Surrounded by children who were once frozen embryos and the families who adopted them, President George W. Bush announced July 19 that he had used the first veto of his five-and-a-half-year administration on a bill that would have expanded federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research.

"As science brings us ever closer to unlocking the secrets of human biology, it also offers temptations to manipulate human life and violate human dignity," Bush said. "Our conscience and history as a nation demand that we resist this temptation."

If the Stem-Cell Research Enhancement Act had become law, "for the first time in our history we would have been forced to fund the deliberate destruction of human embryos, and I'm not going to allow it."

Among the Catholic leaders praising the veto was Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson of the Knights of Columbus, who said the stem-cell bill was "eminently worthy of President Bush's first veto."

"Every human life, no matter how small, should be protected in law," Anderson said in a statement. "Unfortunately in America, the destruction of unborn human life is perfectly legal, whether in a laboratory or in an abortion clinic."

The vetoed legislation would have added "insult to injury by forcing the taxpayers to pay for the destruction, and that is unconscionable," he added.

Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, praised the veto and Bush's insistence "that progress in treating devastating diseases must be pursued in ways that are both effective and morally sound."

"We join the president in inviting Congress and the scientific community to work together on the issue for the good of all," Doerflinger added. "As he said in his address, ethics and science must not be placed at odds, but work together to serve the cause of humanity."

The president said the expansion of stem-cell research that kills human embryos would present "a conflict between science and ethics that can only do harm to both and to our nation as a whole."

Among those present in the East Room of the White House for Bush's announcement were 18 families whose children -- known as "snowflake" babies -- had been frozen embryos created for in vitro fertilization but donated by their biological parents for implantation in the "snowflake" mothers.

The children "remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research," Bush said. "They remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells. And they remind us that in our zeal for new treatments and cures, America must never abandon our fundamental morals."

Also in the East Room were Americans who had undergone successful treatments using adult stem cells. Bush called them "living proof that effective medical science can also be ethical."

Doerflinger said their presence and that of the "snowflake" families "dramatized the need to uphold all human lives equally, not destroy some in the quest to help others."

The president expressed disappointment that Congress had failed to send him the Alternative Pluripotent Stem-Cell Therapies Enhancement Act, which would have increased federal funding of research into ways to derive pluripotent stem cells without destroying embryos.

Although the legislation passed unanimously in the Senate July 18, it was blocked in the House of Representatives on a procedural matter.

"It makes no sense to say that you're in favor of finding cures for terrible diseases as quickly as possible, and then block a bill that would authorize funding for promising and ethical stem-cell research," Bush said.

He asked the heads of the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health "to use all the tools at their disposal to aid the search for stem-cell techniques that advance promising medical science in an ethical and morally responsible way."

Bush said the Fetus Farming Prohibition Act of 2006, which he signed July 19, "prohibits one of the most egregious abuses in biomedical research, the trafficking in human fetuses that are created with the sole intent of aborting them to harvest their parts."

"Human beings are not a raw material to be exploited, or a commodity to be bought or sold, and this bill will help ensure that we respect this fundamental ethical line," he added.

---CNS