Stem Cell Veto Threat Puts Prez at Ideological Extremes

When GOP Senators in tight races engineered a compromise allowing overdue progress for stem cell research, I predicted the threatened veto would be nothing more than that, a threat. It looks like the President will prove me wrong, and defying the vast majority of Americans who support the potential life saving measures this cutting edge scientific research promises, will issue his first veto in six years.

The media keeps saying that the stem cell issue is "like abortion" for social conservatives in that the cells with the most potential are extracted from days old embryos, embryos that, it should be noted, will never develop, but because of their genetic coding hold great potential for life saving treatments.

When GOP Senators in tight races engineered a compromise allowing overdue progress for stem cell research, I predicted the threatened veto would be nothing more than that, a threat. It looks like the President will prove me wrong, and defying the vast majority of Americans who support the potential life saving measures this cutting edge scientific research promises, will issue his first veto in six years.

The media keeps saying that the stem cell issue is "like abortion" for social conservatives in that the cells with the most potential are extracted from days old embryos, embryos that, it should be noted, will never develop, but because of their genetic coding hold great potential for life saving treatments.

The two issues are related in one important way, and it has nothing to do with the medical aspect, but rather because they each highlight the extremist ideology that delays progress on a number of issues.

For mainstream Americans, both issues are a matter of significant common ground. People may differ on whether or not abortion is a choice they could or would make if faced with an unintended pregnancy in their family, but most agree that it should not be banned, and is the type of personal life decision that families should make, knowing that government prohibition has lead to unsafe practice, and inequitable access in the past. The war on contraception, now a cornerstone of conservative ideology, demonstrates that they are not anti-abortion, but instead anti-anything that allows people to make their own decisions about the timing, size and manner of the family they choose to bring into this world.

Similarly with stem cell research, their ideology holds the country hostage because their "pro-life" stance seems concerned only with life at conception (and death) and denies any interest in life once a child is born, in this case, especially those subjected to diseases for which cures could be found if scientists were allowed to further their research. That research continues in private corporations and through states that have seen fit to exempt themselves from the federal prohibition, and in other countries who seek to get a scientific edge on the US in this emerging field.

President Bush, it is said, is acting on his strong belief and principle by making this veto decision. Principle is admirable, but there are much larger questions at stake than his personal beliefs. He swore an oath to uphold the interests of all Americans, not inflict his beliefs on us, and our pluralistic democracy dictates that the law should be as neutral as possible, seeking to protect, preserve and defend Americans, not interfere with or prohibit our freedoms unless one person's rights are being infringed upon by another. The personal life decisions families make everyday are often not easy, but they are best made by families, in a system in which the government ensures citizens freedom of choice, safe and carefully regulated medical care, equitable access and does what it can to foster and inspire progress, not impede it.

That the President is vetoing this potentially life saving bill is further evidence of how far outside the mainstream his administration truly is, and calls into question anyone who claims to be "pro-life."