Washington – President Bush’s threat to veto embryonic stem cell legislation turned into a promise Monday as the Senate barreled toward a vote on the bill.
Senators launched an emotional debate on legislation co-sponsored by Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., arguing about whether the research it authorizes would save human life or destroy it.
A vote on the bill is scheduled for today, and supporters said repeatedly that they have the votes for passage.
As senators debated the bill, the White House issued a statement saying that the legislation would “compel all American taxpayers to pay for research that relies on the intentional destruction of human embryos for the derivation of stem cells.”
If the bill passes, Bush will veto it, the statement says, with that sentence underlined.
“The president is making a big, big mistake in using his first veto on legislation that could benefit 110 million Americans and their families,” DeGette said. “It shows that he’s catering to a very narrow section of his party in a midterm election year.”
Congressional sources said Bush plans to veto DeGette’s bill Wednesday morning, then sign two alternative stem cell bills – expected to pass today – in a Rose Garden ceremony.
One of the alternative bills bans growing embryos explicitly to harvest stem cells. The other directs the National Institutes of Health to try to find other types of cells that could become stem cells.
The House would then take a vote to override the veto.
It is estimated that the House is about 50 votes short of the count needed for the override.
DeGette vowed to do whatever it takes to make the bill law, including attaching it as an amendment to must-pass funding bills. That would make it more difficult for Bush to veto.
“The bill will become law,” she said. “The only question is how soon.”
DeGette’s bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., would reverse Bush’s executive order of Aug. 9, 2001, limiting federal funding of embryonic stem cell lines to those already in existence on that day. The bill allows research on embryos created for in-vitro fertilization that are left over and due to be discarded.
During the debate on the bill, lawmakers supporting it invoked the names of people they knew who died from diseases that embryonic stem cell research is believed to have the potential to cure. Those opposing it named children who had been born as a result of once-frozen embryos that have been adopted and implanted in women who gave birth.
“The debate over embryonic stem cells is as important as any issue that has ever been before me in the United States Senate,” said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa. “We are on the threshold, with this research, to be in a position to save tens of thousands of lives, save tens of thousands of people from extensive human suffering.”
Specter, stricken with Hodgkin’s lymphoma last year, said he believes he would have escaped suffering with the disease if stem cell research had been pursued aggressively after embryonic stem cells were discovered in 1998.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., meanwhile, argued on the Senate floor that “we’re talking about destroying the youngest of human lives for research purposes.” He showed a picture of a girl named Hannah, one of the so-called snowflake babies, born after her parents adopted her as a frozen embryo.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said there are about 400,000 embryos that will be discarded, that it is a choice between using them for research or throwing them out. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said that was not the only option and pointed to the snowflake babies. Specter, however, said that despite spending $6 million in federal money over five years to promote embryo adoption, slightly more than 100 babies have been born.
Senators also argued over whether embryonic stem cells have unlimited potential or have been overhyped and offer false hope. Those opposing the bill talked about the advances in making use of adult stem cells. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a cardiac surgeon, said embryonic stem cells have the greatest potential because they divide unceasingly and can take on the properties of other cells.
Staff writer Anne C. Mulkern can be reached at 202-662-8907 or amulkern@denverpost.com.
