The issues in the embryonic stem cell research debate are the same issues that are in the abortion debate. They do not involve questions of when life begins, whether every life is sacred, or whether an embryo or fetus is “life.” Those questions are irrelevant.

The real issues are whose lives and health we value more — embryos and fetuses who may be life but are not alive, or people who are alive — and whether either group should force its beliefs on the other.

Those who argue that life is sacred from conception, even if in a laboratory dish, to natural death, and that a life must not be destroyed even to save another life, are hypocrites. Our society has decided that homicide, the killing of a human, is acceptable under some circumstances,  particularly to save our own lives or the lives or health of others (self-defense), even if the person killed proves to have been totally innocent. We call the death justifiable or excusable. Indeed, many of the same people who oppose embryonic stem cell research advocate laws to broaden self-defense and make killers less culpable.

Those of us who value the lives and health of the living, such as unwed girls or people with diabetes, Parkinson’s, or spinal cord injuries, over those of fetuses and embryos, do not impose our values on dissenters who are free not to have abortions and to reject any life-saving medical procedure. Our moral beliefs are no better or worse than theirs.

— Raymond Greenberg, Thousand Oaks