By Fred Jackson
August 10, 2001

(AgapePress) - The pro-life and pro-family communities appear deeply divided this morning on whether President Bush’s decision last night on stem cell research was the right one.

In a brief message to the nation last night, Bush outlined how he has wrestled with the moral and ethical questions of using stem cells from unborn babies to further research which might help treat serious diseases. In the end, he said no federal funds would be used for stem cells taken from any new embryos, but he did say he supports research on cells taken from embryos who have already been killed.

James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, is one of those who thinks Bush made the right choice. “I am incredibly relieved by George W. Bush’s decision,” he says. “He called for a total ban on federal funding of human embryo research. And I have to tell you that this is a miracle, folks.”

But Judie Brown of the pro-life group American Life League, sees the Bush decision in a very different light. “What the President has said is literally this: ‘If someone else paid to kill these people, the American taxpayer does not object to harvesting their body parts.’ That’s wrong,” she says. “That’s immoral. It’s unethical.”

Meanwhile, some observers say the Bush decision is nothing short of a compromise designed to ensure the least amount of political damage.

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