What I really want for my children is that they be loved and that they be happy and that they lead a good life.

It is true that the Jewish tradition emphasizes the moral mandate to save life. It also has a different position from the Catholic Church on the moral status of the embryo. It has a more developmental view of when human life, in the sense of personhood, begins than does the Catholic Church.

It's possible to make sense of what's morally at stake in an appreciation of the gift of life, or the gift of a child, without necessarily presupposing that there is a giver. What matters is that the gift - in this case, the child - not be wholly our own doing, our own product.

I think it would be a great tragedy to devote medical resources and genetic technological breakthroughs to purposes that are not to do with health or medicine, but instead are to do with satisfying the desires that are created by the consumer society.

A better way to mutual respect is to engage directly with the moral convictions citizens bring to public life, rather than to require that people leave their deepest moral convictions outside politics before they enter.

I'm a supporter of embryonic stem cell research. I do think there are very important moral and also religious questions at stake in the debate over embryonic stem cell research.

It's ultimately the purpose of education to cultivate the love of learning for its own sake.