The stupidity of STNG abortion + genetic engineering politics

I finally figured out how to work the copy and paste function, so I was able to paste this quote from Wikipedia on the STNG episode "Up the Long Ladder" and its relationship to abortion and genetic engineering politics.

"Up the Long Ladder" was criticized from two directions. Snodgrass recalled, "I got enormous flack from the right to life coalition because they destroyed the clones. They thought I was condoning abortion. In fact, I did put a line in Riker's mouth that was very pro-choice and the right to life coalition went crazy. He says I told you that you can't clone me and you did it against my will, and I have the right to have control over my own body. That's my feeling and it was soapbox, and it was one I got to get on. I was supported by Maurice all the way." (Captains' Logs: The Unauthorized Complete Trek Voyages)

Now, please don't get me wrong. I'm not condemning pro-choicers here, who have many excellent points (I happen to be on the opposite side of the aisle on this issue, though I lean heavily left on almost all others). I merely want to point out that Snodgrass's particular methodology of promoting pro-choice politics in this episode is quite problematic. First of all, an adult clone is not a fetus, and should not be equated with one. It is a fully rational, fully adult being living totally outside a womb. There is no issue of embryonic parasitism here, which is one of the main justifications for a pro-choice position (and a good justification, at that). Nor do clones fall under the second major argument in favor of a pro-choice position: that fetuses are human, but not persons. This position, advocated by Peter Singer, argues that to be a person, a human being must be capable of feeling pain and interacting cognitively with the world. While the Singerian position can be somewhat problematic (since it can be used to justify infanticide and certain forms of euthanasia), it is logically consistent and even though I'm pro-life\anti-abortion, I do not see it as fundamentally unethical. The problem in this episode, however, is that Riker's clone is fully sentient and fully alive. No one questions this. Riker's justification for killing the clone is that he was "cloned against his will". Again, it's very understandable to argue that a woman shouldn't be forced to carry a child to term if she's a victim of sexual assault, but the situation here is simply not analagous. A clone exists outside of the womb, and forceable cloning, while reprehensible, in this episode creates fully alive adult beings (a tragic scientific inaccuracy). You can abort a fetus before it comes to term, but I don't think any rape victim, pro-choice or pro-life, would argue she has the right to kill her child after she's given birth to it.

STNG's simplistic approach to abortion and cloning\genetics technology has severely hampered the series over the years. In Federation society, genetically engineered people are legally discriminated against, yet the Federation is held up as an ideal. Clones and A.I.'s are always shown as "just short" of fully human, a position which denigrates these lifeforms unjustly. Promoting one's personal political viewpoints on abortion can be productive, but not if it comes at the expense of life that no one disagrees is human.