Stem Cell Research Vs. "Snowflake Babies" Wrapped Up in Unbridled Hypocrisy

From CNN:

Sen. Arlen Specter said Sunday he believes the Senate has enough votes to override a threatened presidential veto of legislation easing restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Fellow Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, however, vowed to keep the bill from reaching the Senate floor. Both appeared on ABC's "This Week."

"I've been taught a lot of lessons from the Democrats lately, so I've got some ideas on how one can get this done," Brownback said. "And I think it's important that we move forward."

The bill would allow researchers to use some 400,000 embryos that were created for in vitro fertilization and would likely otherwise be discarded.

President Bush opposes that and held a news conference last week to promote adopting the embryos, which he called "snowflake babies".

Good for Specter if he's committed to something that won't kill the measure.

The president's "snowflake babies" speech last week was completely off the wall. Besides behaving as if he's completely "la-la land", Mr. Bush basically once again went on record as saying that tiny embryos that cannot live outside the body - or the lab - are more important than any fully-cooked human life. He made certain stem cell research couldn't go forward easily with his 2001 ruling that flies in the face of what the public at large feels is right. All he wants to do is be sure that he makes the extreme nutwing happy.

But here's the thing. This is blatant hypocrisy.

If Mr. Bush were ill, or his family, there is every reason to believe he would be more than happy to have treatments that involved the "destruction" of other forms of life.

I wish I could remember the fellow's name, but in 2003 or 2004, an old-time legislator from one of the Western states, a real advocate of the nutwing who opposed abortions, opposed stem cell research, opposed women's right to choice, died after a long and debilitating illness. In reading the article about his death - which may have even been on CNN - it was noted this old fart had undergone aggressive treatment that indeed used something similar to embryonic stem cells. No one but me seemed to blink at the article, which basically tells us that when these "culture of lifers" face a medical emergency, they're going to use everything in their capacity to stay alive by whatever means possible. I think we can all understand that, right?

The difference with that man, and with the Bushes, is that they want to kill any ability for the public at large to benefit from stem cell research by not only ending the right of a woman to choose but also killing any real federal research projects that would benefit everyone. Instead, because they're covered by federal insurance coverage, and because they're people with money, they can quietly go to a private hospital and use those same fetuses, those same stem cells they will not allow for the public.

Even if you end abortion, there will always be a certain quanty of embryos and fetuses developed each year that cannot or will not be brought through a successful pregnancy (through miscarriages, emergency measures, in vitro fertilization, etc.).

No one is talking about creating a situation where women can get pregnant and then financially benefit from donating their embryos to a program doing stem cell research. Just think of the incredible changes in a woman's body that result from even early stage pregnancy, and you realize that few women would ever agree to this even if corporate America sought it.

Do these embryos just go in dumpsters? Or can they be put to use? That's what we're really talking about here: using embryos that would otherwise be lost to life anyway.