McCain wants to kill babies
Very Bad
Next Tuesday, millions of Americans will head to the polls to cast their vote for president of the United States of America. Voting is a remarkable historic privilege, and a weighty obligation for all Americans. But for the numerous voters that are single-issue, life-issues voters, voting also represents a life-or-death choice.
For those voters every election is a referendum on abortion — the quiet genocide. So for those voters, in one corner stands Senator Barack Obama, a pro-choice, Planned Parenthood-backed Democrat. And in the other corner is anti-abortion Senator John McCain, who has the support of every pro-life organization on record.
But what seems like a binary choice between opposition figures is not quite so simple. That’s because between the two candidates, Senator McCain alone thinks killing babies for science is morally righteous.
Part of McCain’s pro-life credentials is very orthodox. When he spoke with Rick Warren at the Saddleback forum in August, McCain was asked “What point is a baby entitled to human rights?” He responded, “Life begins at conception” which is a common refrain in the pro-life camp.
Conception takes place when an egg is fertilized. When a sperm enters the egg, to McCain and many pro-life advocates, a life begins. Fertilization (or conception) marks the beginning of a human’s life in the “life begins at conception” worldview.
But part of his beliefs veers off course from the pro-life orthodoxy. McCain supports embryonic stem cell research through his policies, advocacy and Senate votes. Embryonic stem cells are a collection of cells within a blastocyst, which is the name of a fertilized cell 8-14 days old. Because blastocysts have certain unique biological properties, many scientists believe embryonic stem cell research could lead to medical breakthroughs.
Most pro-life, “life begins at conception,” people decry embryonic stem cell research, because the research requires extracting the stem cells from the blastocyst in a process that “kills” the embryo. If that embryo is a person, then the termination is murder.
As recently as September, when taking part in the Science Debate with Obama, McCain said, “While I support federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, I believe clear lines should be drawn that reflect a refusal to sacrifice moral values and ethical principles for the sake of scientific progress.”
The notions of moral values and ethic principles dominate the entire abortion conversation. While Senator Obama is not against abortion, he does not believe abortion involves killing babies. To Obama, and most pro-choice advocates, abortion involves terminating fetuses that are not-yet-people. When pro-lifers call pro-choice politicians “baby-killers” that is not a statement of intent, rather one of result.
But for McCain to support embryonic stem cell research while believing that blastocysts are people, with full personhood, allows for only two conclusions. The first is that the Senator elected to take two oppositional stances, where there is no possible room for harmony, on sanctity of life issues. But it’s unethical and inconceivable that any policy-maker could hold such an intellectually impossible belief.
So the second, and only remaining, conclusion is that John McCain believes science is more valuable than life to the extent he wants to aggressively fund the murder of babies for research.
Tags: McCain
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Will/Can you please substantiate this claim?
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Hey Rob - great question. I’ve added links above that I’ll repost here:
http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id=42
http://www.johnmccain.com/actioncenter/print.aspx?r=628776b7-e0dd-478f-b554-2757666018ab&t=ceb20ad6-f634-43ef-aedd-f5b59c4e02d7
http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=BCBA48B1-DFA7-4A5D-9FC7-0D8DF5B415BF
That’s not a sum total of the links, just some of the more clear examples of his belief. You may need to search for “embryonic” to find the relevant quotes, etc.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:02 am
So I have read (some in detail, some not so much) the links you have posted above. I fail to see how you draw the conclusion to McCain alone. I don’t see why the title shouldn’t be called “McCain and Obama want to kill babies,” as they both seem to hold very similar positions regarding stems cell research.
Take from the Science Debate:
Obama’s stance
I strongly support expanding research on stem cells. I believe that the restrictions that President Bush has placed on funding of human embryonic stem cell research have handcuffed our scientists and hindered our ability to compete with other nations. As president, I will lift the current administration’s ban on federal funding of research on embryonic stem cell lines created after August 9, 2001 through executive order, and I will ensure that all research on stem cells is conducted ethically and with rigorous oversight.
McCain’s stance
While I support federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, I believe clear lines should be drawn that reflect a refusal to sacrifice moral values and ethical principles for the sake of scientific progress. Moreover, I believe that recent scientific breakthroughs raise the hope that one day this debate will be rendered academic. I also support funding for other research programs, including amniotic fluid and adult stem cell research which hold much scientific promise and do not involve the use of embryos. I oppose the intentional creation of human embryos for research purposes and I voted to ban the practice of “fetal farming,” making it a federal crime for researchers to use cells or fetal tissue from an embryo created for research purposes.
They seem awfully similar to me. What do you think?
November 4th, 2008 at 2:25 am
Rob - did you miss this part of the post?
The point is that, while their stances on embryonic stem cell research ARE very similar, McCain believes they are lives at that point. Obama doesn’t. That makes McCain’s stance really scary…
November 4th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Ahhh… Interesting. I see. I missed the point of the post. Has Obama or his campaign said that they don’t believe that life starts at conception?
November 4th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I can’t find anything on when Obama definitely thinks life begins.
But at the Saddleback forum, Obama glibly answered the question of when life begins with “[it’s] above my pay grade.” It was a lame way to answer such an important question, but coupled with his many references to “pre-viable” fetuses in the discussions, it’s most likely he pegs the beginning of personhood around the time a baby can survive outside the womb.
May 25th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
I am always against abortion because it is a sin to kill an innocent child.*`”