The President’s stem-cell dollars and the judge’s rebuke

Robert P. George, Yuval Levin, and Matthew J. Franck writing at National Review Online: “[I]t is the president who fails to be open to the inconvenient truth about the human embryo, namely, that from the single-cell stage of development onward, the human embryo is a distinct, determinate, self-directing, integrated human organism — a living member of the human species who, if given a suitable environment, will move along the seamless trajectory of biological development toward maturity. At the so-called ‘blastocyst stage,’ when the embryo might be destroyed to derive embryonic stem cells, he or she is already a living individuated organism . . . Is our humanity alone enough to merit protection and regard, or are we required to prove we have some other set of qualities or capacities to qualify for respect and protection?”