It's not necessary to point out that nobody, not even the most ardent pro-lifer, mourns the loss of these embryos. We don't take any precautions, as a society, to try to save embryos created as a result of ordinary procreation. No Nobel Prize will ever be awarded to the doctor who spends a lifetime searching for a way to prevent all this unnecessary "death." Why not? Because even if some people say they do, we generally do not consider embryos equal to the rest of us. Our world simply does not operate by that principle.

Hmm. So are you saying that if Bush can recognize the political benefit of allowing IVF to go forward despite its destruction of embryos, he should also let stem cell research go forward even though it destroys embryos?

It's not only a political calculation. It's also an ethical calculation. Whether or not he recognizes it, Bush tolerates IVF medicine because he realizes its benefits -- giving normally infertile couples the chance to become parents -- outweigh its costs, namely the freezing and discarding of "spare" embryos. Stem cell research presents a similar cost-benefit picture: The cost of destroying embryos that would otherwise have been discarded are outweighed by the chance at treating or curing diseases that afflict tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

Indeed, as Scott Rosenberg pointed out in Salon several years ago, embryonic stem cell research actually presents a neat solution to the moral dilemma created by IVF medicine. IVF creates unwanted embryos, and stem cell research offers us a way to put those embryos to good use.

OK, but doesn't Bush say that he's got his own solution to the problem of unwanted embryos -- doesn't he say that parents should give them up for "adoption"?

Arthur Caplan, the University of Pennsylvania bioethicist, has this to say of Bush's idea that hundreds of thousands of extra embryos can become children to adoptive parents: "I've never heard a sillier, more inaccurate, more ideologically fueled claim about anything in all of biomedicine." And Caplan is right.

It's true that there have been some children -- about 80 -- born from spare embryos donated to couples who want to adopt and also experience pregnancy. But to present this as a way to prevent throwing away all embryos currently frozen is grossly misleading. For one thing, the vast majority of parents of embryos in freezers don't want to give them up for adoption. They're emotionally attached to those embryos, Caplan points out, and they don't like the idea of other people raising their genetic children. That's why, according to the RAND study of frozen IVF embryos, more patients have chosen to discard or donate embryos for research than to donate them to other couples.

Moreover, the embryos currently stored in IVF clinics are there for a reason: They didn't look right, and doctors chose to freeze them rather than implant them. Perhaps that's why, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the chances of a frozen embryo resulting in a live birth are significantly lower than those of a fresh embryo: Once transferred into a woman's uterus, only 24 percent of frozen embryos result in babies, compared to 34 percent for never-frozen embryos. And not only is there a strong chance that you won't get any children if you choose to "adopt" frozen embryos, there's also a chance that you'll have more kids than you wanted, since embryo implantation very rarely results in the birth of just one child.

We should note that, just as it is unclear whether all of the embryos in storage can become babies, it's also unclear whether the embryos could work for stem cell extraction. But ethicists say it's much more practical, and perhaps humane, to try to get stem cells from the embryos than to try to get babies from them. In fact, it's unreasonable to expect any large demand for embryo adoption. Does Bush really believe that hundreds of thousands of women and couples who want kids will opt for this route -- to choose a process that rarely produces children, that sometimes produces more than one child, and that is, to boot, physically taxing and expensive? Caplan calls that expectation absurd.

And rather than selling them on this crapshoot, wouldn't it be more "pro-life" of Bush to suggest that childless couples choose traditional adoption? "We have 500,000 kids in foster care in this country," Rep. DeGette told Salon. "If the ultra right wing is so concerned maybe they might want to look out for kids who are already born."

But if it's so obviously absurd, so pie-in-the-sky, why is Bush pushing embryo adoption at all?

Because it lets him stage events in which he kisses babies. In the end that's what you've got to chalk it up to: Bush's policy on stem cell research is so inconsistent that even most people in his own party don't agree with him on it. After the election last year, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which strongly supports embryonic stem cell research, asked a polling firm to conduct a survey of Bush voters' attitudes toward stem cell research. By a 52 to 42 percent margin, the Bush voters supported obtaining stem cells from embryos at IVF clinics that would be otherwise be discarded. Polls show independents and Democrats to be even more supportive.

By suggesting that every embryo harvested for stem cells represents a lost baby, Bush is attempting to move his uphill fight on stem cells to much more reliable political terrain -- the abortion debate. And indeed, many on the right see this fight as intimately tied to abortion, and groups like the National Right to Life Committee have warned lawmakers that any votes for embryonic stem cell research will be considered pro-abortion votes.

"This is part of not being able to give an inch on abortion," Caplan says. The right worries that by allowing embryo destruction, even for a good cause, they'd be making a hole in their argument that life begins at the instant of conception. Allowing stem cell research "threatens a consistency that is easier to defend" in the abortion debate, Caplan says.

So will it work? Will Bush manage to ride out this political storm by kissing babies?

He may. But if the bill passes the Senate -- where a vote has not yet been scheduled -- Bush is certain to face the kind of tough political choice that challenges even the P.R. power of adorable infants. That's why many supporters of embryonic stem cell research hold out hope that Bush will eventually see the light.

"It would be a grave error," says Rep. DeGette, "for his first veto to be of a bill that could lead to cures for tens of thousands of Americans."

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