A woman in India is reported now to be the “world’s oldest mom,” giving birth to a baby at age 70. Rajo Devi of Alewa, India gave birth to a baby girl last week. She, along with her 72 year-old husband, had been hoping for a baby for a half-century. The local media reported the event as a great scientific breakthrough as the aged couple beamed with their infant.

The moral status of the human embryo now stands as a central question of our times.  In fact, it has only been in recent times that we have even known much about the human embryo.  Now, with the issues of human embryonic stem cell research, cloning, reproductive technologies, and designer babies before us, the human embryo is now a central character in some of our most heated moral and political debates.

Britain’s Labour-led government has unleashed the hounds of biomedical and cultural revolution in recent days, voting to allow expanded research using and destroying human embryos, the development of animal-human hybrid embryos, the development of “savior siblings,” and now equal access to IVF technology regardless of sexual orientation.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is in big political trouble. His Labor Party suffered a recent humiliation in local elections and he appears to be losing support from within the party’s parliamentary ranks. He also faces a host of controversial issues, including big policy decisions about human embryonic stem cell research and the development of animal/human hybrid embryos for medical research.

Archbishop Rowan Williams, Primate of the Church of England and leader of the Anglican Communion was once a human embryo. So was I. So were you. So also were those who would now reduce human embryos to the status of a commodity to be used and destroyed in the name of medical progress.

The development of In Vitro Fertilization technologies [IVF] has produced what one key observer has called “a rather unexpected aspect” of the technique — the destruction of well over a million human embryos in Great Britain alone.

For some time now ethicists have warned that the development of real animal-human combinations — known as chimeras — was nearing on the horizon. Now, according to some reports, the future has arrived.

Is the notion of fatherhood becoming obsolete? Researchers at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in Great Britain say they are on the verge of creating sperm cells from bone marrow. This would allow women to conceive children completely without men.

Well, never doubt the power of the media. My recent article on homosexuality ignited a firestorm in the public square. Why? We may never know — but the controversy represents both a challenge and an opportunity.