D-Day, the Enola Gay and Stem Cells

What do D-Day, the Enola Gay and stem cell research have in common? More than you might think. Watching President Bush rationalize his pledge to veto the stem cell research bill now up in Congress actually made me think back to that remarkable opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. The first wave or two of our troops landing on Omaha Beach were sent by their commanders knowing that many, if not most, would die to enable the successive waves to establish the beachhead necessary to take the higher ground. The commanders made a moral choice-- it was necessary for some to die in order for the larger goal to prevail.

Harry Truman had to make the same kind of moral choice when he ordered the nuclear bombs to drop on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, led by the bomber named the Enola Gay. Truman knew that many innocent lives, including women and children, would be taken in the process-- but more lives would be saved by avoiding prolongation of the war and a land invasion of Japan. History has not condemned that excruciating decision.

The larger point is this: every president, every leader makes choices about life that involve tradeoffs; those choices, in war and in health research embrace the concept that the deliberate and direct loss of some lives in order to save others, or in order to preserve great principles like liberty, are morally acceptable and even morally required.

George W. Bush has made many such choices, in Afghanistan and Iraq among other places. So his explanation for rejecting the House plan for stem cell research, one that would use existing embryos in fertility clinics that otherwise will be destroyed, that the loss of even one embryo that could theoretically become a live human being is unacceptable, is empty.

Let us accept the assumption that these embryos, clumps of a few cells, are in fact life. Despite the reality that nearly all will be destroyed anyhow, they are certainly potential life. The tradeoff here is a handful of these potential lives for the promise of saving tens of thousands, even millions of existing, vibrant hyman beings from extended agony and death. Compared to the D-Day and Enola Gay decisions, this one should be easy, especially for those who proclaim themselves as pro-life.