Catholic Bishops Welcome Ruling Striking Obama’s Embryonic Stem Cell Funding

Bioethics   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Aug 25, 2010   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Catholic Bishops Welcome Ruling Striking Obama’s Embryonic Stem Cell Funding

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 25
, 2010

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The nation’s Catholic bishops weighed in today welcoming a federal judge’s ruling striking down the executive order President Barack Obama issued requiring Americans to pay for embryonic stem cell research that has never helped patients and involves the destruction of human life.

The Obama administration has announced it will appeal the decision.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, welcomed the federal court injunction against the Obama administration’s funding of human embryonic stem cell research.

He called the ruling a “victory for common sense and sound medical ethics.”

He said this ruling also vindicates the bishops’ reading of the Dickey amendment, the amendment approved by Congress since 1996, which prevents federal funding of research in which human embryos are harmed or destroyed.

“I hope this court decision will encourage our government to renew and expand its commitment to ethically sound avenues of stem cell research,” Cardinal DiNardo added. “These avenues are showing far more promise than destructive human embryo research in serving the needs of suffering patients.”

Each year since 1996, Congress has approved the Dickey amendment to forbid funding any “research in which” human embryos are harmed or destroyed.

"This should ensure that taxpayers are not forced to fund a research project when pursuing that project requires the destruction of human life at its earliest stage," he said. "However, beginning with a legal memo commissioned by the Clinton administration in January 1999, this law has been distorted and narrowed to allow federal funding of research that directly relies on such destruction."

The cardinal referred to what the bishops’ conference said in congressional testimony in 1999, namely that “a mere bookkeeping distinction between funds used to destroy the embryo and funds used to work with the resultant cells is not sufficient” to comply with the law."

The pro-life Catholic leader said there are parallels to the debate over abortion funding in the national health care bill.

"In the health care reform debate, as well, we have pointed out that an executive order by itself cannot change the meaning of a law passed by Congress, and that the longstanding policy against funding health plans that cover abortion is not satisfied, but circumvented, by a bookkeeping distinction that merely segregates accounts within such plans," he said.

"A task of good government is to use its funding power to direct resources where they will best serve and respect human life, not to find new ways to evade this responsibility," Cardinal DiNardo added.

He concluded: "I hope this court decision will encourage our government to renew and expand its commitment to ethically sound avenues of stem cell research. These avenues are showing far more promise than destructive human embryo research in serving the needs of suffering patients."

 

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