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Power, pop, and probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper
Jake Tapper is ABC News' Senior White House Correspondent based in the network's Washington bureau. He writes about politics and popular culture and covers a range of national stories.
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THE STEM CELL HAS TWO FACES
July 18, 2006 11:46 AM
In the debate over the funding of embryonic stem cell research, the position I find the most difficult to understand might be the one taken by the White House -- a place that usually prides itself in stark, easily understood, black and white positions.
The Senate debate pits one clear side against the other. On one, exemplified as I write this by Sen. David Vitter, R-LA, are those who think embryos constitute human life and should therefore not be used for medical research. On the other are those who do not think an embryo is a human life.
A more nuanced position, it might be said, is held by antiabortion public figures who support the research, such as Nancy Reagan or Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT, who says the true "pro-life" position is to use the hundreds of thousands of un-used embryos formed for in vitro fertilization procedures -- ones that would otherwise be legally discarded as medical waste -- for research that could cure or treat diseases.
Here's my confusion about the White House's position. On the one hand are clear statements by the White House that the president thinks these embryos constitute human life -- his underlined veto threat, for instance, a PDF document requiring Adobe Acrobat WHICH CAN BE SEEN HERE.
But on the other are the White House communications shop's attempts to herald the work that has been done with the pre-existing embryonic stem cell lines that the President grandfathered in before he banned federal funds in 2001.
On "Setting the Record Straight" documents LIKE THIS ONE, the White House heralds that "President Bush Is The First President To Ever Fund Embryonic Stem Cell Research" and that "President Bush's Stem Cell Policy Has Made Federally Funded Stem Cell Lines Widely Available To Scientists."
But isn't this research, in the president's view, being performed on human lives?
In this week's statement of administration policy, which is clearly against this research, the White House bad-mouths this research, asserting that "Embryonic stem cell research is at an early stage of basic science and has never yielded a therapeutic application in humans."
Then in a different document the White House heralds how the President is the first president to ever fund it!
The statement of administrative policy says "the future of this field does not require a policy of Federal subsidies offensive to the moral principles of millions of Americans" while just a click away the White House heralds how the president has provided tens of millions of "Federal subsidies offensive to the moral principles of millions of Americans"!
I understand the White House wants this to seem like a reasonable middle ground, but it seems fairly contradictory to me.
Please, someone, enlighten me.
jt
July 18, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (4)
The anti stem cell research folks claim that stem cells are a person and it's wrong to take a life even if it saves another life. If they really believe that they should be against the death penalty and the war in Iraq. Bush repeatedly says "let's kill them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Is that not taking of a human life to save another human life? As a life long Mennonite and a pacifist I don't get how the two arguments are any different. If you want to be pro life you need to be consistent.
Posted by: Ivan Zimmerman | Jul 19, 2006 8:43:19 AM
This isn't contradictory to me.The President is clearly stating the government should not fund Embryonic Stem cell reasearch.He will veto if necessary. The embryonic stem cell lines that (and here is the key phrase) 'already exist' are the ones he grandfathered in. This makes sense because of what is happening today at infertility clinics. The embryos that are not used are "discarded" that is happening today and there is no law against it. Why is no one up in arms about that? And you call the President granfathering in lines that already existed as contradictory? I call it a way to do as little damage as possible. Stop the wide spread use of embryonic research, which hasn't proven diddly and closely monitor the lines that already exist.
Posted by: hillary | Jul 18, 2006 2:59:46 PM
I'm afraid I couldn't begin to shed any light on the contradictory positions taken in the dueling press releases released by the White House. It would appear to me that this is a classic case of trying to have one's cake (opposition to use of new stem cell lines) and eat it too (while professing support for the current stem cell lines in use). Such a position is most assuredly incongruous, but I'm certain that Bush is expecting members of his political "base" not to notice the inherent contradiction, if they take any notice at all.
Posted by: chuck | Jul 18, 2006 1:45:40 PM
The war in Iraq, the treatment of prisoners, and the unsupervised surveillance of our phones offends millions of Americans, but that didn't stop Duh-bya from proceeding...
Posted by: phillygirl64 | Jul 18, 2006 1:05:15 PM
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