a thing to defend himself. And the younger, the more helpless he is.
So to kill such a child and use his body to do research that may, one day, lead to the cure of another child's illness is the worst form of oppression--hugely worse than simple chattel slavery.
Such tactics may salve the consciences of those who want their unborn child dead and are pleased his death may have some redemptive value through contributing to scientific research. Such tactics may also be advocated by parents of a living child who has an incurable disease in the hope that a cure for their child's disease may be found by the experiments that will be carried out on the aborted child's body. But contemplating the first child's murder, Christians come to a screeching halt and say "No!"
Christians don't kill one child in the hope of finding a cure for another child. Ever. And civilized states don't do it either.
Even if the child's murder were directly curative, Christians don't murder one defenseless child to heal another. Ever. And civilized states don't do it either.
It's completely understandable that parents go to any length to end their child's suffering, but it's the privilege of the parents' friends, relatives, and brothers and sisters in Christ to come alongside them in their time of weakness, reminding them, "Thus says the Lord: Thou shalt not murder."
Scripture says "Greater love has no man than this, that a man will lay down his life for his friend." Not "Greater love has no man than this: that a man will lay down the life of his friend's child for the sake of his own child."