Visual aids don't come much cuter, said Peter S. Canellos in The Boston Globe. Just as the House of Representatives was voting recently to expand federal funding for research on frozen embryos—a bill the president has vowed to veto—Bush 'œcuddled babies and rubbed the heads of toddlers at a White House reception.' The youngsters, in T-shirts reading 'œformer embryo' or 'œthis embryo was not discarded,' are products of the 'œSnowflakes' program, which encourages women to 'œadopt' the frozen embryos left over from in vitro fertility treatments and carry them to term. Many scientists, and a growing majority of the public, think leftover embryos should be available for use in stem-cell research to find treatments for dread diseases. But the president, along with many conservative Christians, believes that each embryo is its own human being, as unique as a snowflake. 'œThere's no such thing as a spare embryo,' said Bush.
Let's follow that logic through, said William Saletan in Slate.com. Only 2 percent of the 400,000 embryos frozen in fertility clinics have been put up for adoption. If the rest of these microscopic clumps of cells are 'œreal human beings,' as the president called them, then a whole city of babies is being held hostage. And if the 'œparents' won't turn them over to good Christian couples, they should lose any control over what happens to these embryos. After all, 'œpro-lifers don't think anyone, including a parent, has the right to doom an embryo to death.' These embryos, pro-lifers say, 'œbelong to the human family'—and thus could be seized by the government. How's that for a chilling vision of the future?
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