Robert
P. George, Yuval Levin, and Matthew J. Franck, explain the recent
judicial rebuke of the Obama administration’s policy on taxpayer funding of
embryonic stem cell research. Excerpt:
The Obama administration had claimed that
the destruction of the embryos and the research using stem cells derived from
them could be “separated,” so that the latter was publicly funded but the
former (to honor the Dickey-Wicker Amendment) was not. In other words, the
administration interpreted the law as saying: “Go ahead and kill the embryos
using non-governmental funds; then you can use the stem-cell lines produced by
killing the embryos for research using taxpayer money without restriction.” Of
course, this interpretation would essentially nullify the amendment, treating
its command as if it were a meaningless bookkeeping procedure. Judge Lamberth
had no difficulty seeing through this shoddy reasoning: “To conduct ESC
research, ESCs must be derived from an embryo. The process of deriving ESCs
from an embryo results in the destruction of the embryo. Thus, ESC research
necessarily depends upon the destruction of a human embryo.”
Meanwhile,
Congress is planning to vote on
a stem cell funding bill later this month.