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My bill, HJR 588, set up the Virginia General Assembly Stem Cell Study Committee which I chaired for three years (2005-07). Testimony from doctors and ethicists showed that use of adult, not embryo stem cells were providing the successful therapies for experimental or clinical treatment of debilitating diseases and conditions.
I support ethical stem cell research which has been effective and approved by the FDA for clinical trials in humans and research to find treatments and cures for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, anemia, arthritis and other conditions.
The FDA has not authorized or approved embryo stem cell experiments, nor have private companies invested in this field because no cures have been forthcoming. I do not want to waste tax dollars on ineffective and unethical experiments, but I do encourage further research in adult stem cell therapies which are providing cures, including curing the young adult daughter of a good friend of ours who had Lymphoma.
After testimony from world renowned medical research experts, the Virginia Stem Cell Study Committee unanimously concluded that adult stem cells represent the best hope for medical breakthroughs. This conclusion was reached a full two years before the recent discoveries concerning the adaptability of skin cells which have made embryo stem cell research obsolete. The Committee also unanimously recommended passage of my law, HB 413, creating the Virginia Cord Blood Bank Initiative.
Further info and audio presentations are available at: http://dls.state.va.us/groups/stemcell/meetings/081705/materials.htm
For references to more than 1500 actual clinical trials using adult stem cells, see http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=stem+cells .
In 2003, I authored HB 1541 banning partial birth Infanticide Abortions which became law over Governor Mark Warner's objections. In 2007, I secured a record vote on my HB 2797 which provided that life begins at fertilization and is entitled to constitutional protection. I also supported legislation to regulate abortion clinics, provide for informed consent and parental notice for minors' abortions, and outlaw forced abortions.
I am 100% pro-life. This has been my lifelong position. The right to life, which comes from our Creator, is our most fundamental right, without which all other rights are meaningless. There would be no controversy over abortion if it did not involve human life either days or months before birth. The following article from California Medicine, The Western Journal of Medicine, September, 1970, Vol. 113, pp 68-69 acknowledges:
“In defiance of the long held Western ethic of intrinsic and equal value for every human life … abortion is becoming accepted … Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception … The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices. … this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while a new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected."
Third graders in Virginia public schools learn that human life begins at fertilization. The false claim that women would be jailed if abortion were outlawed is used by those who favor abortion on demand. Virginia's prior criminal abortion law prosecuted abortionists, not women who are usually pressured to abort by others.
I support:
- the Right to Life Act introduced in Congress which would legally define "personhood" at the moment of conception and therefore guarantee all constitutional rights and protections, including life, to the unborn;
- removing the jurisdiction of federal courts from interfering with state laws that protect pre-born children, thereby preventing interference from federal judges regarding state laws, would could lead to public support for a Human Life Amendment to the US Constitution.
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