But then his wife insisted that embryonic stem cell research wasn't as bad as abortion. "You've got to admit that, right?" she said.

"Why," I asked.

She paused and thought for a moment. "Well...because...they're not babies. They're in a petri dish in a lab somewhere."

"So instead of finding fault with the fact that laboratories have humans in dishes," I said, "you choose to say that because the humans are in the lab it's OK to kill them."

"But they're going to just die anyway," my friend interrupted.

"So are you. That doesn't give me an excuse to throw you in a dish and start using you for parts, does it?"

"That's ridiculous," she said.

"Yes, it is," I said. "Look. I know what you're saying. It's because they don't look human. They don't look like us but the reason of 'they don't look like us' has been a reason given for mass murder and oppression throughout the centuries."