MICHELE MARR -- soul food

o7 “The trouble with the world is not that people know too little,

but that they know so many things that ain’t so.”

-- Mark Twain.

f7

I could hardly have been more surprised last week when I heard that a

couple of our U.S. senators were offering up passages from the Bible for

guidance while debating the controversial issue of embryo stem cell

research.

I didn’t know it was acceptable to do that, much less possible to have

anyone take you seriously if you did.

The issue at hand for these senators to decide is whether a human

embryo is equivalent to a human life. It’s an issue that first came up

for me several years ago when I first considered in-vitro fertilization

as a remedy for my childlessness.

The process had some appeal, considering the rewards, though I’m less

than keen on invasive medical procedures. It had some appeal, that is,

until I discovered a sticky situation that would result from the process.

Very likely, I learned, there would be “unused” embryos left after any

successful pregnancies and births. My husband and I would then have to

decide what to do with these, what? Lives?

Lives. I couldn’t see my way around it. Whatever made me look so far

ahead of myself, I don’t recall. But I’m glad I did. I’m glad I was

spared that decision. Over the next few years I would meet several women

who weren’t.

If you believe an embryo is a child, and these women did, it’s a

wrenching decision to have to make. Yet, as I discovered, couples are

often confronted with the dilemma far into the in-vitro process,

sometimes as they are celebrating the birth of their long-awaited child.

I was confronted with the issue of whether an embryo is a child for

the second time a few years ago, while I watched Parkinson’s disease

incapacitate a dear friend of mine.

He had read about the possibilities of stem cell treatment for

Parkinson’s and he asked me what I thought about it. He told me some of

the literature he read spoke of “harvesting” the cells from human

embryos.

He desperately wanted the hope of that treatment -- and I wanted it

for him -- but he couldn’t reconcile himself to the means. He confessed

to me that he thought of it as scarcely above grave robbing. Or maybe it

was more like killing for a kidney.

My friend was an old man who had lived a good, long life. He never

lived to have to make the decision real that he imagined himself making a

thousand times.

Our senators are facing the decision in real time. Some of their

arguments are amazing, others amusing. Few are all that helpful as far as

I can see.

Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) called attention to Genesis 2:7. He sees

the passage as a description of a “two-step” process for creating humans.

The first step, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground

and” step two, “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man

became a living being.”

That the process is God’s process for creating the first human being

does not seem to deter Smith from suggesting a novel parallel: cells are

like the dust of the earth; to acquire the breath of life, the cells must

be placed in a womb. So in Smith’s world, embryos never placed in a womb

are alive, but not a human life.

A witness, the chief executive of a cell technology firm, giving

testimony for the senators compared the embryos to the talents in Matthew

25:14 -- measures of precious metals to be invested.

Others argued that embryos become a human life at about 14 days, the

point at which an embryo begins to develop a backbone. Still others

explained that, until that time, an embryo can split in two and become

twins, or two embryos can join together.

A handful of theologians concurred. How, they ruminated, could a soul

enter an embryo that could split in two, or two souls enter two embryos

that would soon become one?

What I wonder is: why aren’t these theologians asking how hard could

it be for the all-powerful, all-knowing God of the Bible to know these

things -- to breathe the breath of life, the soul, into each embryo

accordingly?

God knows.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer and graphic designer from

Huntington Beach. She has been interested in religion and ethics for as

long as she can remember. She can be reached at o7

[email protected]