The US Senate on Tuesday voted to weaken President Bush’s limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Bush has said he would veto any bill that crossed his desk that would do so.
To freshen your memory, back in the summer of 2001, Bush issued an executive order that forbade federally funded scientists from using taxpayer money to do embryonic stem cell research, except that which uses cells already “harvested” from aborted unborn embryonic children.
The Senate vote was 63-37, just shy of the number necessary for an override of a veto. The House passed the bill in May 2005 by 238-194. They too fall short of the two-thirds required. This would indeed be the first veto issued by Bush, although the White House is spinning it by saying that Bush has issued 141 “veto threats”). Sorry, but unless you use the veto to block bad bills, it’s not much of a threat. That’s a different topic, however.
The forces on the side of killing unborn children in order to harvest their cells in order to treat diseases in already born people—including quite a few Republicans—are, of course, calling on the president not to “stand in the way of progress” and “ease the suffering” of the sick and so on.
Technorati Tags:abortion, legislation, politics, pro-life, stem cells
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‘The forces on the side of killing unborn children in order to harvest their cells in order to treat diseases in already born people—including quite a few Republicans—are, of course, calling on the president not to “stand in the way of progress” and “ease the suffering” of the sick and so on.’
It’s important to clarify the real nature of the outrage: this isn’t even about killing embryonic humans—because there is no law stopping that, whatsoever. That is not sufficient for death crowd—they demand, with this legislation, that everyone pay for it.
That’s what the other side is outraged about—that some of us would rather not pay for murder.
Does anyone have a link for individual senator’s votes?
Good point JC. I found a roll call of the vote. In this morning’s NY Times of all places. http://capwiz.com/nyt//issues/votes/?votenum=206&chamber=S&congress=1092 Isn’t it strange that for all the supposed “popularity” of the idea of funding medical canibalism with tax dollars, not many in the MSM are letting people know how their senators voted. That should tell us something. Like maybe that there’s significant dicomfort with this even among its proponents.
This link has the roll call of the vote, and seems more user friendly than the NYT’s roll call.
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&session=2&vote=00206#position