A letter

Dear President Bush,

We, like you, are against a woman's right to choose abortion. And we, like you, know that taking a position blatantly against women's basic rights is politically distasteful. We have gained quite a bit more support for this position by framing it as "protecting babies", and with quite a bit of help from you, we've managed to make great strides in redefining a fetus as a "baby".
However, the definition of a fetus as a "baby" is a political fiction, something we can use to reduce women's reproductive rights. You seem to believe that it is, in fact, an actual human being. We cannot think of any other reason for your persistent belief that using stem cells from embryo's for research is wrong, even though it has the great potential to save many, many lives of actual human beings.
Using stem cells for research does nothing to reduce rights of a single woman to terminate her pregnancy. Those cells come from embryo's that were left over after from couples who have conceived from in-vitro fertilization and would be destroyed anyway. It's a waste to throw away such useful research material when it could be used to alleviate the suffering and even save the lives of thousands, if not millions. It's probably too late to save The Gipper, but people like him suffering from Alzheimer's could be helped.
A very small minority of people feel that IVF should be banned, because they, like you, seem to think that the anti-abortion movement is really about keeping fetuses and even embryos from getting destroyed, which is inevitable in the IVF process. However, as we have pointed out before, this is about limiting women's reproductive rights, specifically the right not to be pregnant. The women who use the IVF procedure want to have babies, as the Christian Coalition and the Republican Party intended. And since submitting to this procedure requires thousands of dollars, most of the women who get it are hardly poor welfare mothers. We want women to have babies, whether they like it or not, and it's bad form to tell those who would like it, particularly if they are rich, that they can't.
So please lift the funding restrictions on stem cell research. There are better ways to go after women's rights than using the lives and bodies of people suffering from diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and diabetes.

Thank you,
Thirteen Senate Republicans