Daily Inspiration Quote by Mort Kondracke

Kondracke’s line is engineered to make the opposition sound less like a moral camp and more like a logistical absurdity. The kicker is that parenthetical aside - “which is not going to happen” - a journalist’s shrug dressed up as a fact claim. It does two things at once: it preemptively dismisses the “have them adopted” alternative as fantasy, and it nudges the reader toward the supposedly sober option, embryo research, as the only adult choice left in the room.

The intent isn’t to litigate Catholic bioethics on its own terms; it’s to reframe the debate around outcomes and waste. “Better to destroy” is a provocation, because many right-to-life arguments hinge on the embryo’s inviolable status. By putting “destroy” and “adopt” in the same sentence, Kondracke suggests the movement’s stance collapses into a paradox: protect life by guaranteeing non-life (discarded embryos), unless a miracle of mass adoption materializes. That framing treats moral absolutism as a kind of policy malpractice.

Context matters: this rhetoric fits the early-2000s fight over embryonic stem cell research, when “leftover” IVF embryos became the political battleground. Kondracke’s subtext is a secular cost-benefit ethic: if embryos are already slated for disposal, the humane move is to extract social value - knowledge, therapies, progress - rather than stage a symbolic victory. The sentence is persuasive because it converts a metaphysical dispute into a narrative of needless loss, with the Church cast as the agent of that loss.