Bush Stands for Life

The President casts his first veto---to deny federal funding for embryonic stem cell research:

With the stroke of his veto pen, President Bush took a stand for the integrity of the human person while providing the American people with a fine lesson in the fundamental truth that science serves humanity, not vice versa.

In a press conference at the White House, and joined by 18 families whose children were originally frozen embryos not used by other couples, the President vetoed legislation that would overturn his previous policy allowing federal funding of research only on human embryonic stem cell lines derived from embryos that had been destroyed prior to the announcement of that policy. At that time, five years ago, the Bush Administration made available over $90 million for research on these lines, the first administration ever to make federal funds available for this purpose.

Recognizing the challenge of promoting science to alleviate human suffering, "without sanctioning the practices that violate the dignity of human life," President Bush insisted that the bill "would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others."

"It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect, so I vetoed it, " said the President.

The President was explicit in grounding his decision on the fundamental integrity of all human persons: "Each of these human embryos is a unique human life with inherent dignity and matchless value." He noted that each of the children attending the press conference was adopted while still an embryo, "and has been blessed with the chance to grow up in a loving family."

"These boys and girls are not spare parts," said President Bush. "They remind us of that [which] is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research. 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."

Make no mistake---advocates of embryonic stem cell research don't give a fig about science. Adult stem cells are already at the clinical application stage and by all accounts driving medical breakthroughs. Privately-funded embryonic research has yielded no clinical applications, yet that's the fig leaf abortion advocates use to hide the proposed expansion of a culture of death long grown outside civilized bounds.

There's a reason why so many leftists support this research, and it has nothing to do with the poor wretches they simultaneously recommend euthanizing.

The real question in all this is why the President can't be as savvy on other issues threatening the life and well-being of this nation.