Gloria Feldt recently left Planned Parenthood and it just so happens I'm reading her book "The War on Choice'." It's the usual stuff but this paragraph I had to read a couple times:

Those who oppose stem cell research believe that an egg fertilized in a Petri dish is a human being. All other considerations aside, these embryos are not human beings, because humans need a woman to carry and gestate the embryo for nine months to birth. Embryos can’t develop by themselves. It’s a woman’s choice that makes an embryo a potential human being. The blastocycsts that researchers would like to use are ones that woman have clearly decided they will not carry to term. This choice is, of course generally made in consultation with her spouse or partner, her doctor, and her own conscience, but ultimately it is her own. Right-wing ideologues, however, are trying to short-circuit women’s power and take control of the entire reproductive process, even at the Petri dish level. Page 166

Huh? It's not a human being but it could be a potential human being if the woman who is not carrying it decides it is. That's a woman's power? It's simply insane.

I have a theory about why there is so much support among Planned Parenthood and other abortion-minded groups in favor of embryonic stem cell research. If Roe v. Wade is overturned that will turn the debate -- and the making of abortion legislation -- back to the states. If the states already have research centers and state money and universities and industries heavily involved in ESCR it will be that much harder to pass laws against abortion. Those conducting ESCR will say, "We can't limit abortion because it will stop all of the "life saving" research we are doing." Just a thought.