The Chosen Frozen

With the first veto of his presidency, President Bush discovered his "moral line" to spare innocent life. At his news conference, Bush explained this bill, using unwanted frozen embryos for stem cell research, was against his beliefs on the sanctity of human life. Bush was quoted as saying, "...crossing this line would be a mistake, and once crossed we would find it almost impossible to turn back.'' This is a breakthrough, for most lines between life and death are not so easily drawn but are like a series of curly-Q loops, much like a crazy straw. Could this be the beginning of a president ascending to untangle other thorny moral issues and to spare more innocent life? Like the lives of Lebanese and Israeli civilians being snuffed out on a daily basis?

With Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on hold for another week before diplomatic strategies can be implemented, the Israeli government and the Hezbollah militia are free to rack-up the body count in the region. But isn't Israel allowed to defend itself from terror with such overpowering force? Aren't the members of Hezbollah justified in meeting such force with continued bombing from the other side? And how many people need to die before Bush intervenes? Are we waiting for a magic number? Or maybe a magically distinct moral line? Perhaps the best way to stop the daily killings would be to send in the Chosen People - no, not those singled out by Yahwey or Allah - but the American human embryos - The Chosen Frozen.

If Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could enlist an army of frozen embryos to take control of the Lebanon-Israel border, Bush would have to halt the bombing. After all, the Chosen Frozen is a unique bunch of purely innocent, designed beings. Their special status elevates them above all life because they cannot feel, cannot think and cannot speak to defend themselves from extinction. They are truly helpless and in need of a heavenly father to protect them.

Imagine the border dotted with pink and baby blue balloons each one suspend by a nitrogen canister holding an American blastocyst. Symbols of American goodwill, they could be given as gifts to deservingly married (heterosexual) Lebanese and Israeli couples, respectively. Bush can spread freedom in the Middle East with fertilized seed. He could win the peace with Weapons of Mass Reproduction. Surely deploying American human embryos in this twisted haymaker would halt the fighting by taking both ends of the moral issue and pulling them into a crisp, taught line. Because our president believes only these truly innocent, unborn, unseen clusters of cells deserve unconditional mercy. Shouldn't such held sanctity for human life be everywhere?

Obviously, no one wants the death toll (or the price of a barrel of crude) to get too high. No one wants to find himself allowing the sacrifice of innocent life when they had the power, ability and the almighty authority to prevent it. Because that might be a line, once crossed, we would find almost impossible to turn back.