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Senate Stem Cell Bill to Prompt Bush Veto NewsMax.com Wires WASHINGTON -- Debating science, ethics, morality and humanity, the Senate prepared Tuesday to send a bill expanding federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to an unreceptive President Bush.
Despite a White House statement reaffirming Bush's veto threat, supporters said the pressure of public opinion eventually will push the government toward funding. They argue that research into stem cell treatments holds the promise of cures for a host of debilitating diseases afflicting millions of people.
"There has been an upsurge of demand," said Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. "It has crossed every line we could imagine, certainly partisan lines, ethnic, racial, geographic lines."
Such research should be permitted under strict ethical rules - and only on donated embryos that would otherwise be thrown away - supporters argued. Story Continues Below
Those opposed, including the president, have said the research destroys human life. With midterm elections just ahead and the GOP majority at stake in Congress, Bush repeated a promise through the White House his threat to veto the bill.
It would be the first veto for Bush during his 5½ years in office.
Neither the Senate nor the House is expected to have the two-thirds majorities necessary to override the president's opposition.
That didn't stop scientists, celebrities and a former first lady from applying pressure.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote the president and urged him not to veto the bill. "To the prospective impact on the health of millions of Americans, this expansion of federal funding is critical to ensuring that U.S. research efforts remain at the forefront of global innovation," he wrote.
Actress Mary Tyler Moore showed her support for the bill in an appearance with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who brokered the agreement allowing debate on the measure. She said she was "very disappointed" by the president's decision but hopeful he might change his mind.
"This is an intelligent human being with a heart, and I don't see how much longer he can deny those aspects of himself," she said.
The bill would allow federal funds to be used in research on embryonic stem cell lines derived from fertility treatments that would otherwise be discarded. Though several Republican Senate leaders support the measure, many GOP lawmakers oppose it, as do conservative voters with whom Bush wants to maintain credibility.
"The bill would compel all American taxpayers to pay for research that relies on the intentional destruction of human embryos for the derivation of stem cells, overturning the president's policy that funds research without promoting such ongoing destruction," the White House said in a statement.
Bush on Aug. 9, 2001, signed an executive order restricting government funding to research using only the embryonic stem cell "lines" then in existence, groups of stem cells kept alive and propagating in lab dishes.
There has been muscular opposition to the president from those with personal stories of illness, death and the promise of stem cell research.
Former first lady Nancy Reagan lobbied lawmakers on the bill's behalf. Her husband, President Reagan, died in 2004 after a long deterioration from Alzheimer's disease, one of several illnesses that researchers say stem cell research might cure someday.
Everybody, it seemed, had a personal story to tell on the Senate floor where such intimacies aren't routinely shared.
"I lost a beautiful daughter some years ago to heart disease," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., saying he would support the bill because the affliction is one of many that embryonic stem cell research might eventually cure. "I wondered then and I wonder now and I will wonder some long while if there's anything that we could do to unlock the mystery of that devious killer."
Opponents of the bill, meanwhile, sought to put faces on the reasons why the five-day-old embryos destroyed during the research are worth more than the advances they might yield.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., appeared with three children adopted from in vitro fertilization clinics in an effort to humanize the argument that frozen embryos could have a future other than being subjects of stem cell research.
"It is immoral to destroy the youngest of human lives for research purposes," Brownback said. "It is an age-old human debate, whether you allow the stronger to take advantage of the weaker. We have already regretted doing it in the past; we will regret this, too."
Vote counters on both sides said they expected the Senate to pass the bill with at least 60 votes, but they could not predict there would be the required 67 for a veto override.
The House last year fell 50 votes short of a veto-proof margin when it passed the same bill, 238-194.
After Senate passage, Bush was expected to veto the bill early Wednesday, followed by the House's override effort.
Two related bills also were scheduled for votes Tuesday in both the House and Senate. One, sponsored by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would encourage study on stem cells derived from sources other than embryos. The other, sponsored by Santorum and Brownback, would ban so-called fetal farming, the possibility of developing fetuses, then aborting them for scientific research.
Both have little or no opposition and Bush was expected to sign them.
© 2006 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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