Splitting eggs and hairs

The Boston Globe has an interesting story today called "What about IVF?" It's about an evangelical woman, Jennifer Lahl, the director of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network in San Francisco, and her lonely campaign against IVF.

I've always been struck by the way someone on the right and/or religious side of the abortion fight will be criticized for "opposing a woman's right to choose even in cases of rape or incest". This is meant to show how rigid and inflexible they are, how unreasonable. Well, you know what? I have more respect for those people than I do for those who will allow those exceptions.

That latter group just sees abortion as a method of birth control and oppose it because of a myriad of reasons that pretty much boil down to wanting to control women. The former group sees it as murder. And let's face it: if abortion is murder (I don't accept that it is, but if it is), then how the hell do you have "exceptions"? That would be like saying I could murder an actual living person and get away with it because his father was a rapist.

However. I have also always wondered why a huge - practically all-encompassing - majority of the same folks who howl about stem-cell research find IVF acceptable. In both cases, embryos are created to be destroyed. (In fact, Lahl argues that IVF is worse, because it encapsulates eugenics principles of "grading" potential humans.) It's always seemed to me that evangelicals (or anyone) who opposes stem-cell research and doesn't oppose IVF - or in fact engages in IVF - has lost their moral credibility.

And since moral credibility is pretty much all they have going for them, perhaps they should start pushing adoption on all fronts. Or else shut up and let the rest of us also do what we deem best for our families and our lives.