With a great deal of fanfare, President Obama signed an executive order on stem cell research last week. The most controversial element of his new directive is a short, harmless-looking clause that you probably haven’t heard about. People on all sides of the stem cell controversy should call this particular decision what it is: A disgrace. 
Last August—back when President Obama was still just Senator Obama—I wrote a column with a very similar title to this one, detailing a series of indefensible votes Obama cast as an Illinois state senator. At issue was the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, a piece of legislation designed to affirm the full human rights of babies who managed to survive abortions. In short, Obama voted repeatedly against the provision, and then offered a string of evolving, profoundly dishonest excuses for those votes. This episode worried pro-lifers, many of whom correctly concluded that despite his conciliatory rhetoric and overtures to voters on both sides of the issue, Obama would actually govern as the most pro-abortion president in history. They were right.
When Obama reversed the Bush-era policy on embryonic stem cell research funding on Monday, he was flanked by a bevy of smiling activists and legislators who burst into applause when he attached his signature to the order. Like many Americans, the group assembled at the White House seemed to genuinely believe Obama’s act would open research avenues that could help find a cure to devastating diseases. Who can blame them? For years, Democrats portrayed the previous policy as a triumph of narrow-minded religious dogma imposed by zealots who would rather see human suffering continue than surrender an inch on ideology.
Of course, the reality was much more complicated. President Bush’s 2001 executive order did not “ban” embryonic stem cell research, as much of the public believes. He simply ensured that the privately funded destruction of new human embryos—nascent human life—would not be encouraged by the promise of taxpayer dollars for future research. In other words, embryonic stem cell research could continue, but the government stopped short of providing cash incentives for an unproven practice that many taxpayers believed to be morally abhorrent. Obama’s order ends that paradigm. Now researchers who engage in this specific form of stem cell research will be handsomely rewarded with federal funds. (Direct taxpayer funding of embryo destruction is explicitly banned by the 1995 Dickey Amendment, so the new policy allows the government to subsidize the practice while outsourcing the dirty work to private entities).
Perhaps you agree with this new policy. Most Americans, including some who are generally anti-abortion, believe embryonic stem cell research represents a gray area with a lot of potential scientific upside. Many are also willing to allow some tax dollars to further research in this vein. It’s a complicated, difficult issue on which reasonable people can express honest disagreements.
Obama, as he is inclined to do, tried to have it both ways at the signing ceremony. He first acknowledged that, “Many thoughtful and decent people are conflicted about, or strongly oppose, this research. And I understand their views, and I believe we must respect their point of view.”
Mere seconds later, he assailed the previous administration for crafting policy that, well, understood and truly respected the views of those aforementioned “thoughtful and decent” people. Obama congratulated his administration for having the sophistication to ensure that scientific decisions are “based on facts, not ideology.” Remember that phrase.
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