...if an acorn is an oak tree. Maybe there's room for opinion, but if you've ever spent a hot summer day clearing Texas scrub oak, you can appreciate the difference. 
Above, a blastocyst under scanning electron microscope. Obviously not a baby,. (Photo by Dr. Yorgos Nikas)
But stem cell research is an emotional issue for some people, and accurate thinking on the subject can be hard to find in some quarter, like in the White House.. Our current President, who can somehow send thousands of twenty-something-year olds to be killed in Iraq on his fool's errand, claims to have such a highly-evolved "conscience" that he knows that even a one-minute-old zygote is literally a baby, and that any interruption in the process of cellular division at any point would be nothing short of "murder". (Every sperm is sacred...) Unfortunately, this overactive imagination has forced him to veto all bills promoting stem cell research.
The last such bill would have allowed research exclusively on embryos that are definitely going to be destroyed otherwise...but Bush he have power and Bush he say no.
What I don't get is, how can you call yourself Pro-Life if you're Pro-War?
Why does microscopic, potential life trump the needs of actual living, breathing human beings?
The question isn't just "when does human life begin", but "when does human life cease to deserve protecting?" At birth? At age 21?
As a 57-year-old MS patient, I have selfish as well as broader reasons to want stem cell research to continue unimpeded; it could eventually help me re-grow the damaged or missing "insulation" around the nerves in my brain, thus greatly restoring my life and hopefully allowing me to go back to work. Or at least to pee without using a damn catheter...
Another view of a sacred blastocyst. (Getty Photo)
And again, for reference, an actual human baby, above, circa 1950.
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