Madam,- Sé D'Alton (July 2nd) queries my reliance on Peter Singer in my opposition to embryonic stem cell research, given that Prof Singer considers abortion to be much less serious than killing human beings and the destruction of embryos even less ethically problematic than abortion.
As I read Prof Singer, he defends abortion and the destruction of embryos, not on the ground that there is any significant difference between the foetus and embryo, on the one hand, and newborn life on the other, but rather because he rejects the proposition that it is always wrong to kill new-born life. If I may quote him once more: "[ The] strength of the conservative position lies in the difficulty liberals have in pointing to a morally significant line of demarcation between an embryo and a new-born baby. The standard liberal position needs to be able to point to some such line, because liberals usually hold that it is permissible to kill an embryo or foetus but not a baby.
"I have argued that the life of a foetus (and even more plainly, of an embryo) is of no greater value than the life of a non-human animal at a similar level of rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity to feel, etc, and that since no foetus is a person, no foetus has the same claim to life as a person.
"Now it must be admitted that these arguments apply to the new-born baby as much as to the foetus. . .If the foetus does not have the same claim to life as a person, it follows that the new-born baby does not either. . .Thus while my position on the status of foetal life may be acceptable to many, the implications of this position for the status of new-born life are at odds with the virtually unchallenged assumption that the life of a new-born baby is as sacrosanct as that of an adult."
After referring to the fact that humans are instinctively protective of infants and that the killing of infants arouses strong emotional feelings, he states: "If we can put aside these emotionally moving but strictly irrelevant aspects of the killing of a baby, we can see that the grounds for not killing persons do not apply to new-born infants."
Unlike Prof Singer, I do consider the life of a new-born baby to be as sacrosanct as that of an adult. Therefore his admission that there is no significant line of demarcation between an embryo and a new-born baby reinforces me in my view that the deliberate destruction of an embryo through embryonic stem cell research is wrong. - Yours, etc,
GERRY WHYTE, Law School, Trinity College, Dublin.