Religion on both sides of Stem Cells

President Obama announced Monday that federal money will go to conducting embryonic stem cell research on a limited basis, reversing the Bush Administration policy.
While this action is not wholly unforeseen - Obama has stated before his support of this type of research - one particular excerpt from his address raised some flags, and became the focus of an AP article about the role of religion in the embryonic stem cell debate.
Obama said "As a person of faith, I believe we are called to care for each other and work to ease human suffering. I believe we have been given the capacity and will to pursue this research and the humanity and conscience to do so responsibly."
Most are aware of the religious argument against using embryonic stem cells; the leadership of both the Catholic and Evangelical Protestant communities are outspoken opponents on sanctity of life arguments. However, this is a whole new spin on the tired debate.
Obama seems to be saying that there is a religious obligation to engage in this form of stem cell research in order to help save the lives that already exist.
In some ways, I suppose it is similar to the concept of allowing abortion to protect the life of the mother in that the potential life of a fetus - or in this case an embryo - is sacrificed for the life that already exists. Obviously this isn't a perfect analogy; other methods of determining cures to diseases are possible without destroying embryos, but stem cell research seems to offer one of the most promising ways of finding those cures.
Bringing in religious support for embryonic stem cell research complicates an already opaque issue. Many white mainline protestants - 58 percent - believe that relieving the suffering of those afflicted with disease is a more compelling interest than that of the embryo. Interestingly, 59 percent of white Catholics feel the same way. Most Jews also agree; the Jewish tradition teaches that an embryo does not become a life until at least 40 days after conception.
At the end of the day, though, the real question is how much the government should allow religious arguments to drive the debate over the federal government providing funding. The government has a responsibility to decide whether this is valuable research warranting further study, not whether God would want the research undertaken.
Already through the abortion issue, the government in essence has said that until a fetus is viable outside the womb it does not hold the same right to life that the rest of us enjoy. Roe v. Wade laid out this precedent when the Supreme Court began talking about pregnancy in trimesters. The third trimester is where the fetus is viable outside the womb, and so it is where States can make abortion illegal. Any time before that, abortion cannot be outright banned. At the developmental stage of embryonic stem cells - essentially at the beginning of the first trimester - the ability of a woman to abort a pregnancy is virtually unimpeded by law.
Given that view, the use of embryonic stem cells for research - particularly life saving research - seems to pose no legal problems. Thus the government should have no qualms funding it, provided the research is valuable to society.