WASHINGTON (ABP) — Simultaneously pleasing his socially conservative base and overruling large majorities in Congress and the public, President Bush used the first veto of his political career July 19 to kill a bill that would have expanded embryonic stem-cell research.
Bush returned H.R. 810, the “Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005,” to Congress without his signature just a day after the Senate voted 63-37 to approve it. In a statement explaining the veto, Bush said, “If this bill were to become law, American taxpayers for the first time in our history would be compelled to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos. Crossing this line would be a grave mistake and would needlessly encourage a conflict between science and ethics that can only do damage to both and harm our nation as a whole.”
The bill would have greatly expanded the government's ability to fund embryonic stem-cell research. Biologists prize the cells because they can replicate themselves and have the potential to grow into almost any kind of human tissue. Therefore, they may one day be used to replace cells destroyed by diseases — such as Parkinson's — that are currently deadly.
Most conservative religious and anti-abortion groups oppose such research, because embryos are destroyed in the process of extracting their stem cells. In one of his first acts after he took office in 2001, Bush issued an executive order severely limiting federal funding for such research.
The bill he vetoed would have mostly undone that order. The House passed it more than a year ago on a 238-194 vote, which included 50 Republicans voting in its favor. Bush threatened then to veto the bill if the Senate passed it. That chamber did not consider the bill until after Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) announced that he supported the bill.
Many pro-life groups have said they prefer research on similar cells taken from adult tissue and prefer forms of stem-cell research that do not intentionally destroy embryos. But most scientists believe the embryonic cells hold more immediate promise for curing diseases that are currently terminal, because they have the ability to develop into far many more types of tissue than other stem cells.
Supporters of embryonic stem-cell research have also noted that the bill would have authorized research only on embryos that were slated to be destroyed anyway — the fate that annually meets thousands of frozen embryos created as the by-product of fertility treatments.
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), who was one of 19 Senate Republicans who voted for the bill, pleaded with Bush from the Senate floor July 18 to reconsider his promised veto. He noted that he has watched three relatives suffer from Parkinson's. “To watch people die of such a malady is to instill in one's heart a desire to err on the side of health, hope and healing, to find a cure if a cure can be found.”
But Bush announced the veto against the backdrop of 18 families with children who were “adopted” as the extra frozen embryos of other couples, implanted in a mother's womb and carried to term. “Each of these children…has been blessed with a chance to grow — to grow up in a loving family,” he said. “These boys and girls are not spare parts.”
Families of such “snowflake babies” — so named because of the frozen embryos from which they came but also because each snowflake has a unique structure — made several appearances around Washington July 18-19 with opponents of the bill. But bill supporters pointed out that, of the estimated 400,000 surplus frozen embryos in the nation's fertility clinics, only around 100 have become snowflake babies.
Bush's veto sent the bill back to Congress, where House leaders brought it up for a veto override vote on the evening of July 19. Although the chamber voted 235-193 against the veto, the margin did not reach the two-thirds majority necessary for a veto override.
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