"You cannot be against embryonic stem cell research and be intellectually and therefore morally consistent, if you're not also against in vitro fertilization"
About this Quote
Ron Reagan draws a straight line between principle and policy, challenging opponents of embryonic stem cell research to apply their reasoning uniformly. If an embryo has the moral status of a person, then any practice that foreseeably creates, freezes, or discards embryos should be implicated, not just research. In vitro fertilization routinely produces surplus embryos, many of which are never implanted and are ultimately discarded or kept in storage indefinitely. To condemn research that uses these embryos while accepting the system that generates their surplus is, in his view, an intellectual contradiction that undermines the moral stance.
The force of the argument lies in moral consistency. When judgments hinge on the destruction of embryonic life, intention alone does not absolve outcomes. IVF aims to create families, a compassionate end, but it does so through a process that predictably results in embryo loss. Embryonic stem cell research, by contrast, seeks medical knowledge and therapies, and often uses embryos that would otherwise be discarded. Treating one set of outcomes as tolerable and the other as intolerable looks like a preference shaped by cultural acceptance of fertility treatments and political optics rather than a coherent ethical principle.
Reagan made this case most prominently in the early 2000s, including at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, a moment shaped by his father Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease and his mother Nancy Reagan’s public support for research. The policy backdrop included federal funding restrictions like the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which banned creating or destroying embryos for research even as IVF clinics operated legally. By pressing on that tension, he highlighted a broader pattern in bioethics debates: appeals to sanctity of life that bend around practices with strong public sympathy.
The challenge he poses is not merely rhetorical. It asks critics to either reject IVF as currently practiced or to reconsider blanket opposition to research that could alleviate suffering, holding the same moral yardstick to both.
The force of the argument lies in moral consistency. When judgments hinge on the destruction of embryonic life, intention alone does not absolve outcomes. IVF aims to create families, a compassionate end, but it does so through a process that predictably results in embryo loss. Embryonic stem cell research, by contrast, seeks medical knowledge and therapies, and often uses embryos that would otherwise be discarded. Treating one set of outcomes as tolerable and the other as intolerable looks like a preference shaped by cultural acceptance of fertility treatments and political optics rather than a coherent ethical principle.
Reagan made this case most prominently in the early 2000s, including at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, a moment shaped by his father Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease and his mother Nancy Reagan’s public support for research. The policy backdrop included federal funding restrictions like the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which banned creating or destroying embryos for research even as IVF clinics operated legally. By pressing on that tension, he highlighted a broader pattern in bioethics debates: appeals to sanctity of life that bend around practices with strong public sympathy.
The challenge he poses is not merely rhetorical. It asks critics to either reject IVF as currently practiced or to reconsider blanket opposition to research that could alleviate suffering, holding the same moral yardstick to both.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|
More Quotes by Ron
Add to List
