Tom Coburn Quotes

I strongly oppose cloning, as do most Americans. We recoil at the idea of growing human beings for spare body parts or creating life for our convenience. And while we must devote enormous energy to conquering disease, it is equally important that we pay attention to the moral concerns raised by the new frontier of human embryo stem cell research. Even the most noble ends do not justify any means.

A moral choice in its basic terms appears to be a choice that favors survival: a choice made in favor of life.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

One of the reasons I admire David Lindsay-Abaire's work is that he, like the Greeks I've spent so much of my professional life contemplating, is not afraid of taking on the big stuff - huge, human, moral issues - what do we owe to those we love?

Abortion is an attack on the family and the humanity that unites us all.

I hate abortions, but just could not make that choice for someone else.

Once you put human life in human hands, you have started on a slippery slope that knows no boundaries.

We acknowledge the diversity of deeply held convictions within our fellowship even as we seek to interpret the Scriptures under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Many American Baptists believe that, biblically, human life begins at conception, that abortion is immoral and a destruction of a human being created in God's image … Many others believe that while abortion is a regrettable reality, it can be a morally acceptable action and they choose to act on the biblical principles of compassion and justice … and freedom of will. … Many gradations of opinion between these basic positions have been expressed within our fellowship.

Human cloning and attempts at creating animal-human hybrids are immoral and unethical practices that devalue human life and have questionable, if any, scientific merit. These practices are a direct affront to the sanctity of human life in this state, and have no place in our society.

I have said often, and I am sure of it, that the greatest destroyer of peace in the world today is abortion. If a mother can kill her own child, what is there to stop you and me from killing each other? The only one who has the right to take life is the The One who has created it.

If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn.

Life is not yours to take.

The issue is not whether there are horrible cases where the penalty seems "right". The real question is whether we will ever design a capital system that reaches only the "right" cases, without dragging in the wrong cases, cases of innocence or cases where death is not proportionate punishment. Slowly, even reluctantly, I have realized the answer to that question is no- we will never get it right.

What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth.

Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it.

The right to life is the first human right. Abortion is killing someone that cannot defend himself.

I have been one who believes that abortion is the taking of a human life . . . . The fact that they could not resolve the issue of when life begins was a finding in and of itself. If we don't know, then shouldn't we morally opt on the side that it is life? If you came upon an immobile body and you yourself could not determine whether it was dead or alive, I think that you would decide to consider it alive until somebody could prove it was dead. You wouldn't get a shovel and start covering it up. And I think we should do the same thing with regard to abortion.

For me, moral questions such as stem-cell research turn upon whether suffering is caused. In this case, clearly none is. The embryos have no nervous system. But that's not an issue discussed publicly. The issue is, Are they human? If you are an absolutist moralist, you say, "These cells are human, and therefore they deserve some kind of special moral treatment."

[…] life is just the misery left between abortion and euthanasia […]

The traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological and demographic developments.

The right thing and the easy thing are never the same.

It's not easy to shed the idea that human life is sacred.

You can't have intentions without consequences. The question is, who pays for the consequences? Saving fish from drowning. Same thing. Who’s saved? Who’s not?

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?

The right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.