Bush’s first veto blocks funding of fatal research
- Jul 24, 2006
President Bush vetoed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act July 19, preventing the federal government from underwriting experiments that destroy human embryos.
The House of Representatives failed in an override effort the same day the President vetoed the proposal. The House voted 235-193 for the measure, leaving it 51 votes short of the two-thirds majority required to override a veto. The vote total was nearly the same as that of May 2005, when the House voted 238-194 for passage of the bill, H.R. 810.
The veto, the first of Bush’s 5½ years in the White House, followed Senate passage of the legislation by a day. The Senate vote was 63-37, four votes short of a veto-proof majority.
In vetoing the bill, Bush followed through on his pledge to veto legislation that would weaken his policy barring federal grants for experiments that result in the destruction of embryos. Bush’s rule allows funds for research only on embryonic stem cell lines already in existence when his policy was announced in 2001. The extraction of stem cells from embryos results in the destruction of the tiny human beings.
H.R. 810 would have underwritten research that uses embryos stored at in vitro fertilization clinics.
In announcing his veto at a White House event, Bush said the bill crossed a “moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. If this bill would have become law, American taxpayers would, for the first time in our history, be compelled to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos. And I’m not going to allow it.”
Bush announced his actions in the White House’s East Room to an audience that included 18 families with “snowflake” children they adopted as embryos in storage at fertility clinics and four families who donated embryos to other families.
“These boys and girls are not spare parts,” Bush said of the children who surrounded him. “They remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells. And they remind us that in our zeal for new treatments and cures, America must never abandon our fundamental morals.”
Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, commended Bush for “standing by the principles he has articulated on this issue from the beginning.”
“The essential issue here is whether or not we as a nation want to underwrite the killing of unborn children in order to try to seek cures for older and bigger human beings,” said Land, who attended the White House event. “This is biotech cannibalism, in which we eat our own young in order to treat and extend the lives of older and bigger human beings. Americans should be grateful we have a President who says, ‘No, this is not the kind of nation we want to be.’”
The ERLC and other pro-life organizations worked ardently against H.R. 810. In a July 17 letter to a Senate pro-life leader, Land said the entity opposes the bill in the “strongest possible terms.”
Stem cells are the body’s master cells that can develop into tissues and other cells, providing hope for the treatment of numerous afflictions.
Unlike research using embryos, extracting stem cells from non-embryonic sources – such as umbilical cord blood, placentas, fat and bone marrow – does not harm the donor and has produced treatments for at least 72 ailments, according to Do No Harm, a coalition promoting ethics in research. These include spinal cord injuries, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis and sickle cell anemia.
Embryonic research has yet to treat any diseases in human beings and has been plagued by the development of tumors in lab animals. Privately funded research on embryonic stem cells is legal and ongoing in the United States.
Further Learning
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