Potential

Beanie's been really waking up and becoming part of the world lately. She's rolling in a continuous roll in a given direction now, using her rolling to get somewhere. It's pretty impressive, watching her little face as she decides where she's going and works to get there.

This has me thinking about her as a newborn, before she could express much, or do much besides sleep and nurse. I remember waking up and looking at her as a completely different person, something other than my personal remora, at about 6 weeks. That's when she started to smile and make noises, and I could begin to see the little person she was becoming.

This brings me, oddly, to thoughts on the stem cell research debate. My mom sent me a bunch of literature last week that included the relevant (articles on child allergies--Beanie's allergic to the cats) and the not-so (articles on stem cell research, as well as a pamplet containing the Roman Catholic church's stance). I have read none of it as yet.

Several years ago, before I was married or a mom, when I was teaching a intro to philosophy elective at the private high school where I worked. The Biology teacher, the Civics teacher and I were all recruited to have our classes present on the stem cell debate from the perspective of our various disciplines. This is basically what our philosophy class had to say:

Ethics are based on a set of moral beliefs. Moral beliefs are based on values. What a person, group, nation values dictates their morals and ethics. If person A values knowledge slightly more than they value all forms of life, then they're going to have a belief system in which stem cell research is valuable. On the other hand, someone who values all forms of life higher than knowledge is going to consider any act that extinguishes life in favor of knowledge-gathering to be immoral.

Figure our what your values are, then act accordingly. Debate the importance of values; recognize that's what the issue is.

Now that I'm a mother, the values are being reevaluated again. At one point, Beanie was an embryo; the same sort of embryo from which they want to harvest stem cells. If they were to have done this to Beanie-embryo, she would no longer be the Beanie that rolls across the floor. However, the world would never experience this rolling-Bean, and would not know what it's missing.

Embryos are not babies. They are potential babies. The question we need to ask is, are we willing to sacrifice potential for the possibility to help the real? This is not an easy question, but it must be recognized that different people have different answers to it, and that no one comes to them easily.