August 12, 2001Abortion Foes Split Over Bush's Plan on Stem Cells
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
inutes after President Bush announced his decision on stem cell research, some of the leading anti- abortion voices on the Christian right appeared on CNN to praise him for a Solomonic decision in which he kept his promise that no federal money would be spent to sacrifice human embryos in the cause of research.
Stunned by the positive view of a decision that still allows stem cell research, Richard M. Doerflinger, a spokesman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the group's point man on abortion issues, said Thursday night after his own CNN appearance, "I seem to be the only man in America who is against the president's policy."
But by Friday morning, Mr. Doerflinger found that he had allies. A different set of leaders who oppose abortion spoke at the National Press Club in Washington to denounce a presidential decision that some among them even likened to the medical experiments of the Nazis.
The president's decision to allow some research on existing embryos created a sudden and stark division in the large, long-reliable coalition against abortion. Although it is too early to predict what effect the split will have on this movement, opponents of abortion say their initial failure to respond in a unified voice at such a defining moment has left them disturbed and confused.
The split within the movement does not fall along religious or theological lines. It does not, for example, pit Roman Catholic against Protestant, because some evangelical groups were just as critical of the president as the bishops were. Instead, it appears to be tactical: pragmatist versus purist.
"I find their positions difficult to square with the fundamental principle that human life is precious and ought to be preserved," Kenneth L. Connor, president of the Family Research Council said of abortion foes who praised the president's decision.
Mr. Connor, whose group had been counting on Mr. Bush to hold the line against federal financing for such research, suggested that the stance of some groups opposed to abortions might be driven more by loyalty to Mr. Bush than by their principles.
"If a President Al Gore had come out with this position," he said, "I am left to wonder whether or not their reaction would have been entirely different."
Mr. Bush seems aware of the differences within his core constituency and eager to try to heal them. In an article today on The New York Times Op-Ed page, Mr. Bush underscores his own devotion to anti-abortion principles — the same principles that his critics on the right accuse his stem cell decision of violating. "We do not end some lives for the medical benefit of others," he writes. "For me, this is a matter of conviction: a belief that life, including early life, is biologically human, genetically distinct and valuable."
The anti-abortion coalition headed into the president's announcement unanimously agreeing on the principles that life begins at conception and that even a microscopic embryo is a human life. Because harvesting stem cells from human embryos kills the embryo, they agreed, stem cell research is the equivalent of killing a human being.
But Mr. Bush, some anti-abortion leaders said, took them by surprise when he said he would approve federal financing for research on only 60 stem cell colonies, or lines, that had already been harvested. He said no new stem cells would be harvested with federal financing, and therefore no more embryos would be destroyed with taxpayer dollars.
Dr. Lana Skirboll, a policy expert at the National Institutes of Health, said on Friday that all 60 of the cell lines met Mr. Bush's criteria for federal financing, criteria slightly less restrictive than rules proposed by former President Bill Clinton.
While Mr. Clinton would have required the cells to be derived only from frozen embryos held by fertility clinics, to ensure that fresh embryos were not taken from couples at the moment the woman was trying to become pregnant, some of the cell lines approved for use by Mr. Bush were derived from fresh embryos that were created in excess of patients' need.
Yet the National Right to Life Committee, the largest anti-abortion group, announced that it was "delighted" with Mr. Bush's speech. So did the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority, a conservative religious group, and Dr. James C. Dobson, the president and founder of Focus on the Family, a ministry based in Colorado.
Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, proclaimed Mr. Bush's compromise "an elegant solution to the thorny issue of stem research by firmly protecting the rights of the unborn."
Some leading opponents of abortion speculated that the initial positive view was a result of relief at learning that Mr. Bush had not taken a position permitting more extensive embryonic stem cell research. Others said that the stem cell issue was so new that many groups were still formulating their responses.
"Quite frankly," said Carrie Gordon Earll, a bioethics analyst at Focus on the Family, "this proposal that the president put forth is not something anyone expected, and I think people are still examining the repercussions of where this policy could take us."
The split became clear on Friday when 11 anti-abortion allies called the news conference at the Press Club, where they accused Mr. Bush of missing a historic opportunity to close the door on stem cell research.
"The president's position contradicts the Nuremberg Code," said Wendy Wright, the communications director of Concerned Women for America, a conservative public policy group. "We should be horrified at the prospect of participating in research on embryos who are deliberately killed for the same reason that we are horrified that gold fillings were taken from the teeth of Holocaust victims."
The abortion foes accused Mr. Bush of breaking a campaign promise to outlaw research on living embryonic cells, a pledge he reiterated to an anti-abortion group in May.
Lauren Newell of the Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth, a Christian youth group, said: "I am ashamed of our president, who compromises and gives my generation the disposable human life mentality that human life can be picked apart, abused and destroyed. If the president wants to be a strong man and a moral man, then I urge him to reconsider his decision."
This disappointment was echoed by leaders of several organizations supported by evangelicals and Catholics. They include Human Life International; the Christian Legal Society; the Traditional Values Coalition; the Eagle Forum, led by Phyllis Schlafly; the Prison Fellowship, headed by Charles W. Colson, whom the president has praised for his ministry; and the Family Research Council, founded by Gary L. Bauer, who opposed Mr. Bush in the Republican primaries last year. All are conservative Christian groups with sizable followings.
They said they would try to stop the research through legal action. But they stopped short of saying that their anger at the president would translate into direct political opposition. Asked whether they would still support the president in 2004, Angela Buchanan, better known as Bay, whose brother Patrick J. Buchanan was a presidential candidate in 2000, said, "There are some other decisions down the road that we'll be watching, and I guess it will put even more emphasis on those, obviously the Supreme Court justice choices that the president should make."
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http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/politics/12RIGH.html
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