I'M RELYING ON YOUR COMMON DECENCY:

Lawsuit over an embryo fuels debate on when life begins: An Illinois judge allows a wrongful-death suit involving a 'pre-embryo' to go forward, deepening a moral divide. (Amanda Paulson, 3/23/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

When Alison Miller and Todd Parrish filed a wrongful-death suit for the destruction of their frozen embryos by a fertility clinic, they just wanted some compensation for their disappointed hopes.

But when a Chicago judge broke precedents by letting the suit stand last month, the decision's ramifications for reproductive technology, stem-cell research, and abortion stirred debate across the nation. [...]

Jeffrey Kahn, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, recognizes the recent wrongful death suit as one step in a broader debate. He believes the "personhood" strategies used by abortion opponents, as well as the rapid advances in technologies like ultrasound, are having a cumulative effect on public perception.

"All that rhetoric, and the ability to manipulate and understand more about developing embryos and fetuses - it pushes back in people's minds the point at which we should be thinking about this as a person and not a thing."

Just keep pushing...

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 22, 2005 6:50 PM