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Culture of strife: both stem cell research and embryo adoption destroy the building blocks of life. So why do many religious conservatives criticize one and champion the other?

Article Excerpt
When Congress threatened to loosen limits on stem cell research earlier this year, the Bush administration called in the snowflakes. Rescued as embryos from fertility clinic freezers by families who had "adopted" them and brought them to parturition (legally speaking, children have to be born before they can be adopted), these previously frozen test-tube babies were invited to the White House this past May for some well-publicized cuddling with the president. Wearing "Former Embryo" T-shirts, the adorable thawed tots allowed the administration to make a point about the hundreds of thousands of spare embryos currently chilling in liquid nitrogen at clinics around the nation, many of them destined to be thrown out or, if new legislation is passed, destroyed in taxpayer-financed research. "Rather than discard these embryos created during in vitro fertilization," observed President Bush, "or turn them over for research that destroys them, these families have chosen a life-affirming alternative." [paragraph] The fate of frozen embryos has become one of our most pressing public issues, central not only to the debate over stem cell research but also to a wider culture war between science and faith. To religious conservatives intent on building a "culture of life," these microscopic bundles of eight or so undifferentiated cells are cryogenically suspended human lives crying out for our protection. To many other Americans across a wide ideological spectrum--from liberal bioethicists to conservative Republicans like Senate majority leader Dr. Bill Frist--the frozen embryos are full genetic blueprints for human beings sadly destined never to develop but capable of saving countless lives. Religious conservatives have scrambled to throw embryo adoption into the fray because it seems to provide living proof that each one of these frozen souls, certain to perish if its stern cells are extracted for research, is already on the way to becoming a camera-ready kid. In the...

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