President Bush cast the first veto of his 5 1/2-year presidency Wednesday, saying legislation easing limits on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research "crosses a moral boundary" and is wrong.
"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," Bush said at a White House event where he was surrounded by 18 families who "adopted" frozen embryos not used by other couples, and then used those leftover embryos to have children.
Its utterly frustrating to see Bush finally unwrap his veto pen to strike this particular law.
I simply cannot fathom why an indeterminate number of lifeless cells (that are going to be destroyed anyway) is so freaking important that Bush had to break six years of inertia to actually exercise his Constitutional duty to veto bad laws.
His decision, as Kip points out, is wrong on nearly every level.
No lives would have been taken had this legislation passed – only embryos already slated for destruction would have been eligible.
How can the lives of massless lumps be more important than the lives and livelihoods of millions of people (including – gasp – children!) that suffer from diseases that stem cell research is supposed to help.
Kip is also correct in pointing out that government shouldn’t be funding medical research at all…
But - If my tax dollars are going to be used for medical research (and they are) then the process should be as far removed from politics as possible. The feds are already funding stem cell research – restricting that funding for stupid, meritless, political reasons is – to put it bluntly – crap.
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