THE FULL HALF OF THE HALF EMPTY GLASS :

The Future Is Later : The cloning fight comes down to abortion--and down to earth. (Chris Mooney, 7.15.02, American Prospect)

[T]he intellectual collapse of the Kass-Fukuyama-Krauthammer secular argument against therapeutic cloning -- which was clearly designed to extend the position's appeal beyond the antiabortion crowd -- remains the key to the Brownback bill's weak showing. Writers such as Krauthammer (and, for that matter, Republican Senator Bill Frist) repeatedly express support for the president's stem-cell decision but opposition to research cloning. That logic baffles even many anti-abortion intellectuals. As National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in response to a vast Krauthammer New Republic cover story opposing therapeutic cloning: "Krauthammer believes that [b]ecause [an embryo] is not a mere thing, it cannot be created for the sole purpose of using it in a way that destroys it. If it's already been created for some other purpose, though, as the leftover embryos in IVF clinics have been, it can be destroyed. If there's a point of principle that underlies this set of positions, I can't see it." [...]

The people who aren't confused or inconsistent in opposing cloning, though you may disagree with them, are the anti-abortionists. And as the secular anti-cloning argument collapses under its own weight, it becomes increasingly clear that, at its base, the cloning issue boils down to abortion politics by other means. As one therapeutic cloning advocate puts it, "In some offices in the Senate, this whole issue has not even been handled by the health [legislative assistant]." Rather, it was kicked upstairs because of the abortion implications. pessimistic about the species to believe this likely, but isn't it

This should not come as a surprise to anyone. After all, a Pew Research Center survey in April found that "religious commitment is the most important factor influencing attitudes of opponents of stem cell research." Why cloning opponents would be any different is hard to figure, given that both debates center on embryos.

Mr. Mooney's analysis is reasonably good here, though his attempt to make a Waterloo out of conservatives' unsurprising inability to move a cloning ban through a Democrat led pro-abortion Senate is just silly. But one wonders whether his glee over the incoherence of the secular anti-cloning position is wise. It is, of course, possible that those who don't believe in the human soul and human dignity will realize that their argument against cloning implicates both and will therefore abandon their opposition to cloning. But isn't it equally possible that they'll begin to question their secularism? If Leon Kass is right about the "wisdom of repugnance", that there are some things we need not even reason upon, we simply have a visceral feeling that they are wrong, and if people, as polls continue to indicate, do feel that things like cloning and partial birth abortion and the like are wrong, then mightn't they begin to contemplate their first principles, about the nature of human life? Mind you, we're far too pessimistic about the species to think this likely, but isn't it at least possible?
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 17, 2002 9:32 PM