George on Penalver/Garnett

Over at First Things, Robert George weighs in on Eduardo and Rick's exchange on pro-life Catholics and the Democrats:

But Peñalver’s case is even weaker than Professor Garnett’s damning points against him reveal. Here’s why. Even if Peñalver’s optimism about the effect of Democratic policies on the abortion rate were warranted, it would not justify supporting the Democrats. All the major Democratic presidential aspirants and the Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress (together with the vast majority of Democratic senators and representatives) support federal funding for the creation of human embryos by cloning for biomedical research in which they are deliberately killed. That means that if the Democrats come into power, hundreds of thousands—over time it would surely be millions—of human lives will be created and destroyed as a direct consequence. Even if the abortion rate were to drop by 20 percent, the number of lives saved would be massively offset by the authorization and federal funding of embryo-destructive research. If there is one thing we can predict with confidence about the platform the Democrats will adopt at their 2008 convention, it is that the party will not be calling for embryo-destructive research to be “safe, legal, and rare.” On the contrary, the Democrats will promise to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into “therapeutic cloning.”

Of course, there are Republican renegades such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arlen Specter, and Orrin Hatch who side with the Democrats on this issue. But most Republican leaders firmly oppose the creation of human embryos, whether by cloning or the union of gametes, for research in which they are killed. So, however much one might dislike Republican policies in other areas, it’s clear that the death toll under the Democrats would be so large as to make it unreasonable for Catholic citizens, or citizens of any faith who oppose the taking of innocent human life, to use their votes and influence to help bring the Democratic party into power.

Rob