August 9, 2001

The President Decides to Allow Federal Funding of Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Under Limited Circumstances


Greenfield: Joining me now from our Washington bureau are Ambassador Alan Keyes, a former Republican presidential candidate and syndicated columnist Tony Blankley. He was spokesman for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

You are both self-professed pro-lifers, both Republicans.

Ambassador Alan Keyes, the President tonight as he had all last year, talked about encouraging a culture that reveres life. He said only embryos already destroyed will be the subject of stem cell research with federal funding. Is this a pro-life position that he took?

Ambassador Alan Keyes: Sadly, it reflects what I have often seen in George W. Bush. He says words that are pro-life, but then he does things and he takes steps that demonstrates that demonstrate that he has no understanding of the principle involved.

And, unfortunately, tonight I think if this decision were accepted it puts the pro-life principle on path of extinction. It seemed to accept the notion that we make these decisions based on some calculus of cost-benefits instead of on a clear understanding of principle. And he also embraced the idea that it's OK to eat the fruit of a poison tree.

It is a well understood principle in our law that if you are going to be violating somebody's rights when you do "X," you don't get to keep your ill-gotten gains. And that is essentially what he did by approving the use of stem cells that have come from what he called "life and death decisions already made"--as if somehow or another the injustice of it is lessened by the fact that somebody else made the decision. But we are going to go forward in a way that encourages, in fact, further research, and that will create an environment of mounting pressure if it is successful to simply go forward down this unprincipled path.

Greenfield: Tony Blankley, earlier today I spoke to somebody pretty close to the White House who said he thought that because of what the President had been doing since his term began--the appointment of John Ashcroft, the reversal of Mexico City family planning Clinton policy, his pro-life statements--that he was going to be cut some slack within the right-to-life community.

Is that a sound political prognosis?

Tony Blankley, syndicated columnist: It is and it's not. I think that the fact that he has generally been supported--supportive of those positions, will give him some mitigation of the intensity of opposition. But I don't doubt that this is a decision he's made tonight that will be negative politically for him in his base. It's three years before his reelection, but I don't think there will be quite the energy level even three years from now that there was before this decision.

I think in a certain sense this was a courageous decision. The safer political decision at least in the short term, would have been a firm "no."

Greenfield: So, in that sense, though, didn't the fact that a lot of self-professed pro-life Senators and Congressmen support stem cell research, even more expansionally than what the President decided--doesn't that give him some cover, as opposed to . . .

(crosstalk)

Greenfield: Go ahead.

Blankley: I don't think it's cover so much. What it is I think--I guess, tonight we see a little bit of that split, that some us think (I think at least, I will speak for myself) that there is a moral if not a theological difference between a group of undifferentiated cells and a growing fetus, and that given that there is a moral distinction, we don't feel that this is taking of a life. It is the taking of--from the theological point of view--a potential life. But that, at least for me, is not the same thing.

So, for those people, and I don't know what the percentages in the right-to-life movement--I suspect it's a minority but not a tiny minority--I think we can feel pretty comfortable with this decision. But for those people who believe this is absolutely a violation of the moral standard, I don't think that the fact that a few Senators or a few people of my elk say one thing or the other is going to make any difference in the intensity of their opposition.

Greenfield: Well, Ambassador Keyes, you know, pretty clear that you are one of those people who does regard this as not a pro-life decision, but is this the kind of decision, do you think, that would produce the same kind of outrage in this constituency as, say, appointing a pro-choice Supreme Court justice? Does it rise to that level, in your view?

Keyes: Well, I think it doesn't rise to that level in terms of overt expression. I think it will rise to a level that confirms the deep concerns many of us have had. When I was asked about this decision and potential, I said that G. W. Bush hadn't given much evidence of being an individual who understood the principles, and tonight he confirmed that fact.

He doesn't understand the principle at stake. And it's not a theological principle, it's an American principle. All men are created equal, that's the principle of the Declaration. As we back away from that and we start making up lines--"OK, all of us are created equal, we become equal after this point in gestation or that point in gestation"--it becomes simply a matter of calculation. And then, the cleverest lawyer, the cleverest demagogue will point the finger at you some day, and they certainly have in the past pointed the finger at people like myself and put us on the wrong side of the line.

That's why I think the Founders made this business of human dignity God's business. It is not the business of scientific panels and judges and Presidents. We have human dignity, which comes from God at the point of creation, not at some arbitrarily determined point in the womb or in a Petri dish.

Greenfield: Very quickly, Tony.

Blankley: Yeah. I mean, in reality, the fact is that humans have been making moral distinctions all of our civilization, and I think the fact that we've agreed to make this decision regarding a few undifferentiated cells does not mean that we're going to go in to therefore allow for infanticide or the killing of old people or sick people. I think that is a bogey man and a strawman fear.

I think our civilization is capable of making moral distinctions that most of us will feel comfortable with. But I do agree that this is going to be a beginning of a very long process.

Greenfield: Unfortunately, we have to leave it there, because time is very short. I apologize to both of you, and I especially thank you both, Alan Keyes and Tony Blankley, for joining me.

When we come back, what President Bush was really saying and perhaps not saying in his speech. Reading between the lines when we come back in a minute.

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