Robert P. George: One really does wish that Governor Cuomo would defend his views with arguments. If he really thinks that human embryos are something other than human beings at the earliest stage of their natural development, he should state his reasons for believing such a thing. He should explain to us the basis of his judgment, if it is indeed his judgment, that every major text in the field of human embryology is simply in error on the point. After all, the question of whether a human embryo is or is not a whole living member of the species Homo sapiens is not one to be resolved in the mind of any conscientious citizen or morally serious policymaker by examining public-opinion polling data.
At the same time, it should be noted that Cuomo doesn’t even manage to do justice to public-opinion polls on the question of embryo-killing. For what it is worth, polls stating the question in an unbiased fashion tend to show that a majority of Americans do not support the practice of destroying human embryos for biomedical research, and certainly oppose the creation of embryos by cloning for research — so-called "therapeutic cloning" — or any other purpose.
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