Bush: a pro-life president? A truly pro-life president would oppose abortion without exception, and would view the embryo as lie as opposed to potential life. (Cover Story: Abortion).

President Bush won the 2000 election largely because the pro-life community dedicatedly supported him. But the president's policies and public speeches over the past two years have indicated that he has not staunchly defended the principles of the pro-life movement and that he will have little impact on abortion in the United States. Nowhere is this more clear than with embryonic stem-cell research.

"I oppose federal funding for stem-cell research that involves destroying living human embryos," the president pledged on May 18, 2001 in a letter to Robert A. Best of the Culture of Life Foundation. The letter was not extraordinary; Bush had earlier penned similar letters to Pope John Paul II and to other pro-life advocates, both before and after his election. Embryonic stem-cell research, using regenerative stem cells in human embryos created from in vitro fertilization, is one of the frontiers in the struggle to protect the unborn. While proponents of stem-cell research claim embryonic stem cells have the (as yet unproven) potential to produce cures for numerous diseases, pro-life opponents of such research on human embryos correctly point out that the research can only occur after human lives are taken.

Candidate Bush was elected with a firm commitment to prevent subsidizing killing embryonic human beings required for this research. But President Bush made a decision on August 9, 2001 that legitimized this cruel practice. His decision allowed federal funding for stem-cell research on 60 stem-cell lines consisting of what he called "embryos that have already been destroyed." The president's position to allow federal research funding on embryos already killed seemed on the surface to be consistent with his original policy and in harmony with a pro-life agenda. But only on the surface.

Though the decision on embryonic tem-cell research would technically limit federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to 60 existing lines of embryos, Bush's decision to delay a ruling for nearly eight months into his presidency allowed more embryos to qualify for federal funding. "President Bush's prolonged stalling," explained the American Life League in an August 2002 white paper on the subject, "allowed scientists more time to develop stem cell lines that would be eligible for federal funding. When the discussion surrounding federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research first began, there were 12 known stem cell lines in existence. There were approximately 30 human pluri-potent stem cell lines in existence as of June 2001. By the time the President made his decision in early August, the number of lines jumped to over 60."

In essence, Mr. Bush's delay enabled scientists to end the lives of more embryonic human beings in order to qualify more stem cell lines for the research and inclusion in the eventual "compromise" Bush policy. As such, Bush's August 2001 decision can only be considered a Pyrrhic victory for the pro-life cause.

Falling Short on Principle

"As I thought through this issue," President Bush explained in his August 9, 2001 speech on stem-cell research, "I kept returning to two fundamental questions: First, are these frozen embryos human life, and therefore, something precious to be protected? And second, if they're going to be destroyed anyway, shouldn't they be used for a greater good, for research that has the potential to save and improve other lives?"

In the speech, Mr. Bush never answered the first, and most important, question. Instead, he quoted contradictory statements from an unnamed "researcher" who claimed that embryos are "not yet an individual" and an "ethicist" who "dismissed that as a callous attempt at rationalization." Despite professing that "my position on these issues is shaped by deeply held beliefs," the president never made his personal views on this "fundamental" question known in the speech. But he enthusiastically answered the second question in the affirmative. Federal funding of such research will go ahead. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops correctly termed the Bush position "morally unacceptable," adding: "We hope and pray that President Bush will return to a principled stand against treating some human lives as nothing more than objects to be manipulated and destroyed for research purposes.

The Catholic bishops are mistaken in one respect. President Bush has never rested on the principled stand of defending the sacredness of life, despite his claim to support a "culture of life," and that "human life is a sacred gift from our Creator." His official stance on abortion has long been to support rape and incest exceptions to any ban on abortion. (*) If indeed "human life is a sacred gift from our Creator," then the circumstances of birth ought not to matter in deciding whether the law should protect that "sacred gift" of life.

On the other hand, if it is morally permissible to terminate some pre-born children, then shouldn't it be morally permissible to terminate others? A pro-life policy allowing for exceptions opens the door for a continually expanding list of exceptions since it is based on conditions (as determined by those who hold the reins of power) as opposed to the God-given principle that all human life is sacred.

President Bush's public stances on abortion are such that he cannot lead on fundamental pro-life principles. The abortion industry survives by implying that although embryos and fetuses are living tissue, they are not "persons" or "living beings." Bush could have used his presidency as a bully pulpit in his August 2001 stem-cell speech to enunciate the clear principle--and simple biological fact---that fetuses and embryos are living humans with a unique genetic code and the same inalienable right to life as adults. But he did not. Instead, he allowed the abortion industry to continue to confuse the American people by falsely terming human life as potential life. Mr. Bush even employed this pro-abortion phraseology in his speech on stem-cell research:

Research on embryonic stem cells raises profound ethical questions, because extracting the stem cell destroys the embryo, and thus destroys its potential for life. Like a snowflake, each of these embryos is unique, with the unique genetic potential of an individual human being. [Emphasis added.]

