Veering From Bush, Frist Backs Funding for Stem Cell Research - New York Times

WASHINGTON, July 29 - In a break with President Bush, the Senate Republican leader, Bill Frist, has decided to support a bill to expand federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, a move that could push it closer to passage and force a confrontation with the White House, which is threatening to veto the measure.

Senator Bill Frist, explaining his stem-cell decision, said, 'It's not just a matter of faith, it's a matter of science.'

Unlike many of my fellow pro-lifers, I welcome Frist's gambit. And here's why: this is, I believe, the most fruitful gambit for reducing abortions in America.

See, the pro-life/pro-abort dialog comes down to two fundamentals: (1) The right of the genetically-distinct human under discussion to live, vs. the mother's right to do what she wants to "her body"; and (2) the question of when the genetically-distinct human under discussion actually becomes human, meaning its termination becomes homicide.

The second of those two fundamentals is the pivot of it all. Ignoring the gruesome and horrifyingly legal practice of partial-birth abortion for the moment, most reasonable folks would agree that the line-in-the sand certainly falls at or before cognition, awareness, and ability to suffer pain. And to date, that argument boils down to faith: on the pro-life side we have folks believing humanity exists from the moment sperm meets egg; on the pro-abort side we have folks claiming humanity is established only after birth (or, in the case of Barbara Boxer or Peter Singer, days or even weeks after).

What's needed--and I believe what's achievable--is agreement that if science can prove "humanity" is achieved at or before such-and-such a point in gestation, then elective abortion after that date is homicide. After all, one of the grand purposes of law is to protect the weakest among us from the thundering herd.

And this is, indeed, a job for the Federal Government. We don't leave it to the States to define what a person is; that is a Constitutional principle, and few today take issue with the definition of person as amended. So it is within bounds for the Federal government to take on the issue of where personhood begins, and science--as Frist may be attempting to establish here--is the way to do it. I'm also confident that the line-in-the-sand will move back in the gestation as scientific and medical methods improve, just as viability has.

Abortion isn't going to go away overnight, not with about half of all pregnancies ending in termination in some areas of America. What we can do is reverse the tide, by using science to legally establish the humanity of its victims.