Blago block?
All 27 Republican senators have signed a letter to Blagojevich "stand[ing] united in opposition to your proposal to use Illinois taxpayer money to fund embryonic stem cell research in the Fiscal Year 2007 budget."
Sen. Bill Brady spearheaded the effort and announced the letter at a press conference yesterday.
So if three pro-life Democrats agree, it appears funding for Blagojevich's ramrodded IL Regenerative Medicine Institute will dry up unless escr/cloning research is removed from the list of research possibilities.
It was learned during the March 7 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing that the governor wants to separate out the $15 million he proposed for FY 2007 IRMI grants into a separate appropriations bill, so pro-life Democrats won't oppose the budget.
Either way, this will get interesting for pro-life Democrats, particularly in contested races. Will they cave to the guv or stand by their principles? Who will they choose to alienate, the guv or voters?
According to the News-Gazette, grant applications are due today for the first grant funds dispersement April 17.
What funds?
13 comments:
Blago needs to go, but I wonder what Topinka thinks of this? Anyone know?
PP:
Your post was interesting because it shows how people like Stanek have confused the issues.
There is a massive difference between reproductive cloning and biomedical cloning. They are two different concepts with different ethical constraints.
The opposition to biomedical cloning, comes from people like Stanek who have the view that "there is an equivalence between a bunch of molecules in a lab and a beautifully nurtured and loved human who has been shaped by a lifetime of experiences and discovery."
The cells from an unimplanted embryo from an IVF lab are no different from spilled sperm. Both at one point may have held an eventual possibility for life, but neither is life.
Ban stem cell research? If you let them do that, they are going to ban IVF altogether, because it does not fit with their religious model.
There is a difference between reproductive cloning and biomedical cloning. There is a difference between science and religion. When we let the religious extremists control "science" then we may as well give up on any sort of scientific advancement.
Luckily, the people of Illinois have rejected people like Alan Keyes and Jill Stanek, and next Tuesday they will reject their fellow traveler Bill Brady.
Yikes Skeeter!
That is interesting because we oppose embryo research on fertilized eggs. If you do not interfere with a fertilized egg or it is not a miscarriage then, in time, it is “a beautifully nurtured and loved human who has been shaped by a lifetime of experiences and discovery.” There was a time when we were all an embryo Skeeter. I find it interesting that people who were not experimented on and aborted when they were an embryo find it acceptable to experiment on and abort life; in the same stage they once were, in the name of science.
A two-day-old child doesn’t have a long nurtured and loving lifetime of experience and discovery either; perhaps we should do experiments on them. After all they can’t survive without a caregiver and they have had few life experiences yet. And by the way Ethics is part of the science world and that is a legitimate discussion in scientific debate. Otherwise why not just experiment on anyone we deem “not human” I seem to remember these arguments in my history classes.
Interesting argument CP.
First, your basic premise is wrong.
If you take a fertilized egg and leave it alone, it will die. If you freeze a fertilized egg, tnen it may eventually be used to create a baby.
Only if you implant the embryo -- take medical action with it -- will it lead to either a baby or a miscarriage of some sort.
Further, your point about a fertilized egg is awfully broad. Is masterbation the same as abortion? After all, as you point point out, we were all individual sperm at one point. We can't kill an individual sperm, can we? If we kill an individual sperm, is that the same as killing a child? Or is there some distinction between the two?
Is there a distinction between a sperm, an unimplanted embryo, and implanted embryo, and a baby?
On that note, do you oppose all IVF, since the result usually involves an implanted embryo?
Sperm develops into a hairball stuck in the gutter, not a human life. That is the difference.
Hey, where are all the Oberweis and Gidwitz nuthuggers? Echooooo.
A correction to the last line of my prior post. It should indicate that IVF usually involves at least one UNimplanted embryo. The reality is that if you fertilize eight eggs, only three or four will develop sufficiently to be worth implanting. The rest will fail to progress.
This whole post makes me thankful for one thing....President Bush's plummeting poll numbers.
For a brief time, I really was afraid the religious right was going to set up shop in DC, through out the constitution and replace it with the Bible.
Amazing how a party that preaches personal freedom has no trouble telling a woman what to do with their body, what two consenting adults can do in their own home and stifles an individuals right to free speech by calling them unpatriotic if they oppose this president's immoral and illegal war that killed over 2,300 lives (LIVES, isn't that was the right is all about, protecting life?)
Now, we have the stem cell debate and is being twisted into another religious war. Talk about shameful...but, I'm sure asl they'd tell you, they're doing the Lord's work.
Now, I ask that Jill leave this post up...if she's brave enough.
Apropos of nothing, I have a fun story. A couple of weeks ago, while traveling eastbound on the Ike, my wife and I spotted a multi-passenger van emblazoned with pro-life bumper stickers.
Nothing unusual there, right?
Except, as we passed said van, my wife noticed the passenger, a woman, held in her lap a baby who could not have been older than a year.
I would have had a laugh there at the intersection of Irony Place and Hypocrisy Lane -- except that child's life was in grave danger.
Nothing like holding such passion for the offspring of others, even while showing callous disregard for your own.
Well Posted, My Captain, well Posted!
Captian,
I have met a college student who think you should be able to abort children as old as 1 year old (I wish I was joking, I debated a guy about this about 3 years ago, but this is clearly not the norm.)
But the majority of Pro-Abortion people aren't that crazy, please don't take one example of Hypocrisy from one pro-lifer and label us all.
I agree that was Hypocrisy and the women needs to take a serious parent class before she hurts her child, but 99.5% of pro-lifers would say the same thing.
Argue on the issue, don't just take one extreme example. We can find extreme examples all both sides, but it hurts the debate when we just focus on these few examples.
CP, don't infer that I was calling all pro-lifers hypocrites (or as the case of my van friends - horribly negligent parents). I most certainly was not.
I respect many pro-lifers, and think many pro-choicers ride their train a little too close to crazy-town. And vice-versa.
It was, as was the example of your infanticide-loving friend (who would doubtlessly appreciate a couple so careless with their own baby), just a story.
If you want a real example of the lengths that the religions extremists will take, we can look at what the State of Missouri did today.
They BANNED government funding for birth control, and banned state-funded doctors from referring patients to other sources for birth control.
This move by the Republican dominated legislature will inevitably lead to more abortions. That doesn't matter to them, however, because in their mind, birth control is bad.
I note finally that the bill did not save the State of Missouri one dime. Instead, the money spent on birth control was simply directed elsewhere in the state budget.
Captian,
I appologize if you didn't mean to infer all pro-lifers were hypocrites. When I read the post it came off that way to me perhaps because I have seen so many people recently (again on both sides) who take one extreme example and use that as an argument. I find it insulting to anyone who really attempts to use facts or logic on either side of the debate. (examples to back up facts and logic are of course acceptable)
As is since I now realize that is not your intention let me do something not enough people are willing to do...I appologize for misunderstanding your intentions.
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