James P. Greenwood: “Mr. Speaker, this is a matter of values. It is a matter of how much one values our ability to end human suffering and to…”

“Mr. Speaker, this is a matter of values. It is a matter of how much one values our ability to end human suffering and to cure disease. No one in this House should be so arrogant as to assume that they have a monopoly on values, that their side of an argument is the values side and the other's is not. This is a matter of how much we value saving little children's lives and saving our parents' lives. There has been talk on the floor about creating embryo factories. Most of that talk I think has been conducted by people who do not understand the first thing about this research. Here is how one could create an embryo factory. We would get a long line of women who line up in a laboratory and say, would you please put me through the extraordinarily painful process of superovulation because I would like to donate my eggs to science. Does anybody think that is going to happen? Of course it is not going to happen. We are going to take this research, and this research involves a very small handful of cells. In the natural world, every day millions of cells, millions of eggs, are fertilized, and they do not adhere to the wall of the uterus. They are flushed away. That is how God does God's work. In in vitro fertilization clinics, every day thousands of eggs are fertilized, and most of them are discarded. That is the way loving parents build families who cannot do it otherwise.”