The puzzle of profound respect.

In 1979 the Ethics Advisory Board of the (then) Department of Health, Education and Welfare declared that the human embryo is "entitled to profound respect; but this respect does not necessarily encompass the full legal and moral rights attributed to persons." That position has always seemed to me sensible, opening the way for early abortions and reflecting the judgment of many religions and cultures that early human life is not the same as more developed life. Yet though I have argued such a position myself for many years (beginning with Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality in 1970), I have always felt a nagging uneasiness at trying to rationalize the killing of something for which I claim to have a "profound respect." What in the world can that kind of respect mean? An odd form of esteem - at once high-minded and altogether lethal. Of course the answer to that puzzle is simple enough: the diminished status of the embryo provides a justification for abortion, which seems desirable in some circumstances, while the wafting incense of "profound respect" at least makes me feel a little better about it all. I have wondered for twenty-five years whether this is profound wisdom or profound self-deception. How does one tell? Now we as a society are asked to take a further step down that strange road of respect. The Human Embryo Research Panel of the National Institutes of Health has reaffirmed both a respect for embryos and the acceptability under some circumstances of carrying out research on them, including the creation of some embryos for research purposes only. Such research has been the goal of some investigators for many years and only the political opposition of the Reagan and Bush administrations and the likely resistance of Congress has stood in its way. The new Congress is no less likely to be resistant. The report of the Human Embryo Research Panel is worthy of much praise, considerable astonishment, some puzzlement, and outright amusement. The praise is for its careful analysis of the moral status of the embryo, the astonishment for its utterly uncritical blessing of research, the puzzlement because of its unwitting challenge to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision on abortion, and the amusement over its straight-faced pretension that it has taken no particular religious or philosophical position on the status of the embryo. To repeat, the panel deserves praise for the care with which it analyzed the moral status of the preimplantation embryo. No other group has done nearly so well in working its way through that moral thicket. The position it finally takes, that the emergence of the primitive streak (around fourteen days after fertilization) represents "a major milestone in embryonic development," has much to commend it biologically. It is a major milestone - but then so are many other points in embryonic and fetal development. Why should this one be singled out as particularly important for decisions on research limits? The panel's twofold answer is that (a) no single criterion for personhood can withstand criticism, while (b) a "pluralistic approach," stressing "a variety of distinct, intersecting, and mutually supporting considerations" can be serviceable for public policy purposes. "The pluralistic approach," the report states, "accords some moral weight to the preimplantation embryo, but does not rule out well justified research." In other words, the report seems to be saying, if your aim is to do research, then a "pluralistic approach" will give you the leeway to do it but within reasonable limits. That is a plausible argument, but there is also a problem lurking here. How are we to go about establishing some kind of moral proportionality between the claims of research (which the report at one point calls a "duty"), and that of the "moral weight" of the embryo? Some astonishment is in order at this point. Though the report sets up a clear moral tension between those two goods, it is utterly silent on how research claims and possibilities should be evaluated for their moral weight and benefit. …