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Inside Politics

Stem-cell veto override not a sure thing

Story Highlights

• Senators push bill to restore federal funding to stem-cell research
• Bush vetoed similar measure, but Dems have gained seats since then
• Republican Hatch changes stance, now supports funding research
• Stem cells hold promise for treatment of variety of conditions
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Senate turned its attention to plans to loosen President Bush's 2001 limits on embryonic stem-cell research Tuesday, but sponsors conceded their chances of overriding a threatened veto are uncertain.

"Many reporters have been asking, 'Do we have the votes to override a veto?' Well, I don't know the answer to that. It's going to be very close," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a principal sponsor of a Senate bill that would ease those limits.

Harkin said supporters fell just four votes short of the 67 needed to override Bush's veto of a similar bill in 2006, and he said voters "clearly spoke in favor of stem cell research" in November's midterm elections.

"The momentum is clearly going in the right direction," he said.

Researchers hope stem cells will yield treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes, as well as spinal-cord injuries. But because days-old human embryos are destroyed when the cells are extracted, critics equate the procedure to abortion.

In 2001, Bush limited the use of federal funds to research on stem-cell lines that existed at that time. Researchers have since found those lines are contaminated and unusable, prompting calls to roll back the restrictions.

The new bill supported by Democratic leadership would allow researchers to obtain stem cells from embryos created through in vitro fertilization that would otherwise be discarded by fertility clinics.

Democratic candidates campaigned in last year's midterm elections on a pledge to expand stem-cell research, and it was one of the first measures the House of Representatives brought to a vote in January. But the bill passed by a margin short of the two-thirds needed to override a veto.

President's position unchanged

Bush's veto of last year's bill is the only one he has cast in more than six years in office, and the White House repeated its threat to veto any new bill Tuesday.

"The president weighed this issue very carefully back in 2001 and has thought about it since," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "And he believes that clear moral line that he established back in August of 2001 is a good place for the country to be."

Bush won the presidency with strong support from abortion opponents, and Perino said Bush believes tax money from people with strong anti-abortion views should not be used to destroy "a human life."

Some states, such as California, are getting around the Bush policy by funding the work themselves. But with a budget of $29 billion, the National Institutes of Health is the biggest single source of funding for clinical research.

Several of Bush's Republican allies in Congress, including Utah's Orrin Hatch, have joined the Democratic leadership on the issue. Though a longtime abortion opponent, Hatch told reporters: "A pro-life agenda demands that we care for the living -- not just the unborn."

Hatch said his views were influenced by the family of a 2-year-old boy with a family history of severe diabetes that had claimed his grandfather's life at age 47.

"For the life of me, I can't understand how we can discard 7,000 to 20,000 in vitro fertilized eggs a year as hospital waste and not utilize them to help little boys like this with virulent diabetes," he said.

Republicans who back the Bush policy are offering a substitute bill that would establish a national repository for alternative sources of stem cells, such as placental tissue or umbilical cord blood. It would also allow the use of stem cells from human embryos that died a natural death.

"It's obvious that there is great conflict over the whole issue of stem cell research, and the debate is not about the research. The conflict is over the source of the stem cells," said Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minnesota. Coleman said his bill, co-sponsored by Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson, would fund research without facing a veto.

Harkin said he would support the Coleman-Isakson bill, since "It literally doesn't do anything that we can't already do." But he said his own bill "was the only one that really matters."


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