Differences over the ethics of stem cell research is becoming one of the major issues in this presidential election. ABP is reporting that the Kerry campaign is focusing on their candidate's support for embryonic stem cell research. AP is reporting that our nation's First Lady is bashing Kerry for his stem cell stance.
Southern Baptists have already weighed in on this issue, though most do not realize it. The 2000 Baptist Faith & Message says Baptists should "contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death" and supports the view that fertilized human eggs are "Children, from the moment of conception."
What SBC leaders have not done is reveal the full implications of their doctrine. Consistently applied it would also prohibit Baptists from using birth control pills because, at times, this form of contraception prevents fertilized human ova from implanting in a uterus.
More troublesome are the implications of this doctrine for our understanding of God. As Robert Francoeur, a Roman Catholic embryologist and theologian wrote,
“If every human egg fertilized is immediately a ‘fetus’, ‘baby’ and ‘person’, then God and nature play a mean trick on us. Scientists estimate that in the five-six days following union of egg and sperm, between one-third and one-half of all ‘persons’ spontaneously degenerate and are reabsorbed or expelled. In the second week, 42 percent of the implanted ‘persons’ abort. In the fetal period one-third of the remaining fetuses spontaneously miscarry. Thus out of every 1000 ‘persons’ ‘conceived’, only 120 to 160 survive to be reborn!” (Christian Ethics Today, April 2000, p. 26.)
God declared all his creative work to be “very good.” (Gen. 1:31) Would He do that if the natural process for conception itself was wasteful of human life and potential?
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