Children of Men
After wanting to see the movie for weeks, I finally saw Children of Men recently. Based on a novel by PD James, the movie is set in 2027 at a time when humankind is looking at the possibility of its own extinction because of an inexplicable infertility crisis in the population. No children have been born for 18 years, and world is a very bleak place indeed. The movie's advertising tagline says it all: “No children. No future. No hope”.
Then, inexplicably, one woman falls pregnant. The movie tells the story of the struggle to protect this woman and her baby from various groups that want to use them for their own ends.
The contrast with current Western society could not be more stark. We seem to be in the business of destroying life—we abort babies because they come at inconvenient times, or might have something wrong with them. Now we even want to create babies so we can destroy them for the sake of research.
As I watched the movie, I kept thinking about Senator Natasha Stott Despoja's words during the recent Australian Senate debate on embryonic stem cell research. In her arguments to convince the Senate that we should allow research on cloned human embryos, she said, “... I believe it would be unethical not to invest in this research and the technology and possible clinical application that it will bring”. Senator Stott Despoja only has the luxury of thinking like this because babies have become a disposable commodity in our society.
Imagine this same debate happening in a world like the one in Children of Men. Imagine this same debate taking place in a society where women couldn't have children. Imagine the outrage we'd see at the idea that ‘spare’ IVF embryos, or created cloned embryos, should be used for research, when they could just as well be put inside a woman's womb to create a baby. (I wonder if some infertile couples already feel this way.) Imagine how society's views on the value of life would change.
I'm not saying this is the best argument against embryonic stem cell research, or against abortion. But it's not a bad argument, either.