The Government was right to respond generously to objections from its Roman Catholic ministers by permitting them to abstain from voting on the controversial embryo Bill that is going through the House.Making use of special standing orders that allow for a "conscience" opt-out for those with religious objections to a policy, the Government's Chief Whip, Geoff Hoon, has made it possible for Labour MPs and members of the front bench to be excused from the three-line whip that normally attaches to government legislation.
As a result, such high-profile Cabinet ministers as Des Browne and Ruth Kelly will not be forced to engage in full-scale insubordination in order to remain true to their religious convictions.
But there will be no such clear-cut means of escape for Labour MPs of other faiths, or none, from what may seem to them a difficult moral dilemma.
It is, after all, perfectly possible to have profound ethical reservations about this Bill - which permits the creation of human-animal "chimeras" for medical research - from an Anglican, Jewish, Muslim or humanist point of view.
While it is true that, for Catholics, there is a specific religious prohibition for what the Catechism terms "co-operation in evil", which means that supporting the Bill could be seen as a collusion with sin, there are compelling reasons why others, too, should have a right to dissent.
Issues of this kind, which have moral dimensions of such intensely personal resonance, have almost always been subject to a free vote in the House.
wThis is partly because most of them have been Private Members' Bills (David Steel's Abortion Act of 1967 is an obvious example), which, though they may have had tacit government support, were not government-sponsored.
But however sincerely committed Gordon Brown and his Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, may be to this Bill and its potential value for scientific research into debilitating illnesses such as motor neurone disease, they should accept that any intervention by the state in matters of such moral sensitivity needs to be done with humility and respect for private principle.
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