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Monitoring Stem Cell Research 
indistinguishable from murder. Certainly the rhetoric of someone like 
Richard Doerflinger has been consistent in condemning both abortion 
and stem cell research as equivalent to murder. The cartoon draws 
attention to this consistency, even while it questions the 
commitment of pro-life advocates to scientific research designed to 
promote the quality of life. 
In one sense, then, the cartoon probes whether there is an 
inconsistency between being pro-life and opposed to research an 
Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other devastating 
illnesses. I do not myself think that there is any inconsistency in 
being pro-life and opposed to stem cell research, but the cartoon 
does point in the direction of a fairly significant disconnect between 
the rhetoric and the reality of those opposed to stem cell research 
because they believe the early embryo is a person. To see this point, 
imagine that, instead of a stem cell clinic, the cartoon depicted on 
IVF clinic down the block from the abortion clinic and that the 
workers at the abortion clinic are noting how quiet things have 
gotten since the IVF clinic opened. The dramatic tension that made 
the original cartoon funny would be missing from our revised cartoon 
precisely because it is hard to imagine protestors disrupting the 
work at IVF clinics. To be sure, the Catholic church and others have 
argued that IVF is morally wrong, but the rhetoric condemning IVF is 
exceptionally muted compared to that condemning abortion or stem 
cell research. Nor has there been a concerted effort to put an end to 
IVF practice in this country as there has been in the case of abortion 
and stem cell research. Yet, if the embryo is a person from 
conception, then participating in IVF as it is practiced in this country, 
when early embryos are routinely frozen or discarded or both, is to be 
complicit with murder. Why, then, are there no organized efforts to 
shut down IVF clinics in this country?’ 
Indeed, opponents of stem cell research and cloning often write 
as if these technologies raise the haunting specter of human embryo 
research for the first time. The reality, of course, is that the existence 
of in vitro fertilization depended entirely on embryo research and that 
every variation or innovation in IVF protocols involves 
experimentation on human embryos. Carol Tauer is one of the few 
scholars who has pressed this point. As Tauer sees it: 
. . . the entire history of the research leading to the 
first successful IVF is the history of attempts to 
fertilize oocytes in the laboratory. Eventually these 
attempts succeeded, and the first IVF baby was 
PRE-PUBLICATION VERSION 
