Appendix G. 
245 
embryonic stem cell research is wrong, or the early embryo is not a 
person with rights, and then there is no moral reason to object to 
stem cell work. Gene Outka has made a similar point in his 
assessment of stem cell literature. As Outka puts it, in its starkest 
form, the crystallizing question is whether it is cogent to claim that 
embryonic stem cell research is morally indistinguishable from 
murder (Outka, 184). The problem with framing the question this 
way, he says, is that it “encourages an unfortunate tendency to 
restrict evaluative possibilities to a single either/or. Either one 
judges abortion and the destruction of embryos to be transparent 
instances of treating fetuses and embryos as mere means to other's 
ends, or one judges abortion and embryonic stem cell research to be, 
in themselves , morally indifferent actions that should be evaluated 
solely in terms of the benefit they bring to others." (Outka, 2002, 184). 
The frame of human rights reinforces this either/or because, as I 
noted, a being is either a rights-bearing entity or it is not. I have 
argued elsewhere, that this either/or tends to drive people to the 
extremes. Either the embryo is a person or it is essentially a kind of 
property (Lauritzen, 2001). Although I v\nll not rehearse the 
argument for rejecting the two extremes here, it is worth noting that 
the rhetoric associated with each extreme does not appear to match 
the practice of those who adopt the rhetoric or in fact to match the 
considered moral judgments of most Americans on these issues. 
I can illustrate my point in relation to the view that the early 
embryo is a person with the right to life by describing a cartoon that 
hangs on my office door (See Figure A). The cartoon depicts 
protestors in front of a stem cell research lab condemning those who 
work there as being anti-life. Down the street at the abortion clinic, 
the workers are noting how quiet things have gotten at their facility 
since the stem cell lab opened. The point of the cartoon, of course, is 
that we may soon see protests and demonstrations of the sort that 
are common at abortion clinics at facilities that conduct stem cell 
research and that there is an irony in the fact that pro-life advocates 
would be demonstrating against research being done to find 
treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson's, and other devastating 
illnesses. This is not entirely fair to the pro-life community, but it 
makes a point. 
In fact, I do not have trouble imaging protestors picketing stem 
cell research facilities for, as we just noted, when stem cell research 
and abortion are evaluated together and when the evaluative option 
is a single either/or, then abortion and stem cell research may appear 
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