No big surprise here.

[progressoid]

Harkin lauds, King laments Obama's stem cell decision

Democratic Senator Tom Harkin says President Obama has made an "historic" move today by lifting the ban which prevented the use of new embryonic stem cells in federally-funded research.

In 2001, President Bush signed an executive order which banned the use of embryonic stem cell lines created after that date. Senator Harkin says President Obama's decision to lift Bush's ban is "an historic day" for "patients suffering from disease." Harkin says it's also a banner day "for those...who have fought for more than eight years to free up our best scientists to pursue stem cell research to its fullest." Harkin wants Congress to follow Obama's action and pass a law so future presidents can't reverse today's move.

From the other side of this debate, Congressman Steve King says Obama has shown "no respect for the...objections of life-loving, tax-paying Americans" who believe embryonic stem cell research "involves the destruction" of human life. King is a Republican from Kiron in western Iowa.

http://www.radioiowa.com/gestalt/go.cfm?objectid=EC313AAF-5056-B82A-379FB31B2D05289E

[Cairycat]

1. I think the 'thugs are really bringing out the abortion boogeyman for this

No, not surprising that Harkin would support and the wild-eyed cons like Steve King would be against this.

There was an article about this on the Waterloo Courier's website about this earlier this evening. (I commented on it about 7:00, went to read it at 9:00 to see if my comment had gotten published, but - poof - it had vanished into thin air.) Anyway, one of the conservative commenters said liberals were dumb for supporting the lifting of the ban, that embryonic stem cell research had proven useless, and adult stem cell research had been proven effective. This, he said, meant that Obama or liberals or whoever have some evil money-making scheme with all the aborted babies this ban lifting would lead to, and somehow that was also tied in with FOCA, by which I guess Employee Freedom of Choice Act was meant.

Well, I'm trying to express fringe conservative thinking, so sorry if that doesn't make sense. But you hear this all the time when conservatives talk about abortion, this idea that liberals want greater access to abortion so that money can be made off it. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I doubt that abortion would cost a lot more than a similar medical procedure and I would think that any greater cost would probably be insurance for the practitioners to protect them from the protesting conservative loonies. Or maybe there's some secret black market in aborted fetuses? Where does this idea of large amounts of money being made from abortion come from?

[47of74]

2. Life loving

I'd tell King to spare us the old tired Republican sanctimony. When has he ever given a tinker's damn about human life once it has exited the womb?

[Hardrada]

3. The Proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles in 1871.

Oops, wrong thread!!

[rurallib]

4. Maybe King would want to adopt a few 10,000 of the so called snowflakes

pay for their upbrining etc if he is not a hypocrite.