We thank the women who made the choice to help improve the human condition through their<\/em> tissue donation. We applaud the people who make this work possible and those who use these materials to advance human health. We are outraged by those who debase these women, this work, and Planned Parenthood by distorting the facts for political ends.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Technical point: The tissue in question isn’t that of the woman. It is<\/em>—was—the fetus’s. Whatever one thinks of fetal-tissue research, obtaining the specimens isn’t the same as creating a cell line from an excised tumor. Moreover, utility does not justify all things. Good ethics and respect for the intrinsic value of human life are integral to a science sector supported widely by the public.<\/p>\n

The journal’s editorialist is just one small example of how highly ideological our medical intelligentsia have become and how increasingly accepting of morally objectionable practices. To understand why this might be, why venerable medical and bioethics journals are generally supportive of controversial policy agendas such as assisted suicide and medical rationing, we have to explore the ideas that now animate the field of bioethics.<\/p>\n

Most bioethicists, at least those without a modifier like “conservative” in front of the term, are reluctant to clearly define the boundaries that designate when human life becomes morally relevant. That leaves some of the most extreme voices in the public advocacy driver’s seat. Thus a predominant view in bioethics endorses an invidiously discriminatory approach to valuing life based on each individual’s measurable cognitive capacities.<\/p>\n

In this view, those who are demonstrably, say, self-aware over time or able to value their own lives are deemed “persons.” Those insufficiently mature—embryos, fetuses, infants—or those who have lost those capacities, due to illnesses or injuries such as Terry Schiavo or Alzheimer’s patients, are denigrated as “non-persons.” Making matters worse, so-called human non-persons are held to have lesser worth than the rest of us.<\/p>\n

Not only that, but under this philosophical construct, non-persons don’t have the right to life. Thus, the right to abortion is not only about protecting a woman’s right to do as she pleases with her own body; rather, abortion is also acceptable because the fetus is not deemed a person. And, indeed, for many in the field, this means that infanticide should also be allowed, and for the same reasons as abortion.<\/p>\n

Here’s just one example. A few years ago, an article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics<\/em> caused a public furor when it advocated for the propriety of what it called “after-birth abortion.” The authors inflate the scope of personal autonomy that protects what is often blandly called the “woman’s right to choose”—choose what<\/em> usually goes unsaid—to a putative right not to be personally inconvenienced<\/em> by an infant or the child she will later become. Thus, since an abortion can be obtained for convenience purposes and<\/em> since newborns are no more persons than are fetuses, babies should also be killable, and one presumes harvestable, just as the unborn are abortable.<\/p>\n

Here is how the authors describe their argument:<\/p>\n