{"id":6701,"date":"2006-07-25T11:25:43","date_gmt":"2006-07-25T11:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/into-the-breach-1.html"},"modified":"2006-07-25T11:25:43","modified_gmt":"2006-07-25T11:25:43","slug":"into-the-breach-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/into-the-breach-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Into the breach…"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, Tony Snow "clarifies" the statement he made last week after the embryonic stem-cell veto<\/a><\/p>\n

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President Bush does not consider stem cell research using human embryos to be murder, the White House said yesterday, reversing its description of his position just days after he vetoed legislation to lift federal funding restrictions on the hotly disputed area of study.<\/p>\n

White House press secretary Tony Snow said yesterday that he "overstated the president’s position" during a briefing last week but said Bush rejected the bill because "he does have objections with spending federal money on something that is morally objectionable to many Americans."<\/p>\n

The shifting terminology underscored the sensitivity of the issue, especially heading into midterm elections. Many antiabortion conservatives strongly oppose stem cell research involving the destruction of embryos, viewing it as killing human beings. But polls show that most Americans see such research as a potential key to treating Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injuries and other afflictions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now, in response to the veto, states are stepping up:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Two governors seized the political moment Thursday, the day after the veto, to raise their ante for stem cell research. <\/p>\n

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger<\/span><\/a> of California<\/span><\/a>, a Republican<\/span><\/a> who helped Mr. Bush win a second term but has long disagreed with him on this research, cited the veto as he lent $150 million from the state\u2019s general fund to pay for grants to stem cell scientists. In Illinois<\/span><\/a>, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich<\/span><\/a>, a Democrat opposed to most every White House initiative, offered $5 million for similar grants in his state. <\/p>\n

Before the announcements, the only money available was $72 million that five states had allocated for the research and $90 million that the National Institutes of Health<\/span><\/a> had provided since 2001 for work on a restricted number of stem cell lines. <\/p>\n

Several other governors, including one Republican, M. Jodi Rell<\/span><\/a> of Connecticut, denounced the president\u2019s veto, his first, in a sign of the political potency of the stem cell debate. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

EU backs embryonic research, but with caveats:<\/a><\/p>\n

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The European Union decided Monday to continue funding human embryonic stem cell research, although under new rules that prevent human cloning and destroying embryos.<\/p>\n

The funding will come from the EU’s $65 billion research budget for 2007-2013, when the new rules approved Monday expire.<\/p>\n

Poland, Austria, Malta, Slovakia and Lithuania voted against the updated rules for "ethical and moral" reasons, they said. Germany and Italy changed their stance at the last moment and backed the proposal.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, Tony Snow "clarifies" the statement he made last week after the embryonic stem-cell veto President Bush does not consider stem cell research using human embryos to be murder, the White House said yesterday, reversing its description of his position just days after he vetoed legislation to lift federal funding restrictions on the hotly disputed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nInto the breach... - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/07\/into-the-breach-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Into the breach... - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}