When is a Child Not a Fetus? More on Bush's Failure to Care for the Born Once

While the Bush administration tries to stake out some moral high ground by prohibiting the use of stem cells for scientific research, the intellectual oddity is that the Administration has also argued, in at least two cases, that the living, breathing progeny of an in vitro fertilization are not children.

When Robert Netting was diagnosed with cancer, before undergoing chemotherapy, he made a sperm deposit at his local fertility clinic. The spermatozoa were frozen for future use.

One month after Mr. Netting passed away, his wife underwent in vitro fertilization using her eggs and his frozen sperm. Nine months later, ten months after Mr. Netting's death, Rhonda Gillett-Netting gave birth to twins.

Here's the interesting thing.

The United States Department of Justice, on behalf of the United States Social Security System, argued that because the twins had been born more than nine months after Mr. Netting's death, they were not "children" for the purpose of receiving his social security benefits. Gillett-Netting v Barnhart, 371 F.3d 593 (9th Cir. 2004)

In other words, the Bush administration cared more for the twins welfare when they were embryos, than it did after they were fully born, living, breathing human beings.

To say the two positions are morally unreconcilable is an understatement.

This is not the only time the U.S has taken this position. The Justice Department advanced a similar argument to reject a social security claim in 2001. Woodward v. Commissioner of Social Service, 760 N.E.2d 257 (S.Ct. Mass. 2002). The facts in this case are almost identical to those in Gillett. Here, the husband was diagnosed with leukemia and the wife was fertilized with his frozen sperm about 15 months after he passed away. The "couple's" twins were born two years after Mr. Woodward had passed away.

I have little doubt that there are similar cases working their way through the administrative tribunals and courts even as I write this. The issue affects more than cancer patients. Young soldiers, leaving for Iraq, often sign a will and freeze their sperm against the unfortunate event they do not return. If the Administration refuses to pay Social Security benefits, is it any more likely it will pay army benefits to those children of non-returning soldiers?

Far be it from me to expect consistency from the Bush Administration, but I would expect, at a minimum, that if a few mere cells are a child when they are still nothing more than a potential growing in someone's belly, those same cells ought to be treated the same or better once they are born.