{"id":314,"date":"2009-03-09T11:46:24","date_gmt":"2009-03-09T11:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/obama-splits-the-baby-and-deno.html"},"modified":"2009-03-09T11:46:24","modified_gmt":"2009-03-09T11:46:24","slug":"obama-splits-the-baby-and-deno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/obama-splits-the-baby-and-deno.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama splits the baby. And denounces cloning."},"content":{"rendered":"

So in the earlier thread on Obama’s stem cell order today<\/a>, “Reaganite” took me to task for wondering about the possible paths Obama would choose:<\/p>\n

\n

“Please don’t pretend to us that there is any doubt or suspense in your mind on this. David, the readers of your blog are not as dumb as you think.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, maybe the blogger isn’t that dumb either. At least not this time. It turns out Obama punted on the issue of federal financing for research on embryos (NYT story here<\/strong><\/a>, WaPo here<\/strong><\/a>) and will leave that decision up to Congress. He could not have single-handedly overturned the the Dickey-Wicker amendment, which bars the use of federal funds to conduct research on embryos directly. But he’s also not going to push for that change.<\/p>\n

He also said human cloning is “dangerous, profoundly wrong and has no place in our society, or any society.” <\/p>\n

Instead, his executive order on stem cells will allow for research on pre-existing embryos with guidelines to be worked out for approval by donors. <\/p>\n

Chris Cillizza at the WaPo blogs on the politics and punditry<\/strong><\/a>–very good on the issue. <\/p>\n

Is it all worth it? Ethical minefield, dodgy prospects for good outcomes, and all that money when children are dying from easily treatable diseases and afflications. I’d prefer Tom Reese’s three-point plan<\/a>. But Obama split the baby, in a sense, which was not expected. Is this Solomonic? Well, Solomon’s goal, which he achieved, was to have the baby remain whole. Only the mother had to be able to give it up for adoption. The Vatican so far won’t green light embryo pre-adoption<\/a>, so those embryos will perish in a few years anyway. Seems like no way out. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So in the earlier thread on Obama’s stem cell order today, “Reaganite” took me to task for wondering about the possible paths Obama would choose: “Please don’t pretend to us that there is any doubt or suspense in your mind on this. David, the readers of your blog are not as dumb as you think.”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nObama splits the baby. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}