| We have a citizens ballot initiative process in this state for one reason and one reason only ... there may be things that the state's citizens want but that the Legislature is unwilling, for any number of reasons, to give them. In short, it was set up so that people could go around the Legislature to do things when the Legislature proved incompetent to do those things in the first place. Today, some members of the state Legislature hope to reverse that, by undoing to great extent what the people of Michigan did for themselves. The Senate Health Policy committee is preparing to pass bills (SB 647-652) that would limit the promise of embryonic stem cell research, restricting the ability of citizens to donate embryos and placing unnecessary restrictions on our state’s top researchers.
We've been down this path before. Proponents of this needless legislation say that it's necessary to set parameters by which that research can be carried out, which is a very soft way of saying that they wish to place upon that research no end to needless strings so that said research may be legal by practically impossible. It is no terribly unlike the Right's approach to abortion, which has been to, while acknowledging it as the law of the land, restrict access to it to where it is a legal but unavailable option for poor women in wide swaths of geography (making them casualties of an insidious form of class warfare). This legislation moves at a time when the federal government is releasing new lines of embryonic stem cells for research, while also clarifying guidelines on how the stem cells are gathered. In a more enlightened place, this news is met thusly: FEDERAL policy on stem-cell research is moving out of the realm of politics and back into the laboratory where it belongs.
Federal policy on scientific research may be moving out of the realm of politics, but not in Michigan. Here, the voters thought they'd settled the matter by a fair vote of the people. That, it turns out, is not good enough for certain members of the state Legislature. By the way, such things might normally be regarded as DOA for political considerations. The Senate passes Republican legislation; the House passes Democratic legislation; and both die in the others' chamber. However, here we note that the partial birth abortion ban -- a needless ban -- got through the House and had to be killed by the governor. It is hoped that if Andy Dillon truly has aspirations for the gubernatorial mansion that he would never let such a thing as this see a vote on the floor of his chamber, since I assume this thing will run through the Senate like crap through a goose. |
