Steve Chapman, columnist for the Chicago Tribune, dispensed with the sectarian argument in his title: "You don't have to be a believer to think there is something wrong with destroying human life, however immature."
By pigeonholing the president's position as that of a "conservative Christian," cheerleaders for stem cell research hope to avoid grappling with the moral question altogether. The New York Times objects, "The president's policy is based on the belief that all embryos, even the days-old, microscopic form used to derive stem cells in a laboratory dish, should be treated as emerging human life and protected from harm. This seems an extreme way to view tiny laboratory entities that are no larger than the period at the end of this sentence ..."
Yes, it's difficult to think of human embryos ("entities") as members of the human family. But those tiny dots, no larger than the period at the end of this sentence, if implanted in a woman's womb, will not grow up to be paragraphs or essays, but full-term infant boys and girls.
An embryo does not look like a baby, but that is part of the miracle of creation (or reproduction, if you're looking at it clinically). Surely the stem cell enthusiasts can recognize, if they reflect on it, that denying the humanity of others is at the root of countless atrocities in human history.
And yes, many of these potential human beings are being destroyed at fertility clinics around the nation. That is wrong. But using them for medical research does not mitigate that wrong, it compounds it. Even if destroying embryos were certain to bring a cure for grave diseases (and it is far from certain), it is never justified to use one human being -- or even potential human being -- as a source of spare parts for another.