Stem cells and human lives

President Bush was quoted today on public radio saying that when we consider embryonic stem cell research, we should remember that we are dealing with "real human lives."

The only real human lives we are dealing with are the lives of people who could be helped by treatments that might be derived from research on stem cells. The embryos themselves are only potential human lives. An embryo is a cluster of living cells that can become a real human life only if a woman nurtures it for nine months, feeding it through her own body, carrying it about on her own legs, and delivering it at the end of that time in agonizing labor.

To equate an embryo with a real human life is to utterly devalue what a woman gives to turn one into the other. I mean, let's compare the contributions of the male and the female to the creation of a living newborn child. The man experiences a few minutes of sheer pleasure and then he can go away. The woman bears the child for nine months, as above, with morning sickness, backache, food cravings, all that good stuff. But as far as Bush is concerned, as soon as the man has done his "job," that's it, it's done, we have a "real human life." But that's Bush.