To speak of destroying human embryos as destroying "potential" life rather than life itself is to adopt the lexicon of the abortion industry completely. President Bush went on to explain: "In recent weeks, we learned that scientists have created human embryos in test tubes solely to experiment on them. This is deeply troubling, and a warning sign that should prompt all of us to think through these issues very carefully." (Emphasis added.) A truly pro-life president wouldn't merely find the destruction of his fellow human beings something "to think through." There is nothing to think through; the youngest and most innocent of the human race are being slaughtered. It's time to stop it!

But, say Bush supporters, the president should be lauded for more practical reasons--even if he fails to live up to exacting standards of principle. The president supports a number of pro-life policy goals, and indeed he did reinstate the so-called Mexico City rule that bans the funding of abortion providers abroad (unless abortionists only provide abortions in the cases of rape and incest). And, compared to President Clinton, this is indeed a welcome change. Clinton, recall, had stricken the Reagan-era rule from the regulatory books. There will be fewer abortions abroad because of President Bush's reinstatement of the Mexico City policy. But the Mexico City policy and other regulatory rulings will impact very little the more than one million abortions performed within the United States every year.

Many pro-life activists also place great hopes in President Bush's ability to put strict constructionists on the Supreme Court, with a large number of them voting for Bush in 2000 for this reason. But President Bush is not likely to positively influence the Supreme Court with his power to nominate judges. Pro-life President Reagan appointed the pro-abortion Sandra Day O'Connor to the court and the elder Bush appointed the liberal David Souter. The justice who wrote the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, Harry A. Blackmun, had been appointed by Republican President Richard Nixon. Considering Mr. Bush's public admission that "I have no litmus test on that issue [abortion] or any other issue" for Supreme Court nominations, there is no reason to expect that this president will possess greater acumen for selecting justices for the court than his Republican predecessors. Moreover, because the Supreme Court's three most solidly liberal members are younger, Clinton administration appointees, Bush will not likely get an op portunity to tilt the court's balance toward overturning Roe.

Reining in the Runaway Court

This is not to say that President Bush cannot have a major impact toward protecting the right to life. Abortion was "legalized" nationwide in an unconstitutional edict by a Supreme Court decision 30 years ago. The Roe decision overturned abortion laws in all 50 states without any precedents or constitutional justification. President Bush should respond to the unconstitutional judicial activism that led to the Roe decision the same way that Andrew Jackson responded to an unwelcome decision of the Supreme Court during his tenure. Jackson reportedly said: "John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it."

The eminent jurist and author William J. Palmer, judge of the Superior Court of California for Los Angeles County, agreed with President Jackson. Palmer wrote in his 1969 book on judicial usurpation, The Court vs. the People: "When five men, cloistered and made secure against the thoughts, wishes, responses and possible reactions of the people, can do what fifty state legislatures and a national congress, all composed of elected representatives of the people, have refused to do (Miranda case, supra), clearly we have an era of government which is neither democratic nor republican, but rather dictatorial and by the dictation of the few."

If the president failed to enforce Supreme Court pro-abortion decisions, there is indeed little an activist court could do to stop state laws from banning the procedure.

The main contribution George W. Bush can make toward ending the crime of abortion in the United States is to use the presidency as a bully pulpit to explain: (1) Basic biology proves that human life begins at conception; (2) abortion is the deliberate killing of the most innocent human lives; and (3) the people need to pressure Congress to exercise its power to prohibit the Supreme Court from hearing abortion cases (see sidebar). Put simply, President Bush can be most influential by using the prestige of his office to tell America how wrong and destructive abortion is - and how Congress can help put an end to this senseless slaughter. Unfortunately, he seems completely unwilling to do this.

* Some would include "saving the life of the mother" as another exception for allowing abortion, but operations that unintentionally end the life of a baby to save the life of a mother are not exceptions because they are not abortions. They are different in intent, in that they are designed to save lives rather than to end lives, and are different medically. Removing a cancerous uterus, for example, is not medically the same as an abortion. No mother, upon hearing news that she has uterine cancer, eagerly seeks the death of her baby, and no doctor worthy of the name would fail to try to save the lives of both mother and child.