Stem Cells, Cloning, and Abortion: Making Careful Distinctions

The current controversy over federal funding for research involving stem cells derived from very early embryos is situated between two other equally difficult issues: abortion and cloning. As Laurie Zoloth (2002) says, talk about stem cells is "directly proximate" to the abortion debate. Nonetheless, a settled position in favor of abortion rights does not necessarily lead to support for research that involves the death of embryos. Nor should opposition to reproductive cloning necessarily entail opposition to therapeutic cloning. There are important ways in which our attitudes toward research with embryonic stem cells ought to be entwined with our thinking about abortion and cloning, but there are also some very important distinctions which are getting lost in the noisy debate.

With regard to abortion, it is important to remember that the embryos from which stem cells are derived have never been and will never be within a woman's body. I have noticed recently that a lot of acquaintances, when we are talking about stem cells, say, "Well, of course I'm pro-choice," as if that settles the question of how they feel about stem cell research. But think about the most common reasons people give for being pro-choice: women have the right to decide what to do with their bodies; women can compete effectively in the workplace only if they can reliably control their fertility; only the individual woman can decide if she wants to be a parent; making abortion illegal risks women's lives; unwanted children are less likely to fare well. All of these arguments are compatible with the belief that an embryo has some moral status, even quite weighty moral status, just not weighty enough to overbalance the woman's right to make that choice. Judith Jarvis Thompson (1971), in a famous and influential article, has shown that even imagining the embryo as having the same moral status as an adult human being, does not entail that a woman is required to function as that person's life support system for nine months. Thus, legally at least, Ronald Green (2002) is not correct when he says that if an embryo were regarded as a woman's moral equivalent from the point of fertilization, a woman's interests could be overridden if they clashed with the moral claims of the embryo or fetus . Laurence Tribe (1990) reminds us that

There is . . . only one place in the law where a really significant and intimate sacrifice has been required of anyone in order to save another: the law of abortion. If you woke up with [Thomson's] hypothetical violinist attached to you, the law--and, probably, the views of morality held by most people--would permit you to free yourself of him. When the law prohibits a woman from freeing herself of the fetus that is inside her, the law appears to work a harsh discrimination against women even if fetuses count as persons. (1990, 131 [emphasis in original])

Thus, even a woman who would never have an abortion herself can be pro-choice, supporting each woman's right to make that decision for herself. Tribe joins legal scholar Guido Calabresi in making the intriguing suggestion that the Supreme Court, when deciding Roe v. Wade, unnecessarily insulted people for whom fetal personhood is a bedrock of their faith. The Court could have said, "Even if the fetus is a person, the Constitution forbids compelling a woman to carry it for nine months and become a mother" (1990, 135 [emphasis in the original]).

But when the embryo is outside the woman's body, frozen in a pipette somewhere, none of these arguments apply. A person could be firmly pro-choice, out of concern for women's liberty and well-being, and still oppose the destruction of extracorporeal embryos. At the same time, as we have seen in Congress, even some staunch pro-lifers have come...