...if the issue were explained correctly, there would no reason for any serious libertarian or economic conservative to split from the social conservatives, because the issue at stake is not stem cell research, but taxpayer subsidies. The President does not sit in the Oval Office and define the limit and extent of stem cell research. What we're sitting here debating is the esoteric abstraction of "Who pays?" And it is disconcerting to see libertarians rushing to a pro-the-government-spending-money position.
Read the whole thing.
He makes a good point, but I wonder if many social conservatives aren't clinging to the government subsidy angle as a way to bring the more libertarian-minded on the right back into the anti-stem cell fold. Were this a question of government subsidies for religious charities, for instance, would the talking points change?
I'm pretty sure they would.
In a recent reader-submitted post here on Say Anything we discussed this topic pretty throughly. I tend to be a fairly libertarian minded person but have come to the conclusion that a certain amount of government sponsored scientific research is a healthy thing for our society. Private interests investing in research tend to do so, mostly, because they see a profit resulting from that research. Not all research, however, can be immediately profitable (stem cells would seem to fall into this category) and thus certain types of research that could result in wonderful medical or technological breakthroughs go underfunded. Allowing the government to produce funding in situations like these isn't such a bad thing.
There's always a risk, of course, of politicians funding "pet" research projects touted by lobbyists over more necessary or important research, but that goes to the larger problem of our government's spending habits in general, which is a subject for another day.
In short, I don't see government subsidies really being an issue at the heart of this matter. I still believe this is a moral values debate, though as a staunch pro-life advocate on the abortion issue I'm still not understanding the pro-life argument against stem cells.
Update:
More discussion on the pro-life angle here.
I believe that abortion is murder, but I don't believe that taking stem cells from an embryo is equivalent to an abortion. Embryos being washed from a woman's body prior to implantation is a common occurance. In many situations it happens without the woman even knowing about it. We certainly don't morn the loss of those embryos, so how can we say that killing an embryo is equivalent to killing a life?
Were we talking about removing an implanted embryo from a woman's body for experimentation I'd feel differently, but we're not. So I don't.