This is an interesting argument from the Catholic legal blog Mirror of Justice to the effect that destroying embryos for research is worse than abortion.

Of course, the argument won’t cut any ice with you if you don’t think that the embryo has some kind of moral standing, but I’m not particularly interested in revisiting that argument since I suspect most of us know where we stand on that. But leaving that aside, I think the author makes a powerful case.

As Kim discussed the other day, abortion often involves tragic conflicts and it’s difficult to see any legal arrangement that doesn’t involve an injustice toward someone. But ESCR involves intentionally turning nascent human life into a commodity, instrumentalizing it for use by others.

Duke ethicist Amy Laura Hall has pointed out that ESCR promises to be big business, and it’s far from clear that, even if we accept the utilitarian argument for ESCR to treat serious chronic and/or life-threatening diseases, there’s no guarantee that it won’t be extended to more trivial uses:

A multimillion-dollar medical industry surrounds the supposedly simple “which of these two entities matters more?” approach. Endorsing ESCR means endorsing an elaborate, systematic, routine industry of embryo production and destruction, an industry not likely to limit itself to therapies for chronic disease. To suggest that we will not also see the emergence of more generally applicable, and more widely lucrative, products defies common sense.

To those who aren’t moved by appeals to the intrinsic value of the embryo, Hall offers a feminist-inspired argument:

With other feminists, I believe that we must consider the likelihood a) that countries with less stringent guidelines for ova donation will proceed more efficiently with research; b) that countries in the one-third world will likely benefit from research using ill-gotten gametes; and c) that advocates for ESCR will argue that, for the sake of justice, the U.S. needs to implement more liberal guidelines for gamete procurement so as to avoid the injustice inherent in situation b).

The guidelines by which research groups in the U.S. have had to proceed were developed to protect vulnerable populations in the U.S. from one of the most intimate forms of exploitation. Relatively privileged Christians in the U.S. must consider the likelihood that the procurement of requisite ova will follow the predictable patterns of women’s labor in an exploitative global market. A moral analysis of ESCR, as it is likely to proceed, therefore requires reckoning not only with the lives of those who suffer from juvenile diabetes or Parkinson’s, but also with the specter of women sacrificing their bodily integrity for our sakes.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think you need to ascribe full moral personhood to the embryo to find ESCR objectionable, and, thus the “appeal to mourning” objection misses the mark. I think the question can be posed in terms of respect for creation. Is creation, including life, simply raw material to be used any way we see fit? Or does it have its own integrity and (dare I say it?) mystery such that we need to step back and think twice before exploiting it for our purposes?