Little-Acorn
03-20-2009, 12:39 PM
On Monday, President Obama signed an Executive order that lifted previous Pres. Bush's order banning Federal funds from being used in research that killed new embryos for their stem cells.
Two days later, Obama signed the Omnibus Spending Bill into law. It contained a passage that has been in every such bill since 1996, forbidding such funding once again. Since Obama's Executive Order said that funding would be restored only to the extent permitted by law, that means that this spending bill's ban on funds, supersedes any permission in the Ecec Order.
Apparently Congressmen on both sides knew the passage was in the bill, and did nothing to change it or take it out, despite large Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress.
When does "change we can believe in" start, anyway?
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http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=44943
Obama Signs Law Banning Federal Embryo Research Two Days After Signing Executive Order to OK It
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief
Friday, March 13, 2009
President Barack Obama (AP Photo) (CNSNews.com) - On Wednesday, only two days after he lifted President Bush’s executive order banning federal funding of stem cell research that requires the destruction of human embryos, President Barack Obama signed a law that explicilty bans federal funding of any "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."
The provision was buried in the 465-page omnibus appropriations bill that Obama signed Wednesday. Known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, it has been included in the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services every fiscal year since 1996.
The amendment says, in part: "None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for—(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or (2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."
Found in Section 509 of Title V of the omnibus bill (at page 280 of the 465-page document), the federal funding ban not only prohibits the government from providing tax dollars to support research that kills or risks injury to a human embryo, it also mandates that the government use an all-inclusive definition of “human embryo” that encompasses any nascent human life from the moment that life comes into being, even if created in a laboratory through cloning, in vitro fertilization or any other means.
(snip)
At a widely publicized White House ceremony on Monday, President Obama signed his own executive order lifting an executive order that President Bush had signed in 2001. While allowing federal funding of research involving embryonic stem cell lines that had already been created from embryos that had already been destroyed, Bush's 2001 order denied federal funding to research that required the killing of any additional embryos.
(snip)
Close observers on both sides of the embryonic stem cell issue were well aware of the Dickey-Wicker amendment, and understood that it would pose a legal obstacle to federal funding of embryo-killing research even if President Obama issued an executive order reversing President Bush's administrative policy denying federal funding to that research.
(Full text of the article can be read at the URL listed above)
Two days later, Obama signed the Omnibus Spending Bill into law. It contained a passage that has been in every such bill since 1996, forbidding such funding once again. Since Obama's Executive Order said that funding would be restored only to the extent permitted by law, that means that this spending bill's ban on funds, supersedes any permission in the Ecec Order.
Apparently Congressmen on both sides knew the passage was in the bill, and did nothing to change it or take it out, despite large Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress.
When does "change we can believe in" start, anyway?
---------------------------------------
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=44943
Obama Signs Law Banning Federal Embryo Research Two Days After Signing Executive Order to OK It
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief
Friday, March 13, 2009
President Barack Obama (AP Photo) (CNSNews.com) - On Wednesday, only two days after he lifted President Bush’s executive order banning federal funding of stem cell research that requires the destruction of human embryos, President Barack Obama signed a law that explicilty bans federal funding of any "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."
The provision was buried in the 465-page omnibus appropriations bill that Obama signed Wednesday. Known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, it has been included in the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services every fiscal year since 1996.
The amendment says, in part: "None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for—(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or (2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death."
Found in Section 509 of Title V of the omnibus bill (at page 280 of the 465-page document), the federal funding ban not only prohibits the government from providing tax dollars to support research that kills or risks injury to a human embryo, it also mandates that the government use an all-inclusive definition of “human embryo” that encompasses any nascent human life from the moment that life comes into being, even if created in a laboratory through cloning, in vitro fertilization or any other means.
(snip)
At a widely publicized White House ceremony on Monday, President Obama signed his own executive order lifting an executive order that President Bush had signed in 2001. While allowing federal funding of research involving embryonic stem cell lines that had already been created from embryos that had already been destroyed, Bush's 2001 order denied federal funding to research that required the killing of any additional embryos.
(snip)
Close observers on both sides of the embryonic stem cell issue were well aware of the Dickey-Wicker amendment, and understood that it would pose a legal obstacle to federal funding of embryo-killing research even if President Obama issued an executive order reversing President Bush's administrative policy denying federal funding to that research.
(Full text of the article can be read at the URL listed above)