Bad Choice for the President's first veto, IMHO...we will see.
___________________________
Senate to pass stem cell bill, Bush set to veto By Joanne Kenen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Conservative anti-abortion senators were split on Tuesday ahead of a vote on a stem cell research bill that appears destined to draw the first veto of George W. Bush's presidency.
The bill, already approved by the U.S. House of Representatives and set to win Senate passage later in the day, has broad bipartisan support. Most Democrats and roughly 20 Republicans support it.
"This is the bill that will help provide the long overdue expansion of the number of stem cell lines eligible for federally funded biomedical research," Sen. Orrin Hatch (news, bio, voting record), a Utah Republican with a long anti-abortion record, said during debate on Tuesday.
"This is what our leading scientists have told us they want and need to move the field of stem cell research forward," Hatch said.
Bush has said he will cast the first veto of his presidency because days-old embryos are destroyed when the stem cells are extracted.
Some conservatives who agree with Bush were pushing legislation that would encourage other forms of stem cell research that do not harm the embryo. Some like Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, want more leftover embryos to be adopted by infertile couples.
Hatch and others backers of the research pointed out that the legislation only allows scientists to use leftover embryos at fertility clinics that would otherwise be destroyed.
Although the legislation is expected to sail through the Senate, backers acknowledge they do not expect to muster the two-thirds majorities both houses would need to override a Bush veto.
PUBLIC SUPPORT
Numerous opinion polls have found strong public support for expanding federal embryonic stem cell research, and disease advocacy groups have lobbied for it strenuously. Nancy Reagan, widow of former president Ronald Reagan who died of Alzheimer's, was seeking support from fellow Republicans.
Scientists, including Nobel laureates, told the U.S. Congress that the research has a realistic chance of leading to stunning breakthroughs in treating disabling or deadly diseases, including diabetes, Parkinson's and spinal cord injuries.
Bush in 2001 allowed limited federal funding for research on 78 stem cell lines then in existence. But most of them proved unsuitable for research.
"I don't follow his (Bush's) logic on this and frankly I don't believe it is logical," said Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate. Durbin said he did not see how Bush could allow research on some cells, which scientists have said are inadequate, but not on others.
With Republicans divided, stem cell research has become an issue in several Senate races in the November elections and possibly in the 2008 presidential race.
Of the five Senate Republicans considering seeking the presidential nomination in 2008, three -- George Allen of Virginia, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska -- side with Bush. Two, John McCain of Arizona and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, back expanding the research.
Some Republicans, including Brownback and Pennsylvania Republican Rick Santorum, who is in a tight re-election race this November, have pushed hard for two alternative bills, which are expected to pass both the Senate and House on Tuesday and be signed by Bush as early as Wednesday.
One would ban "fetus farming," or implanting a human embryo in a woman or animal for the purpose of harvesting cells or tissue, which has not been proposed. The other promotes research into stem cells that do not involve destruction of an embryo, research which some top government scientists say they are already doing. |
