Proponents of embryo-destroying research lost one of their favorite knee-jerk rhetorical points on Tuesday, as they succeeded in killing a bill that would have funded alternatives to embryo-destroying research. It’s hard to dismiss your opponents as “anti-science” when you’ve voted against it yourself.
The Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act was a great constructive opportunity for Congress. Early on Tuesday, a leading pro-life senator, Pennsylvania Republican Rick Santorum (who is in a tough reelection battle and could afford to be focusing on other things right now — like, oh, saving his political life), rattled off his record of commitment to stem-cell-research advocacy, none of it destructive. He talked about his attempt at finding a “middle ground” by sponsoring a bill to fund adult-stem-cell and other non-embryo-destroying research. This “alternatives” bill was even cosponsored by his Pennsylvania colleague Arlen Specter (who supports embryo research, abortion . . . very many things a Santorum never will). The bill, in both its House and its Senate version, was an embrace of research that is free of embryonic-stem-cell research’s unavoidable ethical baggage.
But on Tuesday afternoon, Delaware Republican Mike Castle, co-sponsor of a bill that would federally fund embryonic-stem-cell research for the first time, sent around an e-mail urging colleagues to vote against Santorum’s alternatives bill. (Richard Doerflinger responds to his e-mail
here.) Since they already knew the president would veto the Castle bill, and since embryonic-stem-cell research will always be a lightning rod for political and moral debate, the alternatives bill was a gift to any politician. Embryo-research stalwart Mike Castle and, say, embryo-protection stalwart (Dr.) Dave Weldon could have united behind it. Given Congress’s dismal approval ratings, it would have even been good politics.
Look at what we can do when we set our minds to it! We’re pro-hope, and pro-research, and pro-consensus.
So much for that. Under a rules suspension Tuesday night, the bill failed to get the two-thirds needed for passage, thanks to Castle’s eleventh-hour work. Even in the Senate, where the alternatives bill garnered unanimous support in the final roll call, Minority Leader Harry Reid couldn’t help but dismiss it as “meaningless.”
But Tuesday’s alternatives takedown in the House is about much more than just one vote. Limits always seem to be too limiting for proponents of embryonic-stem-cell research and cloning. The Beltway battle this week has had shades of a Bay State fight last year. The governor there, Republican Mitt Romney, met proponents of cloning research halfway. He said, O.K., the state government won’t fund it, but you can use so-called surplus embryos from in vitro fertilization procedures as long as you don’t create new embryos. But there was no line of legislators outside his door waiting to work with him. All or nothing, proponents of clone-and-kill research proclaimed. We saw something similar in New Jersey in late 2003. As Wesley Smith, author of The Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, put it to me at the time, “It is remarkable — and very telling — that in less then two years, we have gone from ‘only’ wanting to harvest the stem cells from embryos left over from IVF procedures, to a state senate passing legislation that would permit the implantation and gestation of cloned fetuses to the ninth month, before requiring their destruction. This is not just a slide down a slippery slope, it is a headfirst plunge into the abyss.” Like the House vote Tuesday night, the Garden State debate was instructive.
On the federal level this week we’ve seen supposed proponents of stem-cell research say, No, none of this alternatives stuff, we only want embryonic-stem-cell research. The embryo is everything. Or rather, destroying embryos is everything — that’s where they want research to be focused, and they’re happy to hold research that is free of embryonic entanglements hostage. Coming from a crowd that regularly throws the word “anti-science” at those who oppose embryo destruction and cloning, this is pretty rich. When given the option to vote for a bill that nearly no one could sensibly disagree with, they acted like spoiled two-year-olds who want their way and only their way — even if it’s impractical and Dad has already said “no.” They’ve given opponents a great campaign ad for November, turning the “anti-science” label on them: Care more about what the bioethics lobby wants than advancing science? Talk about hopeless.
Tuesday’s House action gives an advantage to those who talk about the sanctity of human life, specifically those who voted against the federal funding of embryonic-stem-cell research and for the alternatives bill. A third of the members of House of Representatives will support stem-cell research only if it involves the destruction of embryos? Otherwise they’re against it? This is what they want their position to be? As Americans increasingly pay attention to these confusing issues, such clear Party of Death votes as we saw Tuesday night in the House should be as deadly to political careers as they are to life.
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.
