"Better than nothing"

I wonder who, (apart from the Devil, that is) is writing the script for these "pro-life" people? Because it really does sound all pretty much the same from country to country.

From the Chair of the Parliamentary All Party "Pro-life" Group, UK:

"Thank you for your concern. You have, however, missed the point. Voting against the whole of the bill would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are many clauses in the bill which are very necessary and welcome. As co-chair of the all party pro-life group, I am clear on my responsibilities and will continue to vote against those parts of the bill which I find morally objectionable."

From New Zealand.

...and still my all-time favourite stab in the back:

"While Catholic politicians must always seek to protect human life and dignity to the fullest extent possible, there can be legitimate difference on how to achieve this objective. It is , therefore not our intention to tell Catholic Senators how to vote because it is their responsibility to discern the best way to protect human life and dignity after reflecting on all of the resources available to them. This discernment certainly includes Church teaching, but also the Senators' own personal reflections on the political and social realities they face," said Bishop Prendergast reading from a prepared text.

Well, oddly enough, as it turns out, there is a script writer after all.

Dr. Irving told LifeSite that it is no surprise that various countries have been following a predictable pattern in approving embryonic stem cell research despite countervailing scientific evidence. The reason is that the international community is reading from the same erroneous page when it comes to decisions around research on human embryos - an erroneous definition of the human embryo as fostered by the false science of bioethics...

Bioethics was established as a quasi-ethical framework by order of the US Congress to address research on human subjects. In 1974 Congress passed the National Research Act which mandated that a National Commission be set up which in 1978 issued the Belmont Report. The report identified three ethical principles to be used by government to evaluate research on human subjects: respect for persons, justice, and beneficence, but perverted the definitions of these terms to suit their own ends.

Rather than the traditional Hippocratic understanding of beneficence as doing "good" for the individual patient, the report used a utilitarian definition: doing "good" for society, or, "the greatest good for the greatest number". While "justice" in its classic Aristotelian definition refers to treating people fairly as individuals, the report saw justice as allocating the benefits and burdens of research fairly across the social spectrum. And finally, "respect for persons" became respect only for 'persons' defined as fully conscious, rational adults capable of acting autonomously. The redefined principles, according to Dr. Irving, "bear no relation to the patient-centered Hippocratic ethics that for nearly 2500 years required physicians to treat every human being in their care as worthy of respect no matter now sick or small, weak or disabled."