{"id":6324,"date":"2005-06-23T09:28:15","date_gmt":"2005-06-23T09:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/reacting-to-mario.html"},"modified":"2005-06-23T09:28:15","modified_gmt":"2005-06-23T09:28:15","slug":"reacting-to-mario","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/reacting-to-mario.html","title":{"rendered":"Reacting to Mario"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting set of letters in reaction to Cuomo’s op-ed.<\/a><\/p>\n

I like this from the first letter:<\/p>\n

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Mr. Cuomo, the former New York governor, repeatedly refers to "potential," but all in the context of the medical benefits of stem cells. But this potential is hypothetical, based on the faith of scientists regarding where their research will lead (and on a corresponding lack of faith in the potential of adult stem cells). <\/em><\/p>\n

Mr. Cuomo ignores the time-tested potential of implanted embryos to generally produce viable infants.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And then there’s this one. Note the writer:<\/p>\n

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Mario M. Cuomo mars his well-reasoned essay on the use of embryonic stem cells by characterizing the crucial moral issue as whether "human life starts at conception." <\/em><\/p>\n

Even the earliest embryo conceived of human parents is alive and a member of Homo sapiens, and that is enough, in the eyes of many, to make it a living human being.<\/em><\/p>\n

The crucial moral question is not when human life begins, but when human life reaches the point at which it merits protection. <\/em><\/p>\n

It is to that question that the significance of consciousness and viability, discussed by Mr. Cuomo, should be addressed. <\/em><\/p>\n

Unless we separate these two questions – when does life begin, and when does it merit protection? – we are unlikely to achieve any clarity about the moral status of embryos.<\/em><\/p>\n

Peter Singer
Princeton, N.J., June 20, 2005<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Anyone who’s read a lot of beginning-of-life bioethics, both professional and popular, knows Singer’s position, and that it is shared by the more honest of his colleagues, and always has been. I’ve read quite a lot of writings in support of abortion rights, especially the important stuff from the 70’s and 80’s, and none of them blink at admitting the fact of unique biological human life of the embryo and fetus. The question is just as Singer states it. And the puzzling thing is that they don’t see that they’re not the first people to think this way…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting set of letters in reaction to Cuomo’s op-ed. I like this from the first letter: Mr. Cuomo, the former New York governor, repeatedly refers to "potential," but all in the context of the medical benefits of stem cells. But this potential is hypothetical, based on the faith of scientists regarding where their research will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nReacting to Mario - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/06\/reacting-to-mario.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reacting to Mario - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Interesting set of letters in reaction to Cuomo’s op-ed. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}