In my first column this semester, I defended the overall satisfactory performance of President George W. Bush. There is, however, a crucial aspect of his presidency I terribly regret not giving any credit to: social moral values. Especially the protection of life itself. President Barack Obama’s presidency is so far appallingly contrary to this most basic of human virtues.

Obama further demonstrated his disdain for defending the rights of the unborn when last week he ended the ban on government funding of embryonic stem cell research Bush put into place, CBS reported Mar. 9. Obama called the ban a “false choice between sound science and moral values” because new cells wouldn’t be created from the destruction of human embryos for research.

CBS also reported that Obama “issued a memo promising to restore ‘scientific integrity to government decision-making.'”

But as Robert P. George and Eric Cohen wrote in the Wall Street Journal Mar. 10, Obama is the one with a lapse in integrity. Obama is portrayed as a centrist in the media, yet he equates those who view the destruction of human life as tarnishing science with their ethics.

Not only are tax dollars free to fund questionable government practices such as terminating human life, but this sacrifice is proving to be more unnecessary given the advances in alternative stem cell research than the destruction of human embryos.

The Washington Post reported on Sept. 26, 2008 research that “found a safe way to coax adult cells to regress into an embryonic state,” which according to stem cell researcher Konrad Hochedlinger of Harvard University, overcomes major initial hurdles in the research.

But now, voters no longer have a say in whether they want their taxes devoted to the destruction of human life.

Obama is also at odds with those voters who are Roman Catholic. Time magazine reported an Obama campaign promise to Planned Parenthood on July 17, 2007 that his first act as president would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act into law (which hasn’t been presented to Congress). The Freedom of Choice Act would limit restrictions on abortion and would legally bind Catholic hospitals to perform abortion procedures they would find evil.

Furthermore, Obama vocally opposed the Illinois state legislation of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, according to the New York Sun on Aug. 18, 2008. A bill with identical language passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate. Obama claims he voted against it because it was too restrictive on Roe vs. Wade, yet no one in the Senate seemed to have agreed on this concern through their vote. It’s baffling how Obama is seen as a nonpartisan unifier when he’s at odds with every senator concerning the most basic right: life.

The Stanford School of Medicine’s Center for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Education’s Web site states that mammals “come from a single cell via the fertilization of an oocyte with a sperm cell. This single cell gives rise to all of the specialized cells comprising the adult body.the mechanisms governing early development are less well understood in humans than in some other species.”

Human development begins at conception. To deny that conception initiates life is to deny that human development after birth incorporates life. It is nonsensical to deny this, however, because anyone who kills a life after birth is liable for murder. The only difference is that the embryonic stage is a more fundamental developmental stage of life than life after birth.

For someone to have voted for Obama, given his stances on the most vulnerable stages of life imaginable, either suggests a severe na’veté of his views or demonstrates the most egregious lapse in conscience and moral development.

It appears President Obama won’t trouble himself with matters of morality and ethics anytime soon. After all, as Ronald Gottschalk recently responded in the Wall Street Journal: “Moral questions are above the President’s pay grade.” Moral bankruptcy is a poverty of its own.

Stephen Ontko is a senior economics major and columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].