Cloning The Buddha The debate about abortion is hopeless. The Fundamentalists begin from a very simple premise: life begins at conception. From this follows all their intransigence, not to mention the temptation to zealotry. Few things in this life are more smarmy than Jerry Falwell's smile of moral-superiority when he holds forth on the issue of abortion. Or when he smugly asserts that stem-cell research is a wickedness on a moral par with abortion because, well, because life begins at conception. And so a mass of stem cells is a person just like a fetus is a person. QED. To counter the pro-lifers, the pro-choicers usually try to argue the premise. This is pointless. What can you possibly say? "Life begins at conception." "No it doesn't." "Yes it does." "No it doesn't." "Yes it does." "No it doesn't." Blah, blah, blah. See the problem? I have suggested elsewhere that this whole debate is ill-begotten and that the public policy dispute can be settled without having to settle who is wrong and who is right on the moral issue. A sober reflection on the nature of Law informs us that law cannot be made in the absence of moral consensus. And since there is no moral consensus on abortion, the State cannot use the coercive power of law to prohibit abortions. So the pro-choicers win by default. I have not been persuasive. Moral indignation is too powerful a force when put against mere reason. So I have decided the time has come to take on the moral issue head-on. First, let's just observe in passing that the moral premise of the pro-lifers is not as strong as it seems. When Dolly the Sheep was cloned in Scotland it was the creation of life without conception. All cloning is such. So we can see that conception is not a necessary condition for the creation of life. We can also observe that conception is not a sufficient condition for life either since many fertilized eggs never develop into viable life. So conception is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the creation of life. Which is not to say that there is no connection between the two, only that the connection is not so strong as to be a universal truth. But that's not the real problem with the pro-life premise. The real problem is that the whole debate is asking the wrong question. The question "when does life begin?" is a hopelessly metaphysical conundrum and I doubt that there is any sensible way to answer it. In any case, it's the wrong question. No wonder we can't get anywhere asking it. I think the right question is: "When does suffering begin?" The Buddha's admonition to his followers is that one must strive to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings. This is the fundamental moral premise of Buddhism. The Buddha did not undertake to define when life begins as the foundation of his theology. He inquired instead as to the ethical, rather than the metaphysical, dimension of our existence. I think this was a good idea, and one we would do well to emulate. The need to ask a different question is most keenly obvious in the debate about stem-cell research. It is pointless to ask whether a bunch of stem-cells constitute life. And it is absurd to describe them as a person. And it is morally obtuse to equate stem-cell research with abortion. But we can perhaps sensibly ask whether stem-cells suffer. Whatever else we might reasonably say about a glob of stem-cells, I think it unlikely that they suffer, or that there are actions we might take to relieve their suffering. Stem-cell research, on the other hand, promises to relieve the suffering of actual fully-developed human beings, about whose suffering we cannot be in doubt. I am not so confident about well-advanced fetuses. There may come a time in the development of the fetus where is makes sense to say our actions can cause or relieve the suffering of a sentient being. If so, I would be inclined to vote to ban abortions at that point. I don't know where that point is, but I am persuadable on the matter, so long as we are asking ourselves the right question. A test-tube containing a bunch of stem-cells is not a sentient being. We cannot work to relieve its suffering. If we are free of the narrow premise that life begins at conception, then it is possible to adopt a more reasonable posture on the public policy question of stem-cell research. So, for those of you who want to demonstrate your reverence for life, may I respectfully suggest you cease to ask yourself the metaphysical question of when does life begin and ask yourself instead the ethical question of when does suffering begin. In that way, there may be some hope of moving toward more of a moral consensus with your neighbors. The world would be a better place.