What kind of world do we want to live in?

A most appropriate question on this day, when the Supreme Court ruled that Oregon's laws allowing physicians to write prescriptions intended to cause the death of patients.

This time, the question is asked by Kathryn Hinsch,the founder of the Womens Bioethics Project, in her "guest column" in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. The subject of the column is the fraud of Korean veterinarian, Hwang Suk Wu, who falsely claimed to have cloned human embryos in order to harvest stem cells. She notes the temptation to "play G_d" with biotechnology and concludes that the decisions are "too important to leave to the bioethicists, the scientists or the politicians."


It may seem that each day brings a new crisis for those of us who view human life as something to be valued and protected, whether the human is very young and may not even be born yet, whether conceived naturally or by the use of complicated technology and in a lab, or very sick or very old, and dependent on even more medicine and technology.

There's only one subject, not many. Cloning, harvesting of embryos for their stem cells, abortion, euthanasia and so-called "physician-assisted suicide" are all basically the same thing: the division of humans into those who will be protected by society and those who will not. Once we agree that our fundamental principle is that human life is to be protected from deliberate killing by others and that humans should not be used for the benefit of others without consent and benefit to the one being used, we can see that all the crises are actually only one crisis.

I agree with Ms. Hinsch that it is time for each of us to have a voice.

It is time to call, write or email your Federal and State legislators, demanding protection of human life, at all stages of life.

Edited January 27, 2010