Embryonic Stem Cell Research

The current issue of America has published an essay in which I compare the justification for engaging in potentially risky prenatal testing such as amniocentesis with the justification for embryonic stem cell research.  The article begins:

The Disabled Jesus

I know something about hope, enough at least to know what Senator Bill Frist meant when he said during a debate on funding embryonic stem cell research: “If your daughter has diabetes, if your father has Parkinson’s, if your sister has a spinal cord injury, your views will be swayed more powerfully than you can imagine by the hope that a cure will be found in those magnificent cells, recently discovered, that today originate only in an embryo.” ...

(Unfortunately, only this beginning of the essay is available online without a subscription to America.)

In the rest of the essay, I go on to suggest that if new techniques for obtaining embryonic stem cells without destroying the embryos are ever perfected, the Church might endorse such techniques, just as it currently endorses prenatal diagnostic techniques that "do not involve disproportionate risks for the child and the mother"  (Evangelium Vitae 63).  However, since no such techniques currently exist, the Church correctly draws a bright line with respect to embryonic stem cell research.