Robert George takes on the issue of some ostensibly pro-life Catholics and Evangelicals supporting Obama based on an alleged pro-life element to Barack Obama and notes, among other things, that Obama is so extreme in his pro-abortion position that he refused to back a bill providing for research into non-embryonic stem cell research:
For several years, Americans have been debating the use for biomedical research of embryos produced by in vitro fertilization (originally for reproductive purposes) but now left in a frozen condition in cryopreservation units. President Bush has restricted the use of federal funds for stem-cell research of the type that makes use of these embryos and destroys them in the process. I support the President’s restriction, but some legislators with excellent pro-life records, including John McCain, argue that the use of federal money should be permitted where the embryos are going to be discarded or die anyway as the result of the parents’ decision. Senator Obama, too, wants to lift the restriction.
But Obama would not stop there. He has co-sponsored a bill-strongly opposed by McCain-that would authorize the large-scale industrial production of human embryos for use in biomedical research in which they would be killed. In fact, the bill Obama co-sponsored would effectively require the killing of human beings in the embryonic stage that were produced by cloning. It would make it a federal crime for a woman to save an embryo by agreeing to have the tiny developing human being implanted in her womb so that he or she could be brought to term. This ”clone and kill” bill would, if enacted, bring something to America that has heretofore existed only in China-the equivalent of legally mandated abortion. In an audacious act of deceit, Obama and his co-sponsors misleadingly call this an anti-cloning bill. But it is nothing of the kind. What it bans is not cloning, but allowing the embryonic children produced by cloning to survive.
Can it get still worse? Yes.
Decent people of every persuasion hold out the increasingly realistic hope of resolving the moral issue surrounding embryonic stem-cell research by developing methods to produce the exact equivalent of embryonic stem cells without using (or producing) embryos. But when a bill was introduced in the United States Senate to put a modest amount of federal money into research to develop these methods, Barack Obama was one of the few senators who opposed it. From any rational vantage point, this is unconscionable. Why would someone not wish to find a method of producing the pluripotent cells scientists want that all Americans could enthusiastically endorse? Why create and kill human embryos when there are alternatives that do not require the taking of nascent human lives? It is as if Obama is opposed to stem-cell research unless it involves killing human embryos.
Why would Barack Obama, father of two delightful girls, be like this? Either he’s a monster in disguise, or he’s just ignorant. I go with ignorant – and, oddly, I go with this because, once again, I feel a rather strong affinity with Barack Obama. We are, after all, of the same generation – neither Boomer nor Gen X (though, technically, we were both born during the Baby Boom – but so close to the tail end of it that we failed to develope a Boomer view of the world). We are, in a lot of ways, alike – I’d really like to correspond with him in private, because I think both of us would find the exchange invaluable. But there is a difference between us – and the difference is in practical knowledge of how actual people live.
You see, we were both sheltered in our early lives – Vietnam ended when we were little, the threat of nuclear war just wasn’t as ever-present as it seems to have been in the 50’s and 60’s, there was no draft looming at the end of our high school days, you could have sex without worrying about dying, marijuana was harmless fun, cocaine a more powerful stroke of harmless fun, smoking was still ok, as was drinking (including drinking and driving in those pre-MADD days). Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll was the order of the day. Life was a breeze. And then Obama went to college and I joined the Navy, and there our paths of life started to differ.
As I got to deal with real people in their native setting (as it were), Obama got to deal with theoretical people while he sat in an ivory tower. He came out of his formative years and started to organize people – I came out of mine and started agitating for them to be left un-organized by outsiders and looking after their own affairs. And here is the crucial part – if you set out to organize people you have to view them as lesser beings than yourself; if you set out to battle on their behalf, you have to see them as your equals.
Once you start viewing people as so many blocks of wood for you to fashion into a new governing paradigm, it is but a step to start viewing them as expendable…and thus there is no problem with even the most pro-abortion position. Obama isn’t evil in this (though he does evil he doesn’t intend), he just hasn’t thought the matter through and is incapable – at the moment – of doing so because he lacks a frame of reference which would bring him to the understanding that morally – which is the only place it matters – he is no better than the just-fertilized embryo. Barack Obama is Barack Obama – the wise, knowledgeable leader who can bring us all to the promised land…and he’ll do it because he loves us…but his love is the condescending, false love of the self-absorbed. We are to be made better, ultimately, because he, Barack Obama, can’t stand it if we don’t reflect well upon him. America is to match Obama’s expectations, not Obama to match his duties as one, small person in a grand story of people past, present and future with none other than God knowing the full truth.
There is a fine line between folly and evil – a fool harms mostly himself, the evil person harms mostly others. Obama, cut off from reality, has been playing quite a fool – and has been played for a sucker by people who have consciously made the decision to be wicked. And, also, much evil has been done in Obama’s name – how much of it with Obama’s full knowledge and consent? That we don’t know – but we’d best not find out while Obama is in the White House.
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