Wording
Written by Benaiah on March 9th, 2006Changing the wording in a piece of legislation does not change the fact that you are still killing an innocent life.
Democratic lawmakers have changed the word “embryo” to “material” in a bill for embryonic stem-cell research to secure the votes of Catholic senators who did not want to be viewed as supporting abortion-related legislation.
“They didn’t want to vote for a bill that had the language embryo in it,” said Sen. Paula C. Hollinger, Baltimore County Democrat and the bill’s sponsor.
Using “material” instead of “embryo” is supposed to assuage Maryland lawmakers of their guilt of killing innocent life. Nuance does not change the substance of this bill. Sadly the bill has a good chance of passing.
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AM
While I am a supporter of stem cell research, you are correct that “nuance does not change the substance of the bill”. If one believes that stem cell research kills innocent life, then it doesn’t matter if you call that life an embryo, material, or bicycle. No one who believes that changing one word alters the ethics of stem cell research should be respected intellectually.