What Members?
The Chicago Sun-Times report includes the comment from DeLay that made me choke on my coffee this morning when I heard it on NPR:
Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said the embryonic research bill would force taxpayers to finance "the dismemberment of living, distinct human beings."
"Dismemberment"? In order to dismember something, doesn't it have to have, you know, members?
[Fred Clark, "Dismember of Congress", The Slactivist, 25 May 2005.]
He then goes on to point out weird contradictions and inconsistencies that the No-Life-Left-Behind brigade exhibit over the zygotes (undifferentiated masses of cells arising from a fertilized egg,, long before it becomes an embryo or even a fetus) that are created by fertility clinics, kept frozen in liquid nitrogen, and then thawed and flushed when they're not needed. These are sometimes claimed to be little humans (evidently with little "members") with souls and all, but appear to have no advocates as they slip down the drains.
If every zygote is precious (sometimes) and every sperm is sacred (Isaac's favorite Monty Python bit), and knowing that the president worries about a world in which "cloning becomes acceptable", it makes me wonder whether clipping one's toe-nails and throwing away the clippings will soon become manslaughter.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.