Year In Review: Pro-Lifers Blast Senate Approval of ESCR Funding; Bush Exercises First-Ever Veto
December 21, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Pro-life and conservative pro-family leaders are livid at the U.S. Senate for voting late on Tuesday to use citizens' tax dollars to fund embryonic stem-cell research. Many of these sanctity-of-life advocates are feeling a deep sense of betrayal and outrage over the senators' approval of H.R. 810/S. 471, the "Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act."President George W. Bush had promised to veto the measure -- and he has. In a public announcement today, Bush vetoed H.R. 810, his first veto since taking office in January 2001, explaining that "it crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect -- so I vetoed it."
The president strongly supports passage of the other two bills in this package: the Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act (S. 2754) and the Fetus Farming Prohibition Act of 2006 (S. 3504). But he strongly opposed H.R. 810, legislation that would overturn his policy of funding research without promoting the ongoing unethical destruction of human embryos to derive their stem cells. Any attempt to override the president's veto is not expected to pass, as it would require two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress.
Among those present at the White House to attend Bush's announcement was attorney Matthew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel and Interim Dean of Liberty University School of Law. He says the president has taken a "principled stand that promotes science while respecting the sanctity of human life" and that recognizes that science and morality are not enemies.
"Some people who support embryonic stem-cell research are well-meaning, and we must be sympathetic to their emotional pleas," Staver notes, "but the fact is, we do not have to sacrifice moral principles to advance stem-cell research." He goes on to assert that there is "far more promise in adult stem-cell research," which does not destroy human life, than in embryonic stem-cell research, which does destroy human life.
Society's first commitment must be to life, the attorney contends, since "all other rights are illusory" without the right to life. "While we must find ways to cure disease and save lives," Staver says, "we must never devalue human life in the process."
Senate Blasted for Approving Law Forcing Taxpayer Funding of ESCR
But devaluing life is just what many in the U.S. Senate, including some supposed pro-life legislators, are being accused of doing. Opponents of H.R. 810/S. 471 feel that, by passing that piece of legislation, the Senate has not only given a stamp of approval to research that requires the intentional destruction of human embryos but is also forcing U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill for that unethical practice.
Judie Brown of the American Life League, one of America's most powerful pro-life organizations, is unhappy with the Republican-controlled Senate, and her dissatisfaction begins at the top. "I think when you've got somebody as 'pro-life' as Bill Frist defending the killing of these babies, nobody should be surprised at anything the Senate does," she says.
"The Republican Party is not pro-life," Brown contends. "It wears this veneer; it's a cloak that it puts on and takes off, individual Republicans or the party as a whole, when it suits them." However, when it comes down to "where the rubber meets the road and every single baby has to be protected from the moment his life begins," she says, "the Republican Party falls off the face of the Earth."
Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List is another pro-lifer who feels betrayed. She says the Senate's vote on the funding of ESCR should be a wakeup call for the pro-life movement.
"All of us in the movement worked so hard to help produce a really pro-life, strong Senate," Dannenfelser comments. "We have seven new pro-life senators, and you know what we've got so far? This bill -- stem-cell research, creating human beings in order to destroy them for science."
Focus on the Family Action's senior analyst for bioethics, Carrie Gordon Earll, also registered strong disapproval, observing that "some members of Senate who should know better voted to destroy human lives -- and that goes beyond cowardice."
At the same time, Earll remarked on what she called the "uncommon character and courage" George W. Bush has shown in the debate over embryonic stem-cell research. She says she hopes the president's veto of H.R. 810/S. 471 will prevent the "needless destruction" of untold numbers of frozen embryos.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC), had similar praise for the president and says he "is absolutely right to veto this legislation." He says Mr. Bush's strong support for "science within an ethical framework" is welcome, as is his ethical stand against using taxpayers' money to fund the destruction of human life.
On the other hand, the FRC leader laments the senators' failure to "defend human dignity," and he also notes the historic distinction of their vote on H.R. 810/S. 471, which he says marks "the first time in U.S. history a majority of senators approved legislation to use taxpayers' money for research requiring the destruction of human life."
In spite of this failure, Perkins says he nevertheless applauds the Senate's unanimous passage of the ban on "fetal farming," the growing of an unborn baby in a human or animal's womb expressly for the purpose of obtaining tissue from it. He says that vote "shows the growing need for ethical boundaries in the pursuit of scientific advancement and treatments for those suffering from serious diseases."
CWA Condemns Promotion of ESCR, Urges Support for ASCR
Concerned Women for America (CWA)'s statement in reaction to the stem-cell legislation package also applauded the approval of the Fetus Farming bill. However the pro-family women's organization had sharp criticism for those senators who voted to approve using taxpayer dollars to fund a practice the pro-family group's president, Wendy Wright, compares to cannibalism.
Wendy Wright | |
Embryonic research proponents have used deceptive claims and empty promises to push for expansion of ESCR funding, Wright asserts. And in their turn, she observes, too many senators have bought into and spread those same "outrageous myths" about embryonic research.At times, the CWA president contends, these legislators have sounded like "snake oil salesmen," pushing the unethical strategies of "sacrificing small humans to advance science, exploiting desperate patients for political purposes -- and forcing us to pay for it." Using human embryos in this way and then funding it with U.S. taxes "degrades all of us," she says.
"Sadly," Wright adds, "based on false claims and misplaced hopes, politicians have voted to set aside ethical research guidelines that forbid harming or destroying human beings if that human is young and rich in cells."
However, CWA director of government relations Lanier Swann emphasizes that her group is not against all stem-cell research, only against the unethical research that involves killing human embryos. She notes that CWA wholeheartedly supports adult stem-cell research (ASCR), which she describes as "an ethical and effective treatment."
American taxpayers deserve to have their money fund a proven medical practice -- one that has boasted real results, as those using adult stem cells have -- rather than "subsidizing immoral ESCR that, to this day, has not yielded results," Swann says. Unlike embryonic stem-cell studies, she points out, ASCR "has successfully treated at least 72 different diseases and conditions."
The course of action should be clear: the U.S. needs to "stop squandering our resources on immoral, fruitless, and detestable research that treats babies like guinea pigs," Swann asserts. Obviously, she says, that time and money would be best spent focusing on the continued advancement and medical breakthroughs that result from the use of adult stem cells.
