Last Tuesday night, the Senate passed Kay Patterson’s private member’s bill to legalise human embryo cloning. It was carried by the barest of margins, two votes. As a conscience vote it exposed senators to a level of public scrutiny seldom paralleled in normal debates. Many felt exposed and vulnerable. Most registered the weight of the decisions before them. It stretched their comfort zones. Speeches were impassioned, and oscillated between those promoting cloning in the search for disease therapies, and those anxious to safeguard human life from deliberate destruction. Ultimately it came down to numbers, just enough for some, frustratingly short for others.
The next day Senator Andrew Bartlett mused publicly whether his vote was too hasty, even cast in the wrong direction. Such was the pressure.
The debate was too short and intense. It lasted only two days. A senate committee had held separate hearings, but even these were hurriedly convened and tightly managed. The upshot was a divided report coming on the back of a commissioned technical study, which raised as many questions as it answered.
The fair-minded would quickly concede that these issues are complex and confronting. They are far from settled in the scientific and ethical academy, let alone the community generally. So there’s little chance that overworked and hard-pressed parliamentarians can easily rise above the clutter of their daily lives, to ponder the application of fundamental principles in moments of pause and reflection!
However, the debate reflected what previous inquiries had revealed. Maintaining rational argument and logical deduction is difficult in the face of moving human anecdote.
Nowhere is this more acute, than when dealing with the crusade to alleviate suffering and chronic disabilities. Yet experimenting with human life is fraught. The prospect of miracle cures stirs the imagination and excites curiosity. It conjures what could be possible, but challenges long-held fundamental values which underscore our sense of community, even human rights. As much as the challenge is to courageously march into the unknown, so too is the conviction that correct behaviour often involves restraint.
Thus the dilemma faced in making a conscience vote. It is not enough to base decisions on emotional responses, intuitive reactions or mindless obedience. It calls for a deeper, more exacting introspection of what is important. Put simply, it asks an individual to discern which values should prevail in the inevitable contest between desirable outcomes.
What was placed before the