U.S. House Takes First Shot at Human Life

House Approves Funding for Embryo-Destroying Research

January 12, 2006

Adapted from an AgapePress stories by Jim Brown, Jenni Parker and Rusty Pugh of AFR News

WASHINGTON, DC (AgapePress) – Congress has been in session for less than a week and it has already begun to empower abortion advocates and scientists who seek the freedom and funding to destroy human lives. On January 11, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 253-174 to pass H.R. 3, which would expand federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR).

. President George W. Bush has vowed to veto the legislation, saying it “would use federal taxpayer dollars to support and encourage the destruction of human life for research.”

The vote on the legislation fell 32 votes short of the two-thirds margin required to overturn the President’s promised veto. H.R. 3 is the same as a bill that Bush vetoed July 19 of last year; a veto override attempt at that time failed by 51 votes.

American Values president and former U.S. presidential candidate Gary Bauer calls the House vote a sad one, particularly in light of an announced breakthrough from several research hospitals indicating that an abundance of stem cells can be recovered from amniotic fluid without harm to the mother or child. “To me,” the conservative activist says, “it shows that this vote is all about politics more than it is about science.”

On the positive side, Bauer notes, “while unfortunately this legislation passed, it did not pass with a veto-proof margin, so we will be counting on the president to veto this bill.”

President Bush has been “outstanding” on the issue of life in general and specifically on the issue of embryonic stem-cell research, the American Values spokesman points out. He says Bush understands that Americans with deep moral objections to killing human embryos do not want their tax dollars paying for research that does exactly that.

“That’s what this vote is about,” Bauer asserts. “In spite of the demagoguery, embryonic stem-cell research is not illegal in the United States,” he explains; “so all these votes in Congress are about is whether the average American taxpayer will be forced to pay for embryonic stem-cell research, which millions of Americans believe is the taking of an innocent human life.”

Bauer is expecting the vote in the U.S. Senate on the ESCR bill to be lopsided as well. However, he says he would not be surprised if the Senate vote resulted in a veto-proof margin there, just as the House vote did.

Pro-life organizations are disappointed with the outcome of the House vote, but are praising those lawmakers who opposed H.R. 3. National Right to Life Committee legislative director Douglas Johnson says every lawmaker who voted against the legislation supports stem-cell research, just “not the kind that requires killing human embryos, and we commend them for that.”

Johnson has highlighted the fact that the key lawmakers pushing H.R. 3 rejected an anti-human-cloning amendment. He calls this “one more proof that the biotech industry is determined to use human cloning to create human embryo farms.”

A bill that is identical to H.R. 3 has been introduced into the Senate as S.5. Senate action on the issue is expected within a matter of months.

Meanwhile, American Life League President Judie Brown says despite the fact that adult stem cells have already been used to treat diseases and that stem cells derived from the amniotic fluid of pregnant women have shown promise, proponents of embryonic stem-cell research, or ESCR, continue to push the practice for one reason: money.

Brown assets that some members of Congress see the substantial amounts of money that biotech firms are investing in ESCR — and those lawmakers, she believes, want to see more and more money poured into it as well.

“Not because it will ever ultimately result in a cure for a disease,” she says, “but because there’s big money to be made in manufactured hearts, livers, and other body parts.”

It is evident to her, she shares, that those members of Congress are “more interested in extending their own lives into immortality than they are in honesty.”

Brown says it is not surprising that these lawmakers would condone the killing of human beings in the embryonic stage, since they also believe in the killing of unborn children right up until birth — and, in some cases, during birth.