ON THURSDAY EVENING, August 9, George W. Bush delivered the first prime-time special presidential address of the twenty-first century. No one would have predicted a few months ago—way back in the twentieth century—that a decision on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research would have been the occasion for the forty-third president’s first televised, issue-specific speech. After all, the subject had gone unmentioned in last fall’s campaign debates. Nor was it discussed in Bush’s Inaugural or State of the Union addresses. August 9 marked a new moment in our political history. And, on the whole, an auspicious one. Bush’s speech was both morally and intellectually serious. One could even say that it made a major contribution to the health of American public discourse. The president refused to indulge in cheap emotional appeals or glib rhetorical devices. Instead, he laid out the competing arguments fairly and intelligently. He explained what was at stake, and how to think about it. It was altogether an admirable performance. We say this although we must disagree in part with his decision. The president would permit funding of research only on existing embryonic stem cell lines. We are inclined to think that not even that research should be funded. But the president’s position is defensible. All other embryonic stem cell research requires the harvesting of the stem cells from an embryo, which is destroyed. Research on existing stem cell lines requires no harvesting of new stem cells, and thus no further destruction of embryos. As the president put it, with existing stem cell lines, “the life and death decision has already been made.” Our worry is that the president may have drawn a distinction that will be difficult to sustain. Future stem cell lines will be created in the private sector, and scientists will claim that research on them is needed for further medical progress—and therefore deserves funding. Then they will seek federal funding for the creation and destruction of embryos themselves, claiming that this will provide higher quality stem cells. Slippery slope arguments are generally a substitute for serious thought. But in this case, the slope really is extraordinarily slippery, and moral seriousness requires taking that slipperiness into consideration. On the other hand, we are already on that slope, and have been for quite some time. After two decades of unregulated in vitro fertilization clinics, with some 100,000 frozen embryos in warehouses, with no legal bar to their disposal, and with very little public agitation from pro-lifers (like ourselves) to do anything about it, it may be a little late to become so fastidious about those embryos, or about funding stem cell lines derived from them. Or is it? Could Bush’s decision—and just as important, his speech—have the effect of reopening some issues that deserve serious public debate? Here, Bush’s speech may ultimately prove more important than his decision. Its respect for the intelligence of its listeners; its manifest willingness to take seriously the “ethical minefields” and “moral concerns” raised by the new genetics; its articulation of the principle that there are “fundamental moral lines” that cannot be crossed and that “embryonic stem cell research is at the leading edge of a series of moral hazards”; its recognition that there will have to be public guidance, regulation, and limitation of scientific and, yes, medical progress—these are no small contributions to the possibility of a serious conversation on this topic among the American people. Having started such a conversation, of course, the president has an obligation to continue it. And having laid down a moral limitation, the president will have to defend it. For this speech can only finally be judged in the context of the president’s later actions. Will he fight in a committed and serious way in Congress in defense of his position? If he doesn’t, then the concession he has made is bound to be the first of many, and the president will have started our descent toward an appalling commodification and manufacture of human beings. And if he is unwilling to continue making public arguments, if he doesn’t treat his August 9 speech as the beginning, not the end, of his responsibilities, then the speech will be a mere footnote in the history of his presidency. But after August 9, we are entitled to hope—and, yes, to expect—that President Bush understands his obligations in this defining moment, on this defining issue, of the twenty-first century.